It’s been a while since I read Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird. So long, in fact, that when I decided to review it here, I had to pull it down from the shelf to reacquaint myself with it first. Skimming, I noted the chapter names and tried to recall what I had learned from each. Then I dove into one at random, and before I knew it an hour had vanished. This is maybe the best thing anyone can say about a book: I just kept reading.

If you’ve just begun your voyage as a writer, you might find yourself overwhelmed at the piles of books on writing. Grammar manuals, style guides, treatises on character development… it’s enough to make anyone wail but where do I start? Save yourself some agony and get your head right at the beginning: read Bird by Bird. In one short book, Ms. Lamott has created a doorway of sorts, an introduction that may just set you on the proper path to a lifetime of writing bliss. The subtitle says it all; Some Instructions on Writing and Life.

A really catchy movie line can winnow its way into the popular culture in no time, popping up at parties until you’re pretty sure you’ll grab a cocktail fork and murder the next person who says “show me the money” or advises you that “you can’t HANDLE the truth.” Hang out with writers who have read Lamott, and I guarantee you you’ll find her fingerprints all over their speech. “I know, it’s rough, but it’s just a shitty first draft,” one might say. “Remember to use your one-inch frame,” spouts another. Everyone nods in agreement. It’s a testament to how beautifully the author has wrapped up some of the messier, thornier issues writers face, and presented them with neat little bows.

The very first thing I tell my new students on the first day of a workshop is that good writing is about telling the truth. We are a species that needs and wants to understand who we are. Sheep lice do not seem to share this longing, which is one reason they write so very little. But we do. We have so much we want to say and figure out. Year after year my students are bursting with stories to tell, and they start writing projects with excitement and maybe even joy—finally their voices will be heard, and they are going to get to devote themselves to this one thing they’ve longed to do since childhood. But after a few days at the desk, telling the truth in an interesting way turns out to be about as easy and pleasurable as bathing a cat.

Anne Lamott is the writing teacher I wish I’d had as a kid. Maybe by now I would be polishing my Pulitzer, or moving aside my National Book Award to dust. As it is, I’m content to bathe myself in her weird, neurotic, often self-effacing wit, while finding these stunning little gems of absolute truth in her words. Yes, writing is hard. She doesn’t make any bones about that, to her credit. What she does is present the reader with a reasonable frame of reference for beginning a writing journey anyway, hard times be damned. It was she who first gave me permission to write poorly—to celebrate it, even—as a means of just getting the blighted words down on a page. She counsels keeping it simple, holding to short assignments (writing only what you can see through a one-inch picture frame), while pedaling furiously to keep ahead of the censors living in our heads.

In a progression of chapters that each read like fully-realized essays, she delves into the standards you’ll find in other books, such as character development and plot. But she’s not shy about dipping a toe in waters that others are too squeamish to mention; morality in storytelling (no, it’s not what you think), the salvation found in false starts, and how to know when you’re done.

Then I look into my students’ faces, and they look solemnly back at me.

“Who why does our writing matter, again?” they ask.

Because of the spirit, I say. Because of the heart. Writing and reading decrease our sense of isolation. They deepen and widen and expand our sense of life: they feed the soul.

This is no book of rules. Instead, it provides a sturdy foundation in the soft, shifting ground that underpins many of us and our desire to write.