Bird by Bird

I was talking with my brother yesterday about writing and how the process can be so overwhelming, even when one sets limits such as two pages a day. I remembered something I had read by Anne Lamott about her own brother and his writing woes.

"Thirty years ago my older brother, who was 10 years old at the time, was trying to get a report on birds written that he'd had three months to write, which was due the next day. We were out at our family cabin in Bolinas, and he was at the kitchen table close to tears, surrounded by binder paper and pencils and unopened books on birds, immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead. Then my father sat down beside him, put his arm around my brother's shoulder, and said, 'Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.'"

--Text excerpted from Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life by Anne Lamott, Anchor, 1995. Click here to read more online.

--Photos taken by M. Corbett on the ledge beneath the roof of her front porch.