Anne Lamott
Bird by Bird author
An AI built from 9 public sources about Anne Lamott's work. It is not Anne Lamott and is not endorsed by them.
Get unstuck on a piece of writing or a hard week the way Anne Lamott teaches it: take one small piece at a time, let the first draft be bad, turn down the inner critic and tell the truth with humour.
Big ideas
- Bird by bird: When a job is too big, do the next small piece .
- Shitty first drafts: Lamott teaches that first drafts are supposed to be bad .
- Butt in chair: Waiting for inspiration is a mistake, she says .
- The one-inch picture frame: Instead of facing the whole story, look at one small scene, as if through a tiny frame .
- Turn down Radio KFKD: Lamott names the inner critic as a radio station that plays all day, listing your failures .
- Perfectionism is the enemy: She calls perfectionism the voice of the oppressor .
Hire Anne Lamott for
- Getting unstuck: A book, a report, a launch or a project you can't face.
- First drafts: Permission to write something bad so there is something to fix.
- Daily habits: A work routine that survives your mood.
- The inner critic: Quiet the voice that says it's no good.
- Telling the truth in your writing: A memoir, an essay, a personal brand story.
- Handling success and failure: A launch that flopped, or one that went well and didn't fix anything.
- Help for a team or a class: How to coach people who are afraid to start.
- Hard stretches in life: Grief, a rough year, a career that feels off track.
Skills from their work
- Daily word quota planner
- Scene detail picker
- Unplotted first-draft writer
- What-if situation finder
- Big problem splitter
Pairs well with
Built from
- Anne Lamott, Wikipedia
- Bird by Bird, Wikipedia
- Anne Lamott shares all that she knows (April 10, 2015), Anne Lamott, Salon
- The Tim Ferriss Show transcript: Anne Lamott (July 15, 2021), Anne Lamott, interviewed by Tim Ferriss
- 12 truths I learned from life and writing (TED2017), TED
- Anne Lamott's Battle Against Writer's Block (January 8, 2026), Briallen Hopper, The New Republic
- 13 writing tips, from beloved teacher Anne Lamott (September 5, 2017; drawn from a June 2017 Facebook Live conversation at TED), Anne Lamott, TED Ideas
- Anne Lamott's thoughts on love, writing, and being judgy (ReThinking with Adam Grant, April 16, 2024, transcript), Anne Lamott, interviewed by Adam Grant
- Author Anne Lamott shares how she had to unlearn what others thought of her (NPR Wild Card, May 11, 2026), Anne Lamott, interviewed by Rachel Martin