Bird by Bird Review - Part 1

It has been a hectic month, but I did manage to begin reading Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott. The title of the book comes from an incident in Lamott's childhood in which her older brother, trying to get a report on birds written for school, was advised by Lamott's father: "Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird." Lamott's advice to writers echos that of her father. She recommends tackling writing projects one small piece at a time as the best way to overcome the emotions that hinder writers from producing.

To illustrate, here is a sample of her advice:

"The first useful concept is the idea of short assignments.  Often when you sit down to write, what you have in mind is an autobiographical novel... or a play about the immigrant experience... But this is like trying to scale a glacier.  It's hard to get your footing... Then your mental illnesses arrive at the desk like your sickest most secretive relatives. ...as the panic mounts and the jungle drums begin beating and I realize the well has run dry  ...I finally notice the one-inch picture frame that I put on my desk to remind me of short assignments. It reminds me that all I have to do is write down as much as I can see through a one-inch picture frame. This is all I have to bite off for the time being." 

I think that is great advice, at least for me personally. It is so easy to become stagnant in the face of self-doubt and the enormity of the writing task at hand.

Look for more about Bird by Bird in coming days...

ePublishing: Where to Begin?

When I decided to write a book, by necessity I had to start thinking about publishing. My thoughts lately have turned to the subject of self-publishing.  There are two routes one can go these days: traditional publishing and electronic publishing. The wisdom on the Internet at present is that self-published newbie writers have a better chance of selling books if they go exclusively with ePublishing.  The reasoning behind this is based on the belief that the public is more willing to pay $0.99 to download an e-book by an unknown author than they are to pay $7.99 for a hardback or paperback of the same book. Knowing my own book buying behavior, such wisdom is hard to dispute. 

So I came to the conclusion that ePublishing was the best route for me to go for self-publishing. But where to begin? My research reveals that two of the biggest e-book publishers are Kindle Direct Publishing and Smashwords.  Each of these ePublishers has their strong points. Smashwords offers a detailed "style guide" that is very useful in preparing documents for painless translation into e-books while Kindle has a wider distribution network. Still, which is the better choice? Writer Brian S. Pratt advocates uploading your e-book to Smashwords first for the formatting advantages, then posting the formatted document to Kindle as well to take advantage of the wider distribution. Sounds like a good plan to me. I may just give it a shot when the time comes. More on this subject another time...

Reading List Addition

A friend of mine who is a writer highly recommends the book Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott. She says it is one of the best books she has read on the ups and downs of becoming a writer. Last week I obtained a copy for myself. I hope to read it soon. In advance, I read some reviews of the book. One reviewer had this to say:

"I used to write and then I took some time away from it, and someone suggested this book to me to inspire me. It did exactly the opposite. Lamott makes writing sound like passing a kidney stone..." 

On a more positive note, another reviewer said:

"This may be the single best book I have ever read in my entire life. It is helping me get my work done, on a daily basis; it helped me see where I do fit in life (my niche); and it helped me see how utterly not alone I am. It's a wonderful thing."

Here's hoping my read falls in line with the second reviewer and not the first. ;) The image above is art by M. C. Escher, Sun and Moon, 1948.