I have a friend who only reads non-fiction. Despite my efforts to cajole her into fiction, she stays resolutely in her camp. The benefit to me has been some terrific recommendations about books like this one. It was terrific.
Anne Lamott is an author I’ve not read before. She is well known for this book, a compilation of her guidance to aspiring writers based on her own years of writing and teaching about writing. Although targeted at writers, Lamott covers many topics about life and love and growing up and growing older, and so the book reads more like a compendium of wisdom more generally. And she is funny, laugh out loud funny, not with jokes but with wonderfully wry turns of phrase. Example: “Having a baby is like suddenly getting the world’s worst roommate, like having Janis Joplin with a bad hangover and PMS come to stay with you.”
Even better are the words of wisdom she offers to students and to the read, like this one about honesty and candor: “I told her that I thought she’d been very honest, and that this was totally commendable, but that you don’t always have to chop with the sword of truth. You can point with it, too.”
At one point, she comments that learning to be a writer also makes you a better reader, and I agree with this. By reading about writers and writing, I do feel that I become a better reader through recognizing the craft and the graft of creating these works. The best writers make it look effortless, and their genius is pulling you through an elaborate structure and difficult situations and characters without you feeling pulled. But being able to recognize the genius of construction only enhances the appreciation the beauty. Unlike with magic, learning the secrets of the tricks makes them more interesting.
In the section about “Finding Your Voice”, she gives guidance about not trying too hard to emulate your favourite authors – be inspired by them and learn from them, but don’t try to be them. She says, “…the truth of your experience can only come through in your own voice. If it is wrapped up in someone else’s voice, we readers will feel suspicious, as if you are dressed up in someone else’s clothes.” I think this is why AI is so bad at writing good stories (and at innovation more generally) – as a language model built on all other writing, it doesn’t have an original voice or experience and so it can only mimic characteristics of what has come before.
I loved this book, and can see myself rereading it or parts of it gain, and definitely sharing the book with others, especially the budding writers and other artists I know. Also, Lamott is a well-known essayist, a genre I love, so I’ll be seeking out her other non-fiction in the future.
Fate: staying on my overcrowded shelves.
8 – female author
25 – new author to me
32 – a book about art
rclr 
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