Annie Dillard | Write Till You Drop, This is the Life, The Writing Life

The Writing Life by Annie Dillard

Published by Harper Perennial (November 12, 2013)

Genre: Essays

Format: I read these digitally

 

If you go to Annie Dillard's website and scroll down on her "Essays" page, you'll see an annotation on her 1997 Image article "Advice for Young Writers" that says, "Do not read this crap." Now, that's the kind of writer who probably has the advice I actually do want to read.

The Writing Life reads like a series of notes collected over years. Dillard meditates on the idea of writing as a process that has to begin to end -- and must end once it begins. She contrasts some writing to painting, noting that the painter has the opportunity to layer the work. Often, the painter completely obscures the entire first layer by the time the painting hangs on the wall. Similarly, "it is the beginning of the work the writer throws away." Dillard tells the story of a pilot she knew once who died while executing an airplane trick. Dillard notes "his inexplicable wordless selfless line's inscribing the air and dissolving." The pilot's path was there, and then it wasn't. Dillard cites Graham Greene's idea that for projects that take years to write, the man who began the book might not be the same as the man who finishes the book. The book, then, is layered.

In "This is the Life," Dillard paints vignettes of different life experiences. In one stanza, she describes someone whose goal is to "wear the best shoes you can afford" and to "know Rome's best restaurants." In another, it's tribal pig raids. In another, it's holy black rocks. The lives and goals of these individuals are utterly different. The shoe lover can't see or understand the life of the pig raider. She questions: if we could leave our own experiences, climb up on a "ladder," and observe the fabric of the world, the way one piece weaves into another---so what? What would we do differently? Does it change the experience of the individual to connect?

Dillard focuses on the work of writing. A writer should make sure the writing environment works. A writer should study other writers' work. Some writers might compare writing to bleeding; you just cut, and the "blood" inspiration flows. Dillard compares sentences to bricks and a wire of fiber optic cable. Writing requires focus and strength. It doesn't just pour out. Paragraphs require focus and diligence to construct.

LOVELY BIT

"The sensation of writing a book is the sensation of spinning, blinded by love and daring."

"Push it. Examine all things intensely and relentlessly. Probe and search each object in a piece of art; do not leave it, do not course over it, as if it were understood, but instead follow it down until you see it in the mystery of its own specificity and strength."

RATING 

I'd recommend Dillard for anyone who appreciates the writing process or fancies herself a writer.