Bird by Bird: Reading Response Journal

Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird was both daunting and hopeful. I have just embarked on the journey of the writer and found some of her instructions to be quite inspirational. Yet, after finishing the book, I am also filled with doubt and even more questions than I started with. Granted, they are different questions, but they haunt me nonetheless.

First, the hopeful stuff. Write daily and regularly to make a habit of it. Okay, this does shatter my romantic image of writing only when the muse strikes, when we are compelled to write. Those moments will still occur, but according to Lamott, if we make writing a daily habit, we can train our unconsciousness to unleash our creativity.

Lamott’s words on perfectionism and the “shitty first draft” were liberating. I think that part of the reason I have taken so long to committing to writing is because I don’t think that what I have to write is good enough, no great enough. In the pursuit of greatness, I have robbed myself of the experience of writing, which includes both the successes and the failures. So, if I can push aside the drive towards perfectionism and, as the old Nike commercial taunts just do it, and write that first shitty draft, I can penetrate the paralysis and begin the journey, to play a little, dance a little, and maybe even write something worth telling.

Hand in hand with releasing the goal of perfectionism is the cultivation of compassion for ourselves as well as the characters we write about. Lamott urges us to have compassion for all of the characters we create to better understand them. Through compassion and attentiveness, we can become mediums of sorts to our unconscious creative selves.

And, now we get to the part that frightens me. If I accept Lamott’s paradigm on the source of our creativity, I realize that I am limited by my narrow, narcissistic perspective on the world. I am a human being after all and react to the impulses around me. The more I react, the less I see, the less aware I am. The question that now haunts me is what if I am too damaged, too caught up in myself to have that “friendly detachment” that will enable me to tap into my unconscious, creative part or to see people as they really are? What if in the end, like a dream, everything I write about is just another incarnation of my narrow self? So, the more I know myself, the less I see and the more aware I am of my unconscious incompetence. Which brings me back to the question of whether I am worthy of becoming a great writer. To write something great, you have to be able to see something great, beyond yourself, your rational self that is, and communicate it. Can I do this? Maybe, if I take it bird by bird…