Risk Placing Real Emotion at the Center of Your Work
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“If something inside of you is real, we will probably find it interesting, and it will probably be universal. So you must risk placing real emotion at the center of your work.” Author Anne Lamott
“Anne Lamott understands better than anyone that writers need help. . . She writes so well, in fact, that it’s hard to believe that she, too, has trouble with writing. That’s what’s so deeply comforting about this book.” The Wall Street Journal
I am, lately, needing inspiration so I’m rereading “Bird by Bird” and now, sharing some with you!
“Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life”
Listen to her, here. And if you haven’t found this amazing interview series with “old ladies” interviewed by Julia Lewis-Dreyfus, here she interviews Anne Lamott. (Wow. Well, don’t miss the Jane Fonda one either.)
“Thirty years ago my older brother, who was ten years old at the time, was trying to get a report written on birds that he’d had three months to write, which was due the next day. We were out at our family cabin in Bolinas, and he was at the kitchen table close to tears, surrounded by binder paper and pencils and unopened books about birds, immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead. Then my father sat down beside him put his arm around my brother’s shoulder, and said, “Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.”
“For some of us, books are as important as almost anything else on earth. What a miracle it is that out of these small, flat, rigid squares of paper unfolds world after world after world, worlds that sing to you, comfort and quiet or excite you. Books help us understand who we are and how we are to behave. They show us what community and friendship mean; they show us how to live and die.”
