Just a Girl.
Just Me.

3. Remember you own what happened to you.  (p6)

4. You try to sit down  approximately the same time every day. (p6)

5. Becoming a better writer is going to help you become a better reader, and that is the real payoff. (p10)

6. All I have to do was to write a really shitty first draft.( p24)

7. You need to start somewhere. Start by getting something- anything - down on paper. (p25)

8. When I sit down to work on a shitty first draft is to quiet my voices in my head. (p26)

9. I love short stories because I believe they are the way we live. They are what our friends tell us, in their pain and joy, their passion and rage, their yearning and their cry against injustice. -Andre Dubus (p47)

10. Having a likable narrator is like having a great friend whose company you love, whose mind you love to pick, whose running commentary totally holds your attention, who makes you laugh out loud, whose lines you always want to steal. (p50)

11. Now, a person's faults are largely what make him or her likable. I like for narrators to be like the people I choose for friends, which is to say that they have a lot of the same flaws as I . ( p50)

12. ⋯⋯they posses a certain clarity of vision- especially if they have survived or are in the process of surviving a great deal. (p51)

13. Plot grows out of character. If you focus on who the people in your story are, if you sit and write about two people you know and are getting to know better day by day, something is bound to happen.  

Characters should not, conversely, serve as pawns for some plot you've dreamed up.

Let what they say or do reveal who they are,and be involved in their lives, and keep asking yourself, now what happened? The development of relationship creates plot. ( p54-55)

14. John Gardner wrote that the writer is creating a dream into which he or she invites the reader, and that the dream must be vivid and continuous. (p57)

15. Drama is the way of holding the reader's attention. The basic formula for drama is setup, buildup, payoff- just like a joke. The setup tells us what the game is. The buildup is where you put in all the moves, the forward motion, where you get the meat off the turkey. The payoff answers the question, why are we here anyway? What is it that you've been trying to give?(p59)

16. Alice Adams said that sometimes she uses a formula when writing a short story, which goes ABDCE, for Action, Background, Development, Climax, and Ending. You begin with action that is compelling enough to draw us in, make us want to know more. Background is where you let us see and know who these people are, how they've come to be together, what was going on before the opening of the story. Then you develop these people, so that we learn what they care most about. The plot - the drama, the actions, the tension-will grow out of that. You move along until everything comes together in the climax, after which things are different for the main characters, different in some real way. And there is the ending: what is our sense of who these people are now, what are they left with, what happened, and what did it mean? (p62)

17. If you are a writer, or want to be a writer, this is how you spend your days- listening, observing, storing things away, making your isolation pay off. (p66)

18. Each character must sound different from the others. And they should not all sound like you; each one must have a self. (p66)

19. Every room gives us layers of information about our past and present and who we are, our shrines and quirks and hopes and sorrows, our attempt to prove that we exist and are more or less okay. (p74)

20. Writing is about learning to pay attention and to communicate what is going on. (p97)

21. If you start to look around, you will start to see. ( p101)

22. When a more or less ordinary character, someone is both kind and self-serving, somehow finds that place within where he or she is still capable of courage and goodness, we get to see something true that we long for. (p106)

23. If you don't believe in what you are saying, there is no point in your saying it. (p106)

24. To be a good writer, you not only have to write a great deal but you have to care. You do not have to have a complicated moral philosophy. But a writer always tries, I think, to be part of the solution, to understand a little life and to pass this one. (p107)

25. Write about the things that are most important to you. (p108)

26. If you don't know which way to go, keep it simple. (p115)

27. I don't think you have time to waste on someone who does not respond to you with kindness and respect. (p170)

28. Writing is about filling up, filling up when you are empty, letting images and ideas and smells run down like water- just as writing is also about dealing with the emptiness. (p170-171)

29. Life is like a recycling center, where all the concerns and dramas of humankind get recycled back and forth across the universe. But what you have to offer is your own sensibility, maybe your own sense of human or insider pathos or meaning.

Everything we need in order to tell our stories in a reasonable and exciting way already exists in each of us. (p181)

30. Old uncle Jesus said, " If you bring forth what is inside you, what you bring forth will save you. (p199)

31. Writing takes a combination of sophistication and innocence; it takes conscience, our belief that something is beautiful cause it's right. To be great, art has to point somewhere. (p205)

32. Becoming a writer is about becoming conscious. When you're conscious and writing from a place of insight and simplicity and real caring  about the truth, you have the ability to throw the lights on for your reader. He or she will recognize his or her life and truth in what you say, in the pictures you have painted, and this decreases the terrible sense of isolation that we have all had too much of.

33. Don't be afraid of your material or your past. Be afraid of wasting any more obsessing about how you look and how people see you.   

If something inside you is real , we will probably find it interesting, and it will probably be universal. (p225-226)

34. This is what separated artists from ordinary people: the belief, deep in our hearts, that if we build or castles well enough, somehow the ocean won't wash them away. I think this is a wonderful kind of person to be. (p231)

35. How alive am I willing to be? (p236)

書名之所以取做 Bird by Bird，是因為作者的哥哥小時候要交一份有關鳥類的報告，拖延了三個月的時間，遲遲沒有動筆，到了截止日的前一天，她哥哥焦慮到快哭了。作者的作家爸爸對她哥哥說：「一隻鳥接著一隻鳥，夥伴。只要一隻鳥接著一隻鳥，按部就班地寫。」我發現這個小故事不只適用於寫作，對於在追求目標和夢想的過程，都是很好的建議，不要去想為了達到目的地還要走多路，只要專注腳下這一步，左腳、右腳、左腿、右腿，一腳一腳地跨出去，走就是了。寫作也是這樣，不要去想要去寫一本幾萬字的小說，而是想著每天寫三十分鐘、或一小時，二頁或三頁，每天完成該寫完的份量就可以，把固定寫作變成習慣，才是能長久寫下去的法則。不要想著初稿就要寫出完美的傑作，能讓自己滿意的句子，可能是在寫了好幾段、甚至好幾頁才會出現，初稿是為了第二稿、第三稿而寫，不求一次搞定，而是多次地修改、潤飾才能接近自己理想中的樣子。

作者的建議之中，讓我最想試試看的是從「人物開始」寫起這件事，我之前都會為了要寫什麼樣的故事而感到很頭痛，我覺得我沒什麼故事可說，但作者卻說從發展人物開始，把人物寫得有血有肉，寫得對他們有感覺，從兩個人物寫起，讓他們互動，你會開始思考他們的行為舉止，他們對事情的反應，然後才會有故事產生，而不是把故事硬生生套在角色上，讓他們照你的想法走，有生命的人物會有自己獨特的故事。

另外我覺得從書裡也得到了安慰，因為作者提到了她出版時的焦慮，對其他人的嫉妒和對自己的懷疑，這些情緒常常在我的心裡翻攪，尤其是焦慮和不安的感受，每一次的投稿，等待回應的過程是如此的漫長，一天之內多次查看信箱，沒有任何消息，然後有一天好不容易等到了回覆，卻是被拒絕的答案，信心大受打擊，懷疑自己是否根本就不該繼續寫下去，但放棄寫作，自己就什麼都沒有了的想法，給了自己寫下去的動力，然後再繼續投稿，然後不斷地重複上述的過程。不過即便像作者已經出書多次，但她一樣也有這些焦慮不安、嫉妒和懷疑，所以稿子被刊登或甚至出版並不是解決這一切負面情緒的答案，當然被肯定的當下會感受到極大的喜悅，但過不久日子又回到了本來的樣子，你還是要坐在書桌前，面對文字，面對下次的壓力。

或許比較好的作法是把寫作當成一種自我療癒，探索自我的過程，不是為了別人，是為了自己，因為孤獨所以寫，因為悲傷所以寫，因為想不通某些事情，所以透過書寫來釐清想法，或者因為記憶不總是可靠，所以靠文字來記錄生活的點滴。說到底，沒有人逼我們非寫不可，就如同村上春樹所說的，「基本上，對創作者來說，動機是是確實在自己心中安靜存在的東西，不應該向外部求取什麼形式或基準。」若是寫作不能給自己帶來某種意義，就沒有非如此做的理由不是嗎？

  

二十歲的漢娜，在戰爭期間因為目睹太多的死亡，內心感到疲憊，尤其在父親也死亡之後，她找不到回到一般生活的理由，於是在其他人都搬到較安全的地點之後，她選擇留在原處照顧那個全身被燒傷的英國病人。沒有人知道英國病人在過去發生了什麼事，也不知道他到底是誰。漢娜把神秘的英國病人當成自己精神的支柱，稱他為「聖徒」，照顧他的方式近乎虔誠，漢娜對英國病人的愛可被視為宗教式的神聖之愛。

另一方面，漢娜和吉普之間的柏拉圖愛情，是因為漢娜和吉普懷有相似的人道主義精神。身為護士的漢娜照顧了許許多多的病患，而吉普每天身犯險境在各地拆除炸彈，為的也是能解救更多人的生命。他們是兩個同樣看見太多死亡的靈魂互相取暖，在夜晚緊緊依靠彼此的身體，擁抱生命的脆弱，證明自己還存在。