June Review: The Writing Life

In this collection of short essays, Annie Dillard—the author of Pilgrim at Tinker Creek and An American Childhood—illuminates the dedication, absurdity, and daring that characterize the existence of a writer. A moving account of Dillard’s own experience, The Writing Life offers deep insight into one of the most mysterious professions.

Annie Dillard (born April 30, 1945) is an American author, best known for her narrative prose in both fiction and non-fiction. She has written eleven books, including the memoir of her parents, An American Childhood; the Northwest pioneer epic The Living; and the nonfiction narrative Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, which won the 1975 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction.

The author

Dillard taught for 21 years in the English department of Wesleyan University, in Middletown, Connecticut.

A gregarious recluse, she is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

My review: 4/5

This was a difficult book to review.

At first it seems that the writing is so random – various incidents and thoughts thrown together. But then, you realize that it is a stream of consciousness kind of work and it begins to grow on you. You realize the wisdom and power of Dillard’s words. You begin to enjoy the metaphors, the quiet wit and the underlying message that being a writer is not an easy task.

The book is topped off with an essay on a stunt pilot and whose daring flying and the twists and turns he takes are an apt metaphor for writing.

If you are a patient and reflective reader, you’ll enjoy this book.

Excerpts:

She begins:

When you write, you lay out a line of words. The line of words is a miner’s pick, a woodcarver’s gouge, a surgeon’s probe. You wield it, and it digs a path you follow. Soon you find yourself deep in new territory. Is it a dead end, or have you located the real subject? You will know tomorrow, or this time next year. You make the path boldly and follow it fearfully. You go where the path leads. At the end of the path, you find a box canyon. You hammer out reports, dispatch bulletins. The writing has changed, in your hands, and in a twinkling, from an expression of your notions to an epistemological tool. The new place interests you because it is not clear. You attend. In your humility, you lay down the words carefully, watching all the angles. Now the earlier writing looks soft and careless. Process is nothing; erase your tracks. The path is not the work. I hope your tracks have grown over; I hope birds ate the crumbs; I hope you will toss it all and not look back.

Talking about the courage it takes to self-edit, she says:

How many books do we read from which the writer lacked courage to tie off the umbilical cord? How many gifts do we open from which the writer neglected to remove the price tag? Is it pertinent, is it courteous, for us to learn what it cost the writer personally?

The gift of writing is a gift to be shared, not preserved:

One of the few things I know about writing is this: spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time. Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book, or for another book; give it, give it all, give it now. The impulse to save something good for a better place later is the signal to spend it now. Something more will arise for later, something better. These things fill from behind, from beneath, like well water. Similarly, the impulse to keep to yourself what you have learned is not only shameful, it is destructive. Anything you do not give freely and abundantly becomes lost to you. You open your safe and find ashes.

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