Addiction, motherhood, and Jesus with writer Anne Lamott

This is the TED Radio Hour. Each week, groundbreaking TED Talks. Our job now is to dream big. Delivered at TED conferences. To bring about the future we want to see. Around the world. To understand who we are. From those talks, we bring you speakers and ideas that will surprise you. You just don't know what you're gonna find. Challenge you. We truly have to ask ourselves, like, why is it noteworthy? And even change you. I literally feel like I'm a different person. Yes. Do you feel that way? Ideas worth spreading. From TED and NPR, I'm Manoush Zomorodi. In Northern California, in the fifties and early sixties, all fourth graders had to write their first research paper, and you have a whole semester to do it. One semester was about Sacramento, our capital, and one semester was about birds. This is best selling author Anne Lamott. So my older brother, who did not like school and was very bitter about any homework he was asked to do, had not started it. He'd had the whole semester, and it was due that Monday. So we were out at this one room cabin we had on the coast, and my dad was trying to help him. And they had photos of birds at the National Geographic. They had Roger Tory Peterson and Audubon. But my brother was crying because it was just such a daunting project. And my dad sat down next to him and put his arm around him and said, just take it bird by bird, buddy. Even though Anne was just nine years old at the time, her father's words stuck with her. That was the best writing advice I've ever heard, that you study about chickadees, and then you write about them for a little bit in your own voice. Then you illustrate them. Then you think about great blue herons, and you read what Audubon has to say, and then you put it in your own words. And you've really turned that into a metaphor for starting so many things in our lives. Everything. I mean, the American way is that you should always know what you're doing. You've made a decision, and you should stick with it. Mhmm. But the fact is that no writer knows what they're doing until they've done it. The way that you get to that to the miracle of writing is bird by bird. If you know Anne Lamott, you've heard this story before. If you don't, it's a great introduction to her because that phrase bird by bird is also the title of one of her best known books. Anne is now the author of 20 books, mostly filled with her own memories of family, single parenting, addiction, faith and forgiveness. For over forty years, her work has touched a nerve with so many people who turn to her for wisdom and advice on how to write but also how to live. And so today on the …