I just finished reading Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird and wanted to share a passage that addresses the idea of fresh ideas:
"All the good stories are out there waiting to be told in a fresh, wild way. Mark Twain said that Adam was the only man who, when he said a good thing, knew that nobody had said it before. Life is like a recycling center, where all the concerns and dramas of humankind get recycled back and forth across the universe. But what you have to offer is your own sensibility, maybe your own sense of humor or insider pathos or meaning. All of us can sing the same song, and there will still be four billion different renditions. Some people will sing it spontaneously, with a lot of soulful riffs, while others are going to practice until they could sing it at the Met. Either way, everything we need in order to sell our stories in a reasonable and exciting way already exists in each of us. Everything you need is in your head and memories, in all that your senses provide, in all that you've seen and thought and absorbed."
I'm a little past the halfway mark on editing my first draft, and I hope to make a big dent today so I can get on with draft number two!
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4 comments:
So, did you like the book?
One of my journalism profs assigned us "Bird by Bird" and I seriously think I learned more from that book about writing than from all of the hours I have ever spent in class. It' should be required reading...for everyone.
I agree with the notion that there aren't really any fresh ideas, just fresh tellings. I've never read "Bird by Bird", but it sounds like something I need to add to my library.
~your favorite soccer mom.
I did enjoy the book and pulled a lot of good advice from it.
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