Inspired by Bird BY Bird

This section of the book is about The Writing Frame of mind. When I read the first short piece in this section, my mind wandered off on a tangent. Anne Lamott was speaking about paying attention and communicating what is going on. That brought to mind an incident that later became a short story called "A Small Smile." The incident and my observation during that brief moment has played in several of my stories. Not as it happened but what I learned from it.

As a new student nurse I was scared during the first time I worked with patients. We will not go into the comedy of errors that occurred but with an encounter with a patient. He'd had a leg amputated for gangrene and might lose more. Yet there as a special cheerfulness about him. As I was dashing around not accomplishing anything of use he called me aside. "Just smile. That's better medicine than anything the doctors or pain medicine can bring."

Those words were buried in my memory until I began to write. The patient became a dying man. The me became an older nurse who had no family or even close friends. She worked nights. The friendship that developed between the two became love but a love that wouldn't ever come to fruition. All that came from a short observation made by an eighteen year old frightened young woman.

That brings me back to the point of what I found in this essay. Keep your eyes and emotions open to the things you see around you. As a writer you never know what bits and pieces of real life you can twist and change to make a story work.

Inspired by Bird By Bird -- Plot Treatment

Reading this section of Anne Lamott's book brought to mind many of the times I've struggled and found myself backed into a corner when writing a boot. So many times I've done what she did and went back to the beginning to figure where I went wrong. She speaks of the book she'd worked on for two years and had her editor say it didn't work. I imagine the way she felt. After reading Bird By Bird for the first time, I began something that has worked for me.

The rough draft may wander all over the place and much of it won't be in the final version. No one sees this but me. Why? Frankly it doesn't make sense. Once I have the rough draft out of the way, I sit down like she did and do a treatment for each chapter of the book. Usually not more than a paragraph or two. Now some of these change as the story evolves, but having a plan is better than spending weeks and days on writing something that's not going anywhere. Whether it's flawed characters which hopefully you've made part of your psyche. Writing is something like acting. You need to become the characters you write. A flawed plot. Deciding where the important segments should be placed and you won't end up writing a book that wraps up the entire journey in a page or two.

Try a story treatment. Look at each chapter and find the purpose of that segment. Are you developing the characters, advancing the plot or giving needful information. If you can do more than one in a scene congratulate yourself and if all three figure in, you should have a scene that makes the story and the characters live.

Inspired by Bird by Bird - A look at Settings

Several things in this segment of Bird By Bird tickled me. The first was her woeful attempts at becoming a gardner. I have been known to have plants outdoors and they usually thrive. It's the indoor ones that never survive. Take spider plants they always grow and send out new little babies - for everyone else, not me. I also had this wonderful cactus that existed in my house for years. Carried the thing from Texas to Pittsburgh and finally to Nyack. Then the new cat attacked the plant and killed it.

Several things Ann Lamott said about settings rang true. Your characters need to be located in time and space. Details are wonderful when describing a character's space but not too many. The setting should reflect the character's ideas. I know she calls people and asks them. This is a good way to learn. I also have some aides - books of house plans and even some of apartment plans from early houses to the modern ones. I also have books on gardens and places. The internet can also help when creating a setting for your characters. What she suggests is seeing the setting like it's a set for a play or a movie. Maybe this works for some people. For me, word pictures does it. Words work to bring a setting alive.

In my current book my characters are spending a lot of time in a forest. Remembering what it was like to walk in the woods can bring the smells and the scenery to life. And if you've never been somewhere and have no friends who have been to that place of in a home like that, one can delve into books on many things and allow the words to spin dreams in their heads.