Reading Dillard Again

 I thought if I read Annie Dillard’s The Writing Life it would give me inspiration to write, or I could write about it, or so hopefully, write better.

I may be onto something. 

This book is a boulder of a metaphor.

It is barely about writing at all. Although this may be my lack of understanding, failure to read between the lines, see the overall picture. She does claim to be an intellectual (it’s obvious) writing for intellectuals. She’s a machine. 

Yet, I like it, the way you might like a symphony which yourself could never compose. 

I did however underline five sentences, which I’d like to share and comment on. 

1) “This writing that you do, that so thrills you, that so rocks and exhilarates you, as if you were dancing next to the band, is barely audible to anyone else.” p. 559

It is personal. And it is a passion. It’s a muffled scream— who will read it and understand? Who will taste your soup, and who will know the love you put into it? It is tapping away on late nights, it is putting a puzzle together, it is a friendship with words. The result is beautiful.

2) “I cannot imagine a sorrier pursuit than struggling for years to write a book that attempts to appeal to people who do not read in the first place.” p. 561

That speaks for itself.

3) “Even when passages seemed to come easily, as though I were copying from a folio held open by smiling angels, the manuscript revealed the usual signs of struggle — bloodstains, teeth marks, gashes, and burns.” p. 566

I, too, have felt a divine hand enabling my “genius” (I’m only being sentimental ;)). It might be a delusion, but where does the flow come from? Writing that pours onto the page without mistakes…is that my brain, on steroids? And why at times does it flow (that is the exception, not  the rule) and at other times drip, and become so painstaking it makes you want to quit? There is method in the madness, to be cliche. No one sees the process, they only see the product. There is a lot of editing involved, I can vouch for this.

4) “Why people want to be writers I will never know, unless it is that their lives lack a material footing.” p. 576

It’s why anyone wants to be an artist or a carpenter. To create. Writing is a bit more or less tricky, and the work is never done (endless edits keep me up at night). Dillard ends the book by referring to the art of a specific stunt pilot. There’s a lot of analogies for writing. That’s fun. The rewards of the effort keep us going; there must be intrinsic value or no one could stand it. 

5). “There was a tiny range within which coffee was effective, short of which it was useless, and beyond which, fatal.”  p. 579

Yes, yes, and yes!

I know I read this book in college, but I couldn’t for the life of me remember (any of) it, except for where she talks about living in a cabin thriving off of “coffee, Coke, chocolate milk, and Vantage cigarettes.” It seemed to me a simple and enlightened way to live, for someone serious about writing (it may have inspired my eating disorder :/). 

For all its worth, I could never be half the writer she is. I’ll plug on anyways.