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By Teri Rizvi

Anne Lamott eavesdrops in grocery store lines.  She scribbles notes. And she sits down at the same time every day to write as she wrestles and tames her inner critic.

“Being a writer is a sacred calling like being called to the monkhood or to the convent,” she told nearly 300 writers in a kick-off keynote talk at “The Virtual Erma: Stories of Our Lives” on April 5.

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, and responded candidly to questions from the University of Dayton’s Erma Bombeck Writers’ Workshop community. Her talk was part inspiration, part tough love.

Her advice:

• Tell me a story, make me care. “If you’re a writer, you’re asking us to come around the campfire because you have a story worth telling. … We want you to hold up the mirror in which we can see who we are and how we are to live — and what is most important in this one fleeting life we've been gifted with."
• Write what you come upon. “Two pages is all I ask, and it doesn’t have to be a story. It can contain a character who shows up out of breath. It can contain a lake and a bunch of swans. It can take place entirely in the dark. I have learned we do better when we are not trying so hard. There is nothing more deadening to creativity than the grim determination to write a story. At the very least, these assignments can provide a writer with a nicely stocked larder and some notion where the mind goes when it’s off its leash.”
• Stop not writing. “Any excuse you can come up with for not writing I’ve heard. …Find a community. It’s here. It might be your community college. It might be a bookstore. It might be any number of places where people give you benevolent pressure, who are going to say, ‘You have to give me five new pages every other Tuesday.’”
• Write down as much as you can see through a one-inch picture frame. “I only have to write what I can see through this one-inch frame I keep on my desk. I can see being at a little pond in West Marin when I was four. This is my mom pregnant with my little brother. My older brother nearly drowns. My Uncle Don is really drunk, and mom and dad have made this incredible gourmet picnic for everyone. … E.L. Doctorow said that writing is like driving at night with the headlights on. You can only see a little way in front of you, but you can make the whole journey that way.”
• Schedule your writing. “A bribe at the other end — yogurt with a little granola — is very effective.”
• Write shitty first drafts. “The first draft is a child’s draft where you get everything down with way too many details. The second draft is the adult draft, and you go through it very strictly like the pediatrician Dr. Spock would with a 2-year-old. You must be firm but friendly: ‘We really can’t use that here. Why don’t you put it aside for another book?’ The third draft is the dental draft. You go through it paragraph by paragraph, sentence by sentence, tooth by tooth. You jiggle each tooth and see what works.”
• Quiet your inner critic. “The main thing you’re up against is that inner voice that says you’re no good. It is the main obstacle in the path of most writers. You (must say), “Oh, it’s you. Why don’t you go in the other room and read?”
• Scribble notes. “If you want what we (authors) have, which is finished material, do what we do. Have a pen with you at all times. Scribble notes.”

Lamott held up Erma Bombeck as one of her early influences: “I grew up on her and was probably more influenced than I could even imagine by her incredible spirit and hilarious way with words.”

The next Erma Bombeck Writers’ Workshop is slated for March 26-28, 2026, at the University of Dayton. Registration will open in November.