This Brilliant Advice for Writers Will Also Help You Live a Better Life

It is simple but definitely not easy

The best, most memorable writing advice is in the first line of Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott.

What Lamott says is this:

I love this advice. In a few words, it explains how to connect with people through your writing. That is the golden ring of writing.

When you write fiction, you want the reader to relate to your characters.

When you write non-fiction, you want the reader to say, “yeh, me too!” You want the reader to take at least a virtual highlighter to your words. When that happens, you’ve hit on the truth.

And yet, as simple as it seems, it’s not easy.

Shakespeare’s masterful writing gave us many quotable truths about what human beings are like. Not only did he observe the essence of human behavior, but he also expressed it more succinctly and more clearly than Freud.

Incredibly, the truth about people he observed is still the same in 2022 as it was in the year 1600.

One of his most quotable lines, for example, “The lady doth protest too much,” is a brilliant example of one way to spot a liar.

When you capture the truth, people relate. They know someone like the character you drew. Maybe they even recognize themselves in that person.

To connect with a reader, say something the reader knows from experience is true.

When you write about yourself, it’s even harder.

Sometimes to get to the truth, you have to uncover layers of pretense. The front we show to the world isn’t exactly a lie, but it is not the truth either.

Why is it so difficult to write the truth about ourselves?

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