Anne Lamott's classic on writing began as a course she taught at UC Davis and grew into one of the most beloved books on the craft ever published. The title comes from her father's advice to her older brother, paralyzed by a school report on birds: 'Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.' That image of small, attainable steps governs the whole book. Lamott covers the practical: how to start, what a 'shitty first draft' is for (her chapter on that subject has become canonical), how to handle dialogue, plot, character, and the lonely middle of a long project. She also covers what she calls the emotional life of writing—jealousy, perfectionism, writer's block, the way a writer's worst voices become loudest at exactly the wrong moments. Lamott is candid about her own history of addiction, single motherhood, religious conversion, and chronic self-doubt, and she uses that candor as instruction. The book is not really a how-to manual; it is a defense of writing as a practice of attention and a way of being honest, addressed to anyone who has felt called to the work and afraid of it. For more than thirty years it has been the book aspiring writers press on each other.