Personal Writing Book, part 1

Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird: Three points from the first third

1. Bad first drafts - just get it down on paper; it's okay if it's awful
I think I'm actually getting better about this. I know that once I've got something on my paper/computer, I can move on to making it pretty. It's like sight-reading hard music - it's not pretty, but it has to happen sometime. I remember my high school speech teacher had a poster up that said "Never fall in love with your first draft."

2. Writing a lot will get you to some usable material
"There may be something in the very last line of the very last paragraph on page six that you just love, that is so beautiful or wild that you now know what you're supposed to be writing about, more or less, or in what direction you might go - but there was no way to get to this without first getting through the first five and a half pages." (p.23)

3. Perfectionism: get over it
"Perfectionism means that you try desperately not to leave so much mess to clean up… Clutter is wonderfully fertile ground… messes are the artist's true friend… We need to make messes in order to find out who we are and why we are here… and what we're supposed to be writing."