The Book for Me

It was my mother who recommended Anne Lamotte’s Bird by Bird: Instructions on Writing and Life. I had just quit working in restaurants and hadn’t yet started Author, and she thought it would inspire me and give the kind of compassionate support I needed at that point in my career. Plus, it was funny, she said, and we both liked funny.

Reading it was strange. I knew by my personal writing metrics that it was a quality book. As my mom promised, it was funny and wise and less concerned with the craft and business of writing and more with its emotional challenges. Also, as the subtitle indicates, the book’s essays were as much about life as writing. Lamotte didn’t draw a distinction between learning about one more than the other.

I believe it was her focus on the overlap between writing and life and that bothered me. That writing teaches me about life and life teaches me about writing has become a preoccupation of mine – actually, it’s become an occupation of mine. That’s mostly what I write about, teach about, and interview other authors about. But at that time, I had yet to write a single blog, or teach a single workshop, or interview a single author. I just knew, in ways I had not yet learned to articulate, that the deliberately creative act of writing was a way to practice living deliberately.

Every time Lamotte drew a conclusion with which I disagreed even slightly, or that I simply would have phrased differently, I became irritable and impatient. I would huff and sigh and slap the book closed. This happened just often enough that I soon abandoned it. Let me be clear – I basically liked the book. I knew why my mom had recommended it to me and why it was one of the most popular writing books out there. I felt it deserved all its accolades and sales. I just couldn’t read it.

If I were a different person, Bird by Bird might have inspired me. Here was someone having success doing what I would like to do, demonstrating there was a demand for what I wanted to share. But I was someone who had not yet given himself permission to dive fully into this subject, and that resistance, that self-rejection, was becoming increasingly uncomfortable. Lamotte’s essays reminded me again and again of what I wasn’t writing.

Which is why, in its own way, it was just the book for me.

If you like the ideas and perspectives expressed here, feel free to contact me about individual coaching and group workshops.

Fearless Writing: How to Create Boldly and Write With Confidence.
You can find William at: williamkenower.com