I think I discovered this gem at the exact right time. It comes at a point when I am roughly 75% through my first draft and I alternately swing from writing doggedly on to throwing up my hands in despair at the large pile of dog faeces words I have created.
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Author: Anne Lamott
Genre: Nonfiction – Writing
Rating: 4/5
It is in the top five for every list of writing books I have seen and for good reason. Instead of trying to tell us how to write (remember for every writing rule, there is a classic work that has broken it), it attempts to explain how to live as a writer. She is unabashedly honest as she discusses writer’s block and jealousy, self-doubt and fear. This is the best writing book for stuck writers because she makes the job and the writer feel like they have value.
“…when you get serious, you will be dealing with the one thing you’ve been avoiding all along – your wounds.”
Once you start seeing the beauty and the terrible around you clearly, it is hard to ignore. She explains the need to find your voice and shows us how. When you hear the constant stream of negative self-talk and the voices telling you to keep quiet about this horrible moment or strength in the face of meanness, she argues for using this to fuel your writing.
“Don’t be afraid of your material or your past. Be afraid of wasting any more time obsessing about how you look and how people see you. Be afraid of not getting your writing done.”
She offers us snippets of her life to let us know that we are not alone, that she has felt the jitters of passing the story on to a first reader, that she has hugged herself while listening to a stream of ‘you’re not good enough’. She really gets it.
At any earlier point in my writing journey, I wouldn’t have completely understood the joy and value Lamott places on writing. She captures the futility of publishing, the wanting to create a little niche for yourself, the wanting to be heard, the selfish yet urgent desire for a legacy. She also touches on the peace writing brings and the desire to gift a piece of yourself to others.
The only reason I gave this a four star rating was that I would have liked a few more practical tips, like always taking a little index card. Lamott never leaves the house without one, in order to safeguard those conversations or rare perfect moments that you collect along the way.
This book is a must read for any writer, if only for the knowledge that the writers you know and love are on the same journey, just at a different point. It assures us that others wrestle with demons and feel just as deeply but keep on putting words down anyway.
Get it from Book Depository:
Further reading:
Read my review of Stephen King’s On Writing or my post on short story competitions open to international submissions.
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