To write well, we have to notice:

There is ecstasy in paying attention. If you start to look around, you will start to see. When what we see catches us off guard, and when we write it as realistically and openly as possible, it offers hope.

Putting effort into practicing:

To be a good writer, you not only have to write a great deal but you have to care.

And find a way to trust ourselve:

Don’t look at your feet to see if you are doing it right. Just dance… If you don’t know which way to go, keep it simple. Listen to your broccoli. Maybe it will know what to do.

Bird by Bird is like having a conversation with a good friend. I giggled many times, because Anne Lamott has a good amount of humour when writing about writing. The references she makes (“It’s like so-and-so who once told me”), the personal experiences she relates (her discovering the novel written by her father), the painful and the joyful, she sheds light on Life with a constant twist of humor.

It’s more than just about writing, we find good principles of life in there, like unfailingly showing up, finding the good around us and putting words on that like picking our most beautiful flowers from the garden to put them in evidence on the kitchen table. She champions the idea that, yes we are all going through a terrible mess, but the important is what we make with life, we all have the choice to see the beauty and share hope.