Bird By Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life

Use these questions or activities to help gauge students’ familiarity with and spark their interest in the context of the work, giving them an entry point into the text itself.

Short Answer

1. Who is Anne Lamott? What has she written, and why should readers take her advice about writing seriously?

Teaching Suggestion: Knowing more about Anne Lamott will increase students’ confidence in her writing advice and increase their engagement with Bird by Bird. If students are unfamiliar with Lamott, they might investigate these or similar resources before attempting to respond to the prompt.

• This overview of Lamott’s career from her literary agency succinctly lists her accomplishments and describes the characteristics of her writing.
• In this 16-minute TED Talk from 2017 Anne Lamott offers a few pieces of life advice from her perspective.

2. What do you guess are the most significant differences between formal writing instruction in school and books on writing that are aimed at the popular market? Do you think both approaches offer something valuable to all writers, or do you think that these two sources of instruction serve different audiences with different needs?

Teaching Suggestion: Students are very familiar with traditional in-school writing instruction, but they may  be less familiar with writing books published for a general audience.