“We don’t have much truth to express unless we have gone into those rooms and closets and woods and abysses that we were told not go in to. When we have gone in and looked around for a long while, just breathing and finally taking it in – then we will be able to speak in our own voice and to stay in the present moment. And that moment is home.”
– Bird by Bird

It was very difficult to choose a single quote from this book, I want to commit to memory every other paragraph in it. This is one of those books I’d like to own and read over and over again and expect to learn something new on every reading. I read it after having watched the TED Talk by Anne Lamott and so ended up reading the entire book in the voice of a kind hippie grandma telling a story on a quiet Sunday afternoon about a benevolent giant made of cookie dough.

The sense of humor in the book is very lucid, heartwarming and yet not annoyingly optimistic, like a P.G. Wodehouse meets a religious Hemingway. I think if you were on your deathbed and someone read this out to you, you would feel a little less sad about dying. Lamott has an enviably deep understanding of the connection between language, humor, and life and she weaves her sentences with great precision, as a poet would, rythms and blues as she puts it, heavily borrowing from her vast stockpile of quotations.

The book is aimed at explaining the process of writing to clueless amateurs, just ordinary people who love to scribble. It is a wonderful feeling to get transported to a distant land and see and hear and feel it as if it were real, and it is equally wonderful to take someone there with you. But as with anything worthwhile in life, it takes effort and practice and failures and discipline to be able to do it well, which is what the book is about.

Even though the book is mainly about writing there are several insights, which when not taken literally, apply to just about everything I do, from doing research, teaching, dancing, to being a good person. She says that the most important thing about writing is putting your ass down every single day and getting on with it, but is this not true about anything and everything?

And everybody has something to write about. Think of all the unique experiences you’ve had over all these years, all the unique things you’ve felt, from the smell of musty corridors, acrylic paint, and creaky wooden chairs at the place where you took your first painting lessons as a kid, to feeling like the captain of Titanic as you realize your proofs don’t work and you’ll have to start your research project all over again.

Writing is about being a good observer of the world and letting the stories filter through you as you squeeze them out back into the world, crisp and distilled. She says that there is a Dr. Seuss character with a long neck in the attic of her unconscious which tells her what to write. The trick is to befriend it and let it say what it wants to say through you. I think mine’s an endearing little Machiavellian kid, and it’s great fun to stop talking and listen to it hatching plans to conquer the world and trying to figure out why underwear?

“I love you like 20 tyrannosauruses on 20 mountaintops.”