The Writing Life

While some writing books offer nuts and bolts–the so-called rules of writing–this book from Pulitzer Prize winner Annie Dillard teases the writer with essays that make you think.

We are invited into the world of writing with metaphor and we learn by comparison. Like the story of the inchworm stuck in the long grasses, frozen to the tall blades. Perhaps you should just jump, Dillard quips, and put yourself “out of your misery.”

True, writing can be miserable at times, but also, it can be wonderful. I like this book because it is a way to experience what it feels… show more.

A frequent question I am asked is what my work, my day-to-day activities, as a writer are like. The answer is that it’s pretty mundane. Physically I sit at my desk for many hours without standing up. I can see it in my dog’s eyes that I am boring to watch. But inside my head, lots of trains, planes, and electric automobiles are flying around. Pulitzer Prize-winner Annie Dillard puts into words, so eloquently, what writers are preoccupied about and how we manage to get our work done. Also, a slim book, clocking in at 111 pages of brilliance. 

Memoir is sometimes dissed as an inferior, quasi-literary genre: just a souped-up diary, therapy session, or family history that lacks the imagination and artistry of works of fiction. In truth, the great memoirs of the past and present are every bit as literary as the great novels. This means that, if you’re going to write a good memoir, you need to see yourself as a creative writer and nurture that side of yourself on the regular. How do you charge the parts of you that are wild, passionate, and free, devoted to elegance, artistry, and beauty for the pure sake… show more.

Read this and tell me if you think it’s funny: “Write as if you were dying. At the same time, assume you write for an audience consisting solely of terminal patients. That is, after all, the case. What would you begin writing if you knew you would die soon? What could you say to a dying person that would not enrage by its triviality?” If you just burst out laughing, you may be a writer. This book is full of gems like that, and I laughed out loud in the way one might while driving off a cliff. You know,… show more.