Oh, it’s such a good book. I’m taking my copy on the subway with me this morning. Thanks for the reminder, I totally forgot about that part!

Everybody’s been recommending that book to me for years too. Perhaps it’s time to finally get to it.

It worth his reading… it also worth his rereading each years. You get stock with your writings? You need inspiration? This is the book ;)

I blogged about it a while ago and wrote some quotes from it: Other quotes from Bird by Bird

You finished to read the book and need more? I can suggest you “Page after Page” by Heather Sellers. The book is in the same trend with another voice and other tips and tricks.

Good reading,

Salutations,

Fred

Index cards are good … or the contemporary alternative could be to use your PDA/smartphone ;-)

Merlin, it’s one of my favorite books of all time. Index card synergy is excellent, but the book certainly stands on its own merits.

In the same vein, Annie Dillard’s The Writing Life is extraordinary, as well.

Anne Lamott lives near SF and was on a KQED show last week, talking about faith and politics.

She seems like a fascinating, unpredictable person with a natural gift for musical language. The archived interview is available in Real format.

(I love the idea of a “jukebox” in your head that plays the greatest hits of what you think you’re good and bad at. Great image.)

Bucky Fuller and his chum, E J Applewhite, obviously knew a thing or two about index cards:

E.J. collaborated with Bucky on Synergetics 1 & 2, and he compiled – on a typewriter not a computer – one of the oddest books in philosophical history – The Synergetics Dictionary, a 4-volume photocopied collection of 22,000 3 x 5 cards used during their work on Synergetics. On the cards he abstracted Buckminster Fuller ‘s thoughts on hundreds of topics from letters, books, tapes, published and unpublished papers, and thus “introduced Bucky to himself” on all these subjects. And too, in the process, he gave Fuller scholars an annotated resource beyond price.

I just can’t imagine how much fun it must have been to type up 22,000 of them, though.

Another non-fiction writing book that extols the virtues of the index card (at great length and depth) is A Writer’s Time: Making the Time to Write by Kenneth Atchity. It is one of my favorite writing and time management books. A 2fer.

That’s the thing—like the Buckminster Fuller example, what do you DO with them when you’re done? Anybody can create a bunch of stuff, but that doesn’t help anyone by itself.

Thanks for the tip o’ the hat, Merlin!