Bird by Bird, Buddy

Do you ever have one of those projects that is so completely overwhelming you just don't know where to begin? Between the mounds of paper provided to you as "background information" and the meetings at which surely there must have been an "acronym-using contest," all sense seems to have been lost. Where to begin? When will it end? Help.

Sometimes when I don't know what to write, I read books about how to write by other writers. One of the very best "how to write" books is by Anne Lamott, a hilariously fabulous author and teacher. In her book, Bird by Bird, she offers some instructions on writing and life. In my favorite anecdote, she writes about her brother feeling overcome by the enormity of a looming project:

"Thirty years ago my older brother, who was ten years old at the time, was trying to get a report on birds written that he'd had three months to write. It 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."

Isn't that the truth? Bird by bird (word by word?) is all any of us can do.