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Anne Lamott, the New York Times bestselling author of 20 books, offered a master class in lessons from her popular writing guide, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life, at The Virtual Erma: Stories of Our Lives on April 5, and responded candidly to questions from the University of Dayton’s Erma Bombeck Writers’ Workshop community.

Brianna Pitts, intern for the Erma Bombeck Writers' Workshop, excerpted and edited Lamott’s answers.

Questions from the Erma writing community:

Ruth Bonapace (Jersey City, New Jersey)

Q: How do you make the most ordinary, smallest activities into a really interesting essay?

A: I scribble down ideas and things I overhear all over the world — in church, in meetings, in express lines, everywhere I go. And I use very little of it, but that’s the important part: that you get it all down. I have notes and bits of paper everywhere of stories that I thought were about one encounter, and all of a sudden, I make a connection to something that really was interesting today, that I could incorporate into something that happened last month.

Patricia Wynn Brown (Columbus, Ohio)

Q: How do you KEEP THE FAITH? And slog through the bog?

A: I keep the faith because usually I have work due and I have something I want to write to help people keep the faith. To make a commitment with a writing community means that you’re accountable; you have to take action to get your writing done and to give it to somebody to read. So have a writing partner — in 12-step recovery, we always say the whole system works because we’re not all nuts on the same day, but I would also add that we’re not all faithless on the same day.

Julie Fanselow (Seattle, Washington)

Q: In these weird times, might she have a fourth word to add to the “Thanks. Help. Wow” prayer?

A: In 12-step recovery, people always say expectations are resentments under construction, so I keep my expectations low. When I first got sober, an old guy who had many years sober said, “Well, everybody’s going to tell you to say these recovery prayers—these formatted, flowery prayers. We old timers, we wake up in the morning and we say, ‘Whatever,’ and when we go to bed at night, instead of a flowery prayer of gratitude, we say, ‘Oh well.’” So I think those two prayers are great: “Whatever,” and “Oh well.”

Kara Kinney Cartwright (North Potomac, Maryland)

Q: I'd love to hear her speak about writing something beautiful in a time of despair.

A: I was in total despair a couple weeks ago and I came across the great Rebecca Solnit. She posted a long thing on Facebook, and it went viral, and I was so lifted by it that it made me feel like offering the same thing. It’s like what Erma Bombeck would write about, where there is richness and laughter and hope in these very mundane stories about our lives, not giving up, and keeping the faith.

Kari Lynn Collins (Wichita Falls, Texas)

Q: I would love to know her definition of hope.

A: Hope that this or that will happen tends to leave me feeling pretty deflated or defeated because life happens on life’s terms. I have the hope in what Martin Luther King calls the “precious community,” that hope that love is the answer to any question you might throw at me. There’s an acronym for hope that I love, which is “Heart Open, Peace Enters,” so I try to keep my heart open. If you want to have loving feelings, you do loving things. Loving feelings give us hope.

Karen Bell-Brege (Grandville, Michigan)

Q: Do you stick to a strict writing schedule, and is it every day?

A: I write five days a week and I do stick to a strict schedule. I start at nine every morning, I need to have eaten, and I can’t write if the kitchen is a mess. I used to wear mascara back when I had eyelashes, and I used to not be able to write if I had old mascara under my eyes. Isn’t that funny?

Allia Zobel Nolan (Norwalk, Connecticut)

Q: How can you be so brutally honest about the personal and painful? One more question: Can you adopt me?

A: I don’t write really intimate stuff. By the time I write about something, I absolutely know it’s universal, and I don’t write anything that anyone is going to be embarrassed about later, including myself.  And yes, I can adopt you.

Anne Bardsley (St. Petersburg, Florida)

Q: How do you find the spark that calls you to choose a subject? (My spark needs a flame.)

A: I have paper and a pen on me all the time. I scribble down memories and ideas on these lists I keep. You got to be open for business. You got to say to the universe, “I am receiving.”

Stephanie Johnson (Atlanta, Georgia)

Q:  How does it feel to know people hang on your every word — knowing they watch for your essays during difficult times?

A: I don’t know that people hang on my every word. I do know that for some reason, the way I talk about stuff seems to help people during dark times, because I do have faith in God, and the reason I have such deep faith in God is because I have such incredible, rich friendships. Maybe it’s semi-messianic, that over the 45 years that I’ve been publishing, people seem to find my voice — or my combination of trying to do a deep dive and be funny — helpful in dark times.

Teri Foltz (Fort Thomas, Kentucky)

Q: How much time do you spend in silence before an idea is formed? Do you see ideas in all the everyday events?

A: I sit in silence when something’s coming to me. Ideas for people or stories or settings come to us like Polaroid images. So when I feel something coming, I close my eyes and it presents itself to me as it trusts me to get it down.

Kathy Tully (Boston, Massachusetts)

Q: How do you manage to live with that perfect husband? Is your marriage a healing between two souls?

A: It absolutely is a healing between two souls. I’m much more easygoing, but I’m OCD at the same time, so I’m kind of gentle and sweet most of the time and he can be cranky, but we have tools in our battered old toolbox of life. He’s a great cook. We’ve learned what the other loves and needs.