Most Helpful Customer Reviews
46 of 46 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Refusing to be pigeon-holed, August 22, 2000
All of the negative reviews of this book I've seen so far mention that it's not a "how-to" book. Very good! You got the point. Dillard writes about writing, what it means to write, what happens when you write. Sure, there are insights into writing that others may use just as a book about someone's life might produce some insights into living. However, this book never claims and never is a "how-to" book. There are enough cheezy "here are the secrets to writing" out there; Dillard knew better than to add to the drivel. Instead she gives us a brilliant look at the life that one writer leads. Don't judge this book for being something that it isn't. That would be like saying an orange didn't perform so well at being pasta.
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38 of 40 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Annie Dillard gave me hope and faith, April 2, 2003
If someone of Annie Dillard's stature can write like this while claiming to abhor the whole process, then there's hope for all of us writers. Writing is a lonely process, as I quickly learned when I began writing my memoir, Baby Catcher (Scribner 2002). It helped considerably to know that the agonizing moments I experienced while trying to craft just the right phrase, the perfect sentence, the hang-together paragraph were shared by Ms. Dillard and, by extension I suspect, most other serious writers as well. As we authors and as-yet unpublished writers sit alone and get RST of wrists and fingers and forearms from incessant pounding of the keyboard, staring out the window at a telephone wire or a bare tree or a garage wall, it's immeasurably helpful to know that Annie Dillard is sitting in a remote cabin somewhere, doing the same thing. It makes it possible to go on and get down to the business of writing for yet another day. Now: if only I could write as beautifully and with such seeming lack of effort as she does...
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16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Poetry Avoidance and Fear, May 21, 2001
Most writers avoid writing because they are afraid. My writing career came to an abrupt pause in high school when a English teacher read my anon piece and proclaimed it poetry without an explanation. What did that mean? Annie Dillard's Writing Life speaks to the poet in me. It speaks to the writer's avoidance I see in myself and fellow writers. It talks of other writer's who have also had such difficulties. It talks about writer's writing spaces. It told me how writers that I admired were able to hold down normal jobs and still be prolific writers. I consume books about writing, this is the only book, small and sweet which spoke to my heart. I bought it because it was a book about writing, but found that it was a book about life.
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