Bird by Bird
I have resisted reading another book on writing until I was forced to unearth numerous paper bags of books languishing in the attic for the past five years.
There I discovered a book I had also resisted because of its’ strange title, bird by bird by Anne Lamott. That title was the sage advice given by her writer-father to her 10 year old brother languishing the last minute over a writing assignment he had known about for over a month. (Sound familiar?)
Every writer needs this book. It’s worth any price you pay just for the first 27 pages. In it the writer talks on a problem with just about every writer is familiar: the voices. Lamott, in a very down to earth, sometimes off color humor and potty terms, names a couple of hers including the vinegar-lipped Reader Lady who pinces her nose and remarks, “Well that’s not very interesting, is it?” There’s the emaciated “German male who wries Orwellian memos detailing your thought crimes, William Burroughs, dozing off or shooting up because he finds you as articulate as a houseplant.” And then there are the dogs, the ones in their pen who if you ever stop writing will “surely hurtle and snarl their way out because writing is ……..the latch that keeps the door of the pen closed…..containing the crazy ravenous dogs,” keeping them at bay from tearing the writer apart.
These voices were quelled when one day the writer had sessions with a hypnotist who gave her the suggestion and resulting exercises to perform that required her to imagine each critic, each voice the personification of a mouse. She would take the mouse by the tail and drop into a mason jar. She did this with each whining, critical voice in her head. Then she was to put the lid on and watch as all these mice clawed at the glass jabbering away, “trying to make you feel like shit because you don’t do what they want.”
The hypnotist further advised Lamott to imagine the jar having a volume control button which she could calibrate and watch as every mouse clawed at the glass trying to get to her. At that moment she would turn away and could “get back to her shitty draft.”