Bird by Bird
by Anne Lamott, 1994

Great little book about writing. Contains tips for staying motivated and writing well, along with a lot of funny anecdotes about the author’s personal journey. Focused on fiction writing, but useful nonetheless. The following paragraph, about saving ideas on index cards, is fairly representative of the book at large:

I eventually throw away a lot of my index cards, either because I use what’s on them in a paragraph somewhere or because it turns out that the thought wasn’t all that interesting. Many index cards on which I write in the middle of the night tend to be incoherent, like some incredibly bright math major thinking about oranges or truth while on LSD. Some contain great quotes that I sharew with my students, although I unfortunately often forget to write down whose quote it is. Like this one, for instance: “What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters, compared to what lies within us.” Now, I”m almost positive Ralph Waldo Emerson said this, but with my luck some critic will point out that it was really Georgette Mosbacher. (Who was it that said, “A critic is someone who comes onto the battlefield after the battle is over and shoots the wounded”? I have it written on an index card somewhere…) Other cards just sort of live with me, in little piles and drifts. My son will probably have to deal with them someday, after my death. They are my equivalent of all the cats that those nutty Bouvier aunts own. But my cards do not smell or shed or go wee-wee on the floors, and I think [my son] should be aware that he is getting off easy. Most of them will not make much sense to him. There are many with just one or two words on them that would have reminded me of entire scenes and empires, but he will have to stand there scratching his head.