Síntesis
Bird by Bird de Anne Lamott es una guía cálida, generosa y muy divertida sobre el arte de escribir y, en muchos sentidos, sobre cómo enfrentar la vida. Su premisa principal es tan simple como liberadora: para ser un mejor escritor, tienes que escribir más y, sobre todo, darte permiso de hacer “primeros borradores de porquería” (shitty first drafts). Lamott explica que nadie escribe perfecto a la primera; la escritura es un proceso de descubrimiento donde solo al sentarte a teclear logras descifrar de qué trata realmente tu historia.
El título del libro proviene de una anécdota y un sabio consejo. Cuando el hermano de la autora tenía diez años, estaba paralizado por la angustia de tener que hacer un gran reporte escolar sobre aves para el día siguiente. Su padre, para calmarlo ante la inmensidad de la tarea, le puso el brazo en el hombro y le dijo: “Pájaro a pájaro, amigo. Solo tómalo pájaro a pájaro”. Esta es la metáfora central del libro: para evitar el bloqueo y la abrumadora presión del perfeccionismo, debes dividir el trabajo en pasos diminutos y manejables. Además, Lamott insta a los escritores a ser auténticos, a compartir su punto de vista único de la vida y a no tener miedo de pedir ayuda a expertos para darle realismo a sus textos.
Mis subrayados
- You have to relax, and wool-gather, and get rid of the critics, and sit there in some sort of self-hypnosis, and then you have to practice. I mean, you can’t just sit there at your desk drooling. You have to move your hand across the paper or the keyboard. You may do it badly for a while, but you keep on doing it. Try to remember that to some extent, you’re just the typist. A good typist listens.
- She said that sometimes she uses a formula when writing a short story, which goes ABDCE, for Action, Background, Development, Climax, and Ending. You begin with action that is compelling enough to draw us in, make us want to know more. Background is where you let us see and know who these people are, how they’ve come to be together, what was going on before the opening of the story. Then you develop these people, so that we learn what they care most about. The plot—the drama, the actions, the tension—will grow out of that. You move them along until everything comes together in the climax, after which things are different for the main characters, different in some real way. And then there is the ending: what is our sense of who these people are now, what are they left with, what happened, and what did it mean?
- Drama is the way of holding the reader’s attention. The basic formula for drama is setup, buildup, payoff—just like a joke. The setup tells us what the game is. The buildup is where you put in all the moves, the forward motion, where you get all the meat off the turkey. The payoff answers the question, Why are we here anyway? What is it that you’ve been trying to give? Drama must move forward and upward, or the seats on which the audience is sitting will become very hard and uncomfortable.
- Find out what each character cares most about in the world because then you will have discovered what’s at stake.
- All you can give us is what life is about from your point of view.
- Plot grows out of character. If you focus on who the people in your story are, if you sit and write about two people you know and are getting to know better day by day, something is bound to happen.
- You don’t mind that people in this situation are not being charming. You are glad to see them doing something you will need to do down the line, and with dignity. The challenge and the dignity make it interesting enough.
- In general, though, there’s no point in writing hopeless novels. We all know we’re going to die; what’s important is the kind of men and women we are in the face of this.
- … perfect means shallow and unreal and fatally uninteresting.
- Bad things happen to good characters, because our actions have consequences, and we do not all behave perfectly all the time.
- … it was about tragedy transformed over the years into joy.
- And finally, as the portrait comes into focus, you begin to notice all the props surrounding these people, and you begin to understand how props define us and comfort us, and show us what we value and what we need, and who we think we are.
- Perfectionism is a mean, frozen form of idealism, while messes are the artist’s true friend. What people somehow (inadvertently, I’m sure) forgot to mention when we were children was that we need to make messes in order to find out who we are and why we are here—and, by extension, what we’re supposed to be writing.
- Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor, the enemy of the people. It will keep you cramped and insane your whole life, and it is the main obstacle between you and a shitty first draft.
- Close your eyes and get quiet for a minute, until the chatter starts up. Then isolate one of the voices and imagine the person speaking as a mouse. Pick it up by the tail and drop it into a mason jar. Then isolate another voice, pick it up by the tail, drop it in the jar. And so on. Drop in any high-maintenance parental units, drop in any contractors, lawyers, colleagues, children, anyone who is whining in your head. Then put the lid on, and watch all these mouse people clawing at the glass, jabbering away, trying to make you feel like shit because you won’t do what they want—won’t give them more money, won’t be more successful, won’t see them more often. Then imagine that there is a volume-control button on the bottle. Turn it all the way up for a minute, and listen to the stream of angry, neglected, guilt-mongering voices. Then turn it all the way down and watch the frantic mice lunge at the glass, trying to get to you. Leave it down, and get back to your shitty first draft.
- What a miracle it is that out of these small, flat, rigid squares of paper unfolds world after world after world, worlds that sing to you, comfort and quiet or excite you. Books help us understand who we are and how we are to behave. They show us what community and friendship mean; they show us how to live and die. They are full of all the things that you don’t get in real life—wonderful, lyrical language, for instance, right off the bat. And quality of attention: we may notice amazing details during the course of a day but we rarely let ourselves stop and really pay attention. An author makes you notice, makes you pay attention, and this is a great gift. My gratitude for good writing is unbounded; I’m grateful for it the way I’m grateful for the ocean. Aren’t you? I ask.