Lisa Firke | Hit Those Keys : words + designs for creative spaces Creativity resources, blockbusters, prompts, etc.

4. “Pick a Bird”

Pick a bird. This expression from Anne Lamott's priceless writer's guide (the one writer's manual you must take with you to a desert island) helps me remember the hardest and most basic thing:


Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott 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....he was at the kitchen table close to tears, surrounded by binder paper and unopened books on birds, immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead. ...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.”

—Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird

You don't write books, or screenplays, or even chapters or acts. You write words and sentences, passages and moments. All you have to write today is what you can see in the work at hand. Pick a bird. Give it your full attention. Show us.

prev | page 4 of 8 | next
back to top