The 2 Best Ways to Improve Your Writing Skills (with a little backup from Anne Lamott)

January 20, 2013beccakinla advice, writing groups, writing process Tags: advice, Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird, bum, chair, community, consistency, improve, improvement, literature, opinion, practice, regular, reliable. help, share, sharing, sit, skill, skills, strategy, support, tush, writer, writing, writing group 6 Comments

I’m going to offer some advice today that seems simplistic, so basic as to be ridiculous. Yet recently, I’ve experienced people who have neglected these 2 important strategies that are pretty much guaranteed to improve their writing abilities. So here I am repeating them.

Almost every book about writing offers the following advice. (The wording might vary according to the delicacy of the audience, but the meaning is the same.)

Okay, so you might need more than a chair. This guy isn’t going to get much writing done if he doesn’t pick up a pen!

1) PUT YOUR TUSH IN THE CHAIR.

By this, of course, we learn that if you tell us you want to write, well that’s a nice sentiment. But we know that you mean it if you sit at a desk, pick up a pen (or keyboard) and actually practice writing. Certainly weekly, and preferably daily, you need to write. A human being is only a writer if s/he is a person who writes. Continue reading →

Who’s talking? POV, Voice, and Narrator as explained in Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird

January 10, 2013beccakinla advice, authors, fiction, finding agent, finish that novel, literature, publishing, recommended reading, review, reviews, style, submissions, teachers, writer, writing, writing process Tags: advice, Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird, character, Ethan Canin, first person, Lamott, learning, Lisa Yee, literature, narrator, novel, point of view, POV, third person, voice, writer, writing, writing process 5 Comments

Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott

There are few books that come up with my writer friends more often than Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird. In the same way that I feel like I’m not quite smart enough because I’ve never taken Calculus, I’ve felt like a slacker because I never got around to reading it.

And I should have felt guilty–because it’s great.

Okay, so it has a lot of rather vulgar language, but Lamott’s writing is so funny, and yet so useful, that I’m pretty much in love with the book.

One of the interesting bits of advice that Lamott gives writers is a gem she attributes to the author Ethan Canin. The most important way to improve your writing, he says, is to employ a likeable narrator.

Here’s the thing that struck me about this advice: for many, many years, I always wrote in third person. Continue reading →

Rebecca Klempner

Author page of Rebecca Klempner

Bird by Bird

Who’s talking? POV, Voice, and Narrator as explained in Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird

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