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Anne Lamott Quotes about Writing - Page 2

All Anne Lamott Quotes Acceptance Age Animation Anxiety Art Atheist Awakening Belief Caring Certainty Character Children Church Commitment Community Culture Dancing Discipline Doubt Drinking Earth Effort Energy Expectations Faith Fear Feelings Giving Giving Up God Goodness Grace Gratitude Grief Grieving Hardship Hate Healing Heart Heaven Home Hurt Inspiration Inspirational Inspiring Intuition Jesus Joy Laughter Life Loss Lying Magic Makeup Mask Memories Morning Mountain Pain Parenting Past Perfectionism Prayer Progress Reading Reality Recovery Resentment Running Self Esteem Shame Silence Singing Son Soul Spring Struggle Students Suffering Sunday Tea Understanding Vision Waiting Water Worry Writing quotes

Writing is about hypnotizing yourself into believing in yourself, getting some work done, then unhypnotizing yourself and going over the material coldly.

Writing is about hypnotizing yourself into believing in yourself, getting some work done, then unhypnotizing yourself and going over the material coldly.

Believe, Writing, Done

I don't know where to start," one [writing student] will wail. Start with your childhood, I tell them. Plug your nose and jump in, and write down all your memories as truthfully as you can. Flannery O' Connor said that anyone who has survived childhood has enough material to write for the rest of his or her life. Maybe your childhood was grim and horrible, but grim and horrible is Okay if it is well done. Don't worry about doing it well yet, though. Just get it down.

Memories, Writing, Worry

For me and most of the other writers I know, writing is not rapturous. In fact, the only way I can get anything written at all is to write really, really shitty first drafts.

Writing, Way, Firsts

Anne Lamott (2007). “Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life”, p.22, Anchor

The best thing about being an artist, instead of a madman or someone who writes letters to the editor, is that you get to engage in satisfying work. Even if you never publish a word, you have something important to pour yourself into.

Writing, Artist, Editors

Anne Lamott (2007). “Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life”, p.236, Anchor

The very first thing I tell my new students on the first day of a workshop is that good writing is about telling the truth. We are a species that needs and wants to understand who we are. Sheep lice do not seem to share this longing, which is one reason they write so very little. But we do. We have so much we want to say and figure out.

Writing, Sheep, Needs

Anne Lamott (2007). “Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life”, p.3, Anchor

Perfectionism means that you try desperately not to leave so much mess to clean up. But clutter and mess show us that life is being lived. Clutter is wonderfully fertile ground - you can still discover new treasures under all those piles, clean things up, edit things out, fix things, get a grip. Tidiness suggests that something is as good as it's going to get. Tidiness makes me think of held breath, of suspended animation, while writing needs to breathe and move.

Moving, Writing, Mean

You are going to have to give and give and give, or there's no reason for you to be writing. You have to give from the deepest part of yourself, and you are going to have to go on giving, and the giving is going to have to be its own reward. There is no cosmic importance to your getting something published, but there is in learning to be a giver.

Writing, Giving, Goes On

We all know we're going to die; what's important is the kind of men and women we are in the face of this.

Writing, Men, Important

Anne Lamott (2007). “Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life”, p.51, Anchor

You just have to keep getting out of your own way so that whatever it is that wants to be written can use you to write it.

Writing, Use, Want

Anne Lamott (2007). “Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life”, p.8, Anchor

You keep working on your piece over and over, trying to get the sections and paragraphs and sentences and the whole just right, but there's a point at which you can tell you've begun hurting the work with your perfectionism. Then you have to release the work to new eyes.

Hurt, Writing, Eye

To be a good writer, you not only have to write a great deal but you have to care. You do not have to have a complicated moral philosophy. But a writer always tries, I think, to be a part of a solution, to understand a little about life and to pass this on.

Philosophy, Writing, Thinking

Anne Lamott (2007). “Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life”, p.107, Anchor

Writing is how I communicate my deepest beliefs, and what I hope are helpful observations about our dual citizenship, as children of God, as regular old mixed-up, worried, flawed, precious human beings.

Children, Writing, Belief

"Interview with Anne Lamott, Author of Help, Thanks, Wow". Interview with Jana Llewellyn, www.friendsjournal.org. January 30, 2013.

Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.

Writing, Bird, Kitchen Table

Anne Lamott (2007). “Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life”, Anchor

Jealousy is such a direct attack on whatever measure of confidence you’ve been able to muster. But if you continue to write, you are probably going to have to deal with it, because some wonderful, dazzling successes are going to happen for some of the most awful, angry, undeserving writers you know-people who are, in other words, not you.

Writing, People, Awful

Anne Lamott (2007). “Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life”, p.122, Anchor

When what we see catches us off guard, and when we write it as realistically and openly as possible, it offers hope. You look around and say, Wow, there's that same mockingbird; there's that woman in the red hat again. The woman in the red hat is about hope because she's in it up to her neck, too, yet every day she puts on that crazy red hat and walks to town.

Crazy, Writing, Looks

Anne Lamott (2007). “Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life”, p.101, Anchor

Shirley Jackson said that a confused reader is an antagonistic reader, and I live by that. It's okay to start anywhere, and to let yourself write a big sloppy overly-detailed first draft. You just jump in, knowing that the water will be cold at first, but no one is making you swim.

Confused, Writing, Knowing

We write to expose the unexposed. Most human beings are dedicated to keeping that one door shut. But the writer's job is to see what's behind it, to see the bleak unspeakable stuff, and to turn the unspeakable into words - not just into any words but if we can, into rhythm and blues. You can't do this without discovering your own true voice, and you can't find your true voice and peer behind the door and report honestly and clearly to us if your parents are reading over your shoulder.

Jobs, Reading, Writing

Anne Lamott (2007). “Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life”, p.198, Anchor

This is our goal as writers, I think; to help others have this sense of--please forgive me--wonder, of seeing things anew, things that can catch us off guard, that break in on our small, bordered worlds.

Writing, Helping Others, Thinking

Anne Lamott (2007). “Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life”, p.100, Anchor

Write straight into the emotional center of things. Write toward vulnerability. Don't worry about appearing sentimental. Worry about being unavailable; worry about being absent or fraudulent.

Writing, Emotional, Worry

I honestly think that in order to be a writer you have to learn to be reverent. If not, why are you writing? Why are you here?

Writing, Thinking, Order

Anne Lamott (2007). “Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life”, p.99, Anchor

There is a door we all want to walk through and writing can help you find it and open it.

Writing, Doors, Want

Anne Lamott (2007). “Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life”, p.13, Anchor

If you are hoping to find your self-worth and fulfillment in other peoples' opinion of your writing, you will never find it.

Writing, Self Worth, Opinion

Good writing is about telling the truth.

Writing, Telling The Truth, Good Writing

Anne Lamott (2007). “Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life”, p.3, Anchor

The stuff I write about is pretty universal, the things my closest friends and I talk about - our anxiety about being here on this scary planet, during these scary times, as vulnerable as kittens, having lost so many people I couldn't live without.

Writing, People, Anxiety

Source: www.cosmopolitan.com

Being a writer is part of a noble tradition, as is being a musician – the last egalitarian and open associations. No matter what happens in terms of fame and fortune, dedication to writing is a marching-step forward from where you were before, when you didn’t care about reaching out to the world, when you weren’t hoping to contribute, when you were just standing there doing some job into which you had fallen.

Jobs, Writing, Dedication

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