by Kristen Nevarez Schweizer

March 30, 2026

Releasing a hardcover without blurbs on the dust jacket is a power move.

Instead of celebrity endorsements, the back cover of Good Writing: 36 Ways to Improve Your Sentences features five of Anne Lamott and Neal Allen’s three dozen rules.

This weekend, the book hit the New York Times Best Sellers list.

The compact volume — at exactly 200 efficient pages — is as unassuming yet influential as the duo who wrote it. Every sentence pays rent; it is packed with actionable wisdom to help writers take their prose from serviceable to memorable. The literary power couple behind it (literally, married in 2019) is worthy of the historic Balboa Theatre. This Wednesday, April 1 at 7:30pm, at Good Writing: An Evening with Anne Lamott & Neal Allen, they’ll be in conversation with Marni Freedman, a pillar of San Diego’s writing community.

Lamott, 71, author of more than 20 books — including the celebrated Bird by Bird — is beloved for crafting sentences that combine reverence for God with an f-bomb. Allen, 69, is a former journalist turned spiritual coach whose books on the soul earned him a devoted following. Their multi-hyphenate expertise promises a fascinating conversation.

In anticipation of the popular event (presented by ArtPower, tickets here), I asked Lamott and Allen for the story behind Allen’s rules and the reasoning behind the order in which they were listed.

 “The rules had been on my website. I had a website I first developed for clients who were doing inner critic work with me, and I would put random things on it,” said Allen. “I mentioned it to Annie on one of our early dates.”

“And I loved it. I started sharing it in all my Bird by Bird workshops,” Lamott says. “I copied it and gave it to my students almost immediately.”

Allen cues her like a jazz partner, “But it was thirty-four rules then.” 

“Yes. I added two. The two best ones.“

Their banter brings vim to a book that could be described as a delightfully nerdy grammar manual. Allen opens each chapter in a “welcoming, teacherly essay or meditations on the rules,” then Lamott chimes in with her own take on the topic, often including good-natured jabs. Somehow, their technical pages scan like fun e-mails between secure lovebirds.

“But how did I decide the order the rules were listed…?” Allen repeats my question. “Well, I grouped them in some way that made sense to me at the time.”

He pauses. She exhales.

“A number of times in the book we stress how important and life-changing it is to have a person to work with,” Lamott says. “Because at some point, you can’t tell if the material works anymore because you’re so close to it. There is a point at which you might start to hurt the material, and — in writing and all of life — you need somebody to give you honest and respectful feedback.”

The craving for constructive criticism is common among all artists, but writers specifically yearn for reviews (and at the same time are terrified to be described as anything less than luminous), and Allen speaks to that in his 2023 book, Better Days: Tame Your Inner Critic.   

When asked how he can write one great book about quieting one’s superego (Allen calls his The Gremlin; Lamott’s is The Governess) and come out two years later with a book critiquing writing, Allen reframes the narrative.

“The new book isn’t judgmental. The rules that you learn from good writing are life rules, too, because both increase your attention to detail; they increase your focus.”

He clarifies, “If I go into a sentence with the idea that I can improve it by focusing on turning a vague verb to a strong verb, then my curiosity — not judgment — is honed in on what’s happening and I have an intimate relationship with the sentence. The same way I might with a garden, with another person; with these rules, I’m seeking to be an intimate writer.”

Intimacy (potentially pronounced into-me-see) is defined as profound closeness, an unguarded feeling of being seen and known. Great writing — or Good Writing, in this case — with a goal of intimacy between the writer and the page, also sucks a reader along.

The compelling advice of Good Writing is described as starting where The Elements of Style leaves off and a continuation of Lamott’s Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life (which still sells 40,000 copies annually, 32 years after its publication in 1994). This book is a gift from two epic septuagenarians who list Ocean Beach (if you know, you know) as their favorite neighborhood in San Diego.

“I can’t tell you how excited we are to be there in San Diego with you all,” Lamott says. “We just want to tell people every single thing the two of us know about writing.”

Bring a notebook. Bring a pen. Bring your inner critic.

Good Writing: An Evening with Anne Lamott & Neal Allen
Balboa Theatre
April 1, 2026
Doors at 7 pm
Tickets: start at $52.50
UCSD Student: Limited Free Student Tickets – email [email protected]