Who hasn’t procrastinated until the night before on a school project and been reduced to tears by the overwhelming prospect of tackling the job. The title of this book comes from one such experience:
“Thirty years ago my older brother, who was ten years old at the time, was trying to get a report on birds written that he’d had three months to write. It 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 on 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.’”
This exciting and irreverent account of what it’s truly like to be a writer dispels some of the most crippling myths. For example, it’s OK to have “shitty first drafts”. There will be time to revise.
“The first draft is the child’s draft, where you let it all pour out and then let it romp all over the place, knowing that no one is going to see it and that you can shape it later”
Also, give yourself short assignments. Lamott keeps a one-inch picture frame on her desk, to remind herself that:
“all I have to do is to write down as much as I can see through a one-inch picture frame”
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