For anyone looking to improve their writing, I recommend picking up a copy of “Bird by Bird.” Anne Lamott gives some of the most helpful advice for writers and students of life I have ever read.
Start small and take things one step at a time. That’s the overall lesson and theme it carries throughout. One chapter is about the importance of short assignments to move past the novice level. Another chapter is about how all writers have to go through terrible first drafts to get to terrific final drafts.
As we close out this week, the first of our major projects has gone through several revisions. We have completed multiple short assignments, too. So, I hope you can see how this could also apply to our course on Web design.
If you ever feel overwhelmed during the remainder of the class, think about the line given to Lamott’s brother, who had been procrastinating on a book report:
Anne Lamott “Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life” (Turtleback, 1995)
“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.'”