What can I say about Bird by Bird that has not already been said by every writing professor ever and thousands of reviewers? “Bird by Bird, by Anne Lamott” is basically all a review needs to say at this point. It is axiomatic that if you are English-speaking and you aspire to write, you will at some point read this book, or at least have it recommended to you. If you have not, let us know what desert island you are marooned on, and we will send rescue.

So instead of rehashing facts most people already know—that Lamott is funny (albeit a bit too much so for my taste), and Lamott is brutally honest in a beautiful and redeeming way, and Lamott is both deeply wise about writing and very talented at teaching it, and, because it bears repeating, that anyone who aspires to write should read this book—instead of all that, I’ll talk about how this wonderful book has intersected with and impacted my life.

Last week I read this article from Yancey Strickler on Metalabel, and it got me thinking.

My biggest takeaway was that pursuit of a vision—or, let’s say, the living of a life—scales profoundly not just in impact but in meaning, for both the individual and the group, when the chase is taken up in community.

This is the third in a series of posts inspired by Gornick's book, which I reviewed here. Last week we discussed ways to dig in and identify the core "Why" of a memoir. Today we look at how to weed out content that doesn't belong; that is, how to keep readers—and oneself—from going down blind side paths and losing the trail of the true journey.

Or as Gornick puts it, "I took it as my task to keep the narrating self subordinated to the idea in hand. I was never to tell an anecdote, fashion a description, indulge in a speculation whose point turned on me" (p. 10, where "me" refers to aimless self-absorption).

We'll explore one tip on achieving the right mindset, then we'll look at two weeding strategies.

Three reminders:

• This discussion focuses on memoir. It is not advice on or a judgment of other types of personal writing.

• It serves us to know the rules before we decide if we want to break them.

• We assume that the first few drafts of a manuscript are out of the way and we are in the editing phase. If you are a writer and not at this point, consider skipping this post, as revision questions are counterproductive to the raw creativity you need to indulge early on.

Tip 1: For courage and motivation to be selective, embrace your Why.

"The narrator is involved not in confession but in this kind of self-investigation…. Here, it is self-implication that is required. To see one's own part in the situation—that is, one's frightened or cowardly or self-deceived part—is to create the dynamic."

"[In memoir, readers] are in the presence … of a mind puzzling its way out of its own shadows—moving from unearned certainty to thoughtful reconsideration to clarified self-knowledge."

"No, no. What is [the story] about?"

–Vivian Gornick, The Story and the Substance

This is the second in a series of posts inspired by Gornick's book, which I review here. We're continuing last week's discussion of the question "What is it about?"

A heads-up: I said last time that we'd look at how to weed out digressions, but as I was writing this series I realized there was a more fundamental matter to discuss: how one identifies the core subject matter of the story.

I found myself standing in front of a memoir-writing class with a hunk of manuscript in my hand, asking, What is this all about?—and the answer came back, It's about this dysfunctional family in Cincinnati, and I said, No, no. What is it about?

–Vivian Gornick, The Story and the Substance

Last weekend a friend attended the memorial service for a well-known artist from his town. I asked if he'd known the man. No, he said, he just wanted to honor him. He also hoped to learn more about him. However, my friend added, in spite of the fact that there were many eulogists, he learned very little, as most who got on stage spoke mainly about themselves. "One guy carried on about how they used to go fishing." My friend was more puzzled than disappointed as he waited for that speech to have a larger point … but it was only ever about the fishing.

This is the first in a series of posts inspired by Gornick's book, which I reviewed here. I plan to explore how memoir differs from personal narrative, the relationship between the self who writes and the self who is the narrator in the book, how a writer may stay motivated during the writing and editing process, and perhaps other topics as they occur to me (or if a reader suggests something).

We're going to start with the question "What is it about?"

For writers of personal narrative and memoir, here is a book which brims with acute insights delivered with a passion and skill that I suspect will not only improve one's odds of giving readers a rewarding experience, but also of having a more enriching time as a writer. And even setting utilitarian purposes aside, this book's relentlessly beautiful sentences are a delight to read for their own sake.

In her conclusion, Gornick observes that "any attempt to teach writing out of anything other than that which the teacher knows intimately (rather than theoretically) is...doomed." She also says, "To approach the work in hand as any ordinary reader might was to learn not how to write but--more importantly by far--why one was writing."

Well, in The Situation and the Story, it is clear from go that Gornick not only knows her stuff when it comes to this type of writing, she reveres it.

Technical Writer HQ is onto several powerful insights, here. Number one is that successful writers (and businesses) pay attention to their audience.

To extend the metaphor, I'd say the question is not so much whether a chef knows how to cook; it's whether they know why they cook. Probably for the love of it, yes. More crucially: are they doing it for the love of the diners? Kitchen skills alone will not fill a restaurant. The good chef asks what the people want to (or need to, or are able to) eat. If they do not, they may be looking forward to a lonely feast of self-satisfaction.

When I packed my corporate existence into a storage unit and strapped on the backpack of freelance editing and copywriting, my desire was (and remains) to apply my ever-accumulating technical skills and life experience to things that really matter to me.

Foremost in my mind were two ambitions:

1. Empower people to resonate deeply and clearly when they communicate.

2. Encourage deeper insights into the self, to help people to more richly encounter themselves along with readers.

My third, unofficial goal, was once and for all to stop sacrificing my mind, body, passion, talents, and time on the altar of other people’s interests (especially megacorporate interests).

All of these ambitions, and every idea I’ve had concerning what editing services to offer and what sorts of clients to work with, are underwritten by three simple convictions:

• Everyone’s life is uniquely precious

• Sharing our unique stories is vital to personal and collective flourishing

• Truly communicating is hard, but immensely rewarding when we do the work to do it well

Ironically, the biggest struggle I encounter as a freelancer is to keep believing in the convictions with which I hope to empower others.

The Sense of Style, by Steven Pinker, presents an interesting duality. On one hand, it declares an empowering, actionable goal on behalf of writers and editors: to “distinguish the rules [of style and grammar] that enhance clarity, grace, and emotional resonance from those that are based on myths and misunderstandings.” The stated point of this investigation is to allow his audience “to apply the guidelines judiciously, mindful of what they are designed to accomplish, rather than robotically” (pp. 6, 7).

On the other hand, Mr. Pinker’s book spends a great deal of time providing an education which is enlightening and entertaining but not easily practicable, as it pursues the author’s greater vocational hunger: to pick apart clunky grammatical protocols instated by “[m]anuals that are credulous about the inerrancy of the traditional rules [which] don’t serve writers well” and to dig deeper into the mechanisms of the ever-evolving creature we call language, which “orthodox stylebooks are ill equipped to deal with” (p. 3). The final conclusion of this investigation seems to be a sort of joyous surrender to the fact that while we are able to rationalize and reform quite a bit of the rulebook for written language, we will never wrestle all of language into any final set of protocols. In addition to multiple nods to the ever-changing nature of language, in the chapter “Arcs of Coherence,” Pinker serenely confesses, “There is no algorithm for doing this” (p. 143) and also admits, “The ways to order material are as plentiful as ways to tell a story” (p. 144).

To put all this another way, The Sense of Style is a deeply-engaging book which I would recommend to any language nerd or student of the writing craft who enjoys the following three things:

It always fills me with great joy to witness the moment when an author whose story I participated in editing at last come to print. Warmed by Hope, by Ron Nickerson, is the latest occasion for celebration.

Book cover for Warmed by Hope: How Divine Power Shaped This Man's Story, by Ron Nickerson. Art of a shining lighthouse in a storm on a choppy sea

This time, that shining moment when one more precious pilgrim joins his voice to the traveling band of all who write, read, and live life in such unique and important ways (which, by the way, is all of us) feels especially poignant.

When I saw that Mr. Nickerson's book had been published, I also learned that Ron, in the words of his Christian faith, fell asleep two months ago to await the Life-Giver's return.

“If you want to write, here’s a secret: the writer’s struggle is…a con game, a cognitive distortion, a self-fulfilling prophecy.” – Roy Peter Clark, Writing Tools

In early 2019 I was alarmed by how desperate I felt. My larger world was steering into a skid of alienation, despair, and hatred, my family seemed eager to go on that ride, and I felt myself careening right off the cliff with them. Two things magnified my scrabbling urge to escape.

The first was the casual hopelessness which greased the common asphalt. I perceived an ironic unity of vision in my society on this matter and this matter only: we all indulged the assumption that problems were insoluble except through destruction. Shouting and shaking fists and wishing ill in every direction was the best any of us could expect from being trapped in our lives as well as stuck with one another. I felt grieved by the thought that this might be (and remains today) the best that most of us wanted. I mourned our capitulation to a nightmare. Were we not a nation of dreamers?

The second factor which poked a tack in my butt, and the one more responsible for goading me to clamber out the window of the out-of-control vehicle, was the fragile sense of agency I had discovered just two years earlier. My awareness of hope, of positive choices in life, was still in its infancy. After a happy layoff from a decade-long career, I had embarked on a journey of joy, curiosity, and openness to life. I wasn’t ready in 2019 for that to be over. So I got out of the dysfunctional accord and took flight to Spain, to walk.

As I reflect on Writing Tools, by Roy Peter Clark, parallels between my story and the way he speaks about the craft of writing tug at my sleeves like unruly children who have not yet learned the bad ways society wants them to behave. Centrally, the author wants to remedy the paralyzing (and counterproductive) attitudes our world has about writing.

If you want to improve your basic writing skills, the good news is that there are many good books and classes you can avail yourself of. In fact, a lot of books and classes teach slight variations on the same advice. This is another piece of good news: if you have a choice between two or more classes, then as long as you have an engaged teacher, enthusiastic classmates, frequent assignments, and a system of robust, edifying feedback (i.e. workshops), then one is as good as another.

But what if you want to write better science fiction stories? Horror novels? Romance or western or gangster? Where do you go to learn about genre writing?

One may be surprised (as I once was) to learn of the important of genre-savviness for writers and editors. This is at least the case for those who want to appeal to a big publisher, and perhaps even for those who plan to publish independently. Unfortunately, your run of the mill college writing course or graduate program is not going to bother with genre. In fact, they may consider ignorance of genre to be a point of pride. So other than reading in your area of interest, how can you gain knowledge?

Happily, today you can discover niche courses in places like Masterclass and BBCMaestro. More to the point of this review, the library of instructional genre books keeps growing, and a fine entry on the shelf is John Truby’s The Anatomy of Genres, which was published in 2022.

Truby founded and for thirty years has run a writer’s studio. He is also a regular Hollywood consultant. The depth and breadth of his experience is emphatically on display in his book.

The Anatomy of Genres is big—at 700 pages, it is certainly the largest of all the books on writing I’ve ever read. Its subject matter is vast, and its objective ambitious: the author surveys fourteen genres as he endeavors to classify all of storytelling, traveling from horror to memoir to comedy to romance. And during this tour of the solar system of story types, Truby’s enthusiasm never flags.

Truby naturally divides the material on the basis of genre. He combines forms only a couple of times; memoir is put with coming-of-age (one might argue that the latter is a subset of the former) and detective with thriller, but for the most part each form gets its own chapter. This means that a writer who is mainly interested in learning about fantasy, for instance, need only flip to chapter 11.

Something I love about writing is that it is a form of self-expression available to almost anyone. Another beautiful, empowering feature of writing (I have said it before) is that it is a skill which can be developed. One great way to elevate your skill is to write every day. Another is to read often, read widely, and, once in a while, read a good book about craft.

Not all books on craft are created equal, so in this arena I’m happy to hand out tips. Today I want to tell you about a fantastic book on the subject of writing memoir by William Zinsser. It is titled Writing About Your Life.

A brief digression before we get into the book. I did not start an editing business only because I’m great at it and know I can earn a living in the field. When I journey with a client, we seek to nurture their passion, boost their self-confidence, deepen their intuition, and fine-tune their craft.

Why do I work this way? It comes down to love. What drove me to enter this arena was a fierce conviction that your voice matters. If you were not meant to be here, you wouldn’t be here. If your story didn’t matter, you wouldn’t be doing anything and nothing would happen to you. But you are here. You do take action. Events, as it so happens, transpire in your life. This all means that there are amazing stories that only you can tell; unique stories that you deserve to tell; vital stories which the world will be enriched by and which it can only hear from you.

This brings us back to William Zinsser’s Writing About Your Life. If I were to summarize it in one word, that word would be love.

AI is a hot topic that affords people endless opportunities to read and write about it. As is my style, now that everyone else has had their say, I feel like weighing in. In line with my vocation as an editor, I offer my observations on why we write, how we write, and the sort of impact we have in the wonderfully crowded and cacophonous auditorium of human communication (as it happens, today I do have some observations of my own about AI).

Last week we talked about tone: how you sound in your writing. Read about that here. Today we’re going to talk about subject matter: what you write about, and how this, like tone, affects your connection with readers.

Pattern Two: Writing to oneself and forgetting about the reader

Key observation: Many essays and comment about AI write to the author’s concerns rather than those of the reader.

This is part of the reason why pattern one (see last week’s post) exists. Once again it’s complicated, because we could easily add to the axiom “Write what you know,” the rider “and what you care about.”

So off the bat, I’ll clarify that I am not suggesting that you (when I say “you,” I’m talking to every writer, not just editors) not write about what matters to you. In fact I try not to say you should or shouldn’t anything. Unless I am helping you tidy up your spelling and punctuation or enforcing a client’s style guide, my aim is to provide insights, perspectives, and recommendations, then step back so you can make your own best choices.

Nor am I precisely saying you shouldn’t write to yourself. One of my own favorite ways to get my own writing off the ground is to write as if I am the only one who will read it, and I can carry on in that spirit for quite a while before I remember the outside world. There’s a therapeutic side to creative expression that is precious and productive.

Instead, most of the advice which follows is aimed toward the tail end of the creative process, when you as a writer (and your editor as your companion) are reflecting and refining upon how engaging your writing will be.

By engagement, I am not talking about how to transfix people with a flood of hypnotic “content.” Instead I mean the writing equivalent of a shared experience, like looking someone in the eye, feeling the roar of a stadium together, feeling ice cream drip down our wrists at the same time, hugging someone or picking a painful splinter out of the communal palm. How close will you and your readers come? How deep does the resonance of your writing go?

AI has been a hot topic for a while now, and as such it affords people endless opportunities to read and write about it. As is my wont, now that everyone else has had their say (a few times over) I feel like weighing in—but not on AI. Instead, in line with my vocation as an editor, I offer my observations on why we write, how we write, and the sort of impact we have in the wonderfully crowded and cacophonous auditorium of human communication.

What I have written is somewhat long, so I’m breaking it into two pieces. Part one comes out today. Stay tuned for part two next week!

Good news! Writing is a skill like any other, which means that it can be developed. One of the many benefits of hiring an editor is the chance to sharpen your abilities with someone who operates, on one level, like a personal coach. With a good editor, you receive custom insights on how best to refine not only how you put words on the page but also grow in your practices of self-discovery and communication in general. Of course, not every occasion calls for an editor. There are many ways to develop your writing muscles: join a writing circle, take a class…read books.

Let me repeat that for emphasis: read books! Reading in the realm of what interests you is one of the most valuable (and economical!) ways of honing your abilities. Just be advised: reading in your genre is probably a much better use of your time than reading about it. Books promising to teach you how to write abound. For memoir alone there are an abundance of well-intended books trying to pick the bones of how to. (In fact, at the end of this blog and in future installments, I will review such books to help you make informed decisions about your personal development.)