Anne Lamott

Anne Lamott is an American novelist and essayist whose writing guide Bird by Bird has become one of the most beloved and honest books about the craft and struggle of writing.

Anne Lamott has been writing — fiction, nonfiction, journalism — since the 1970s, and her voice is unmistakably her own: warm, self-deprecating, politically engaged, spiritually earnest without being preachy, and deeply funny. She has written about alcoholism and recovery, motherhood, faith, and grief, and all of it comes from the same place of radical personal honesty.

Bird by Bird, published in 1994, is ostensibly a book about writing but is really a book about how to show up for any creative endeavor that matters to you. The title comes from her father’s advice to her brother, paralyzed by a school report on birds: just take it bird by bird. The central metaphor extends throughout — the case for small, manageable actions against the paralyzing ambition of the whole project. The chapter on “shitty first drafts” remains one of the most liberating pieces of advice ever published for writers who are afraid of being bad before they can be good.

Lamott is not a systematic teacher of craft technique; her book will not help you with plot structure or scene construction in any methodical way. What it does is harder: it addresses the emotional and psychological obstacles that prevent people from writing at all. Her voice is so warm and her self-disclosure so disarming that reading Bird by Bird feels like being encouraged by someone who has genuinely struggled with the same fears and come through them. For anyone who writes or wants to write, it is essential.