I'm a little spacy right now. Not in the best blogging form, though I did take the time to release some comments that got tangled in the spam filter. I've been writing all morning, and my head is elsewhere. (There's a new excerpt hidden on this blog somewhere.)

Over the weekend, I started reading Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life, which was kindly recommended by Julie G in a comment section.

Lamott is a fabulous writer. I gobbled up Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son's First Year, when I recovered from my C-Section and nursed Jonah. When you're in the writing mode, it's really best to take the time to read great writers at the same time. Their style will leak into your yours. Like when you're talking to someone from Georgia, you suddenly find yourself dropping a lot of "y'alls." Good writing is contagious, just like a Southern accent.

In bird by bird, Lamott provides some worthy advice for dealing the monstrosity of writing of a book.

 I also remember a story that I know I've told elsewhere but that over and over helps me to get a grip: thirty years ago my older brother, who was ten years old at the time, was trying to get a report on birds written that he'd had three months to write, which was due the next day. We were out at our family cabin in Bolinas, and he was at the kitchen table close to tears, surrounded by binder paper and pencils and unopened books on birds, immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead. Then my father sat down beside him, put his arm around my brother's shoulder, and said, "Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.

… Say to yourself in the kindest possible way. Look, honey, all we're going to do for now is write a description of the river at sunrise, or the young child swimming in the pool at the club, or the first time the man sees the woman he will marry. That is all we are going to do for now. We are just going to take this bird by bird. But we are going to finish this one short assignment.

Bird by bird. I related that story to Steve this weekend, and he agreed that it was very wise. It's really the best way to undertake any huge job, not just writing.