Listening to anne lamott lecture is like taking a refreshing cool bath on the hottest day of the year; it quenches the soul. Additionally, her wonderfully gritty voice doles out practical writing advice with sturdy handles, the kind you literally cannot get from any oridinary seminar. Much of this tape is subsumed within her bestselling book, Bird By Bird, yet there is plenty that is unique to Word By Word to make it well worth the price; not the least of which is hearing the poem which Anne's dog Sadie wrote to her, wherein Sadie ponders the question: 'Should she (the author) really be driving?' Hilarious and poignant as ever, Lamott mixes up wry asides with text from her writing manual, and makes everything difficult seem worth undertaking. All in all, a generous illumination and expansion of several classic Lamott topics; hearing her say it in her own words brings it crackling to life. Writing is hard work, but with Anne at your side, it's a shared journey.