The Writing Life (Paperback)

by Annie Dillard (Author) "When you write, you lav out a line of words..." (more)
Key Phrases: Mount Baker, Dave Rahm, Dick Smith (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
Annie Dillard has spent a lot of time in remote, bare-bones shelters doing something she claims to hate: writing. Slender though it is, The Writing Life richly conveys the torturous, tortuous, and in rare moments, transcendent existence of the writer. Even for Dillard, whose prose is so mellifluous as to seem effortless, the act of writing can seem a Sisyphean task: "When you write," she says, "you lay out a line of words.... 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." Amid moving accounts of her own writing (and life) experiences, Dillard also manages to impart wisdom to other writers, wisdom having to do with passion and commitment and taking the work seriously. "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.... Something more will arise for later, something better." And, if that is not enough, "Assume you write for an audience consisting solely of terminal patients," she says. "That is, after all, the case.... What could you say to a dying person that would not enrage by its triviality?"

This all makes The Writing Life seem a dense, tough read, but that is not the case at all. Dillard is, after all, human, just like the rest of us. During one particularly frantic moment, four cups of coffee and not much writing down, Dillard comes to a realization: "Many fine people were out there living, people whose consciences permitted them to sleep at night despite their not having written a decent sentence that day, or ever." --Jane Steinberg

From Publishers Weekly
"In this collection of short essays, the author of Pilgrim at Tinker Creek and An American Childhood probes the sorcery that levitates her own writing, discussing with clear eye and wry wit how, where and why she writes," said PW .
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 128 pages
• Publisher: Harper Perennial; First Printing edition (August 17, 1990)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060919884
• ISBN-13: 978-0060919887
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5.1 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars See all reviews (41 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #18,028 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

24 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Annie Dillard gave me hope and faith, April 2, 2003

By	Peggy Vincent "author and reader" (Oakland, CA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

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...

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Annie Dillard's frank discussion........., September 24, 2001

By	Margaret "fugirl" (NYC) - See all my reviews

.....of writing and her own experiences with the craft. As an aspiring creatve writer, I found Dillard's discussion of her own struggles as a writer to be honest and quite recognizable. Writing anything from a short story to a novel to a collection of poems or essays requires an amazing amount of energy and an almost unrivaled ability to give of oneself. Getting up that energy and tapping the self produce the agony writers so often experience.

What I didn't expect was to read about Dillard's "solution", if you will, to such problems. Distraction, and the subsequent problems it produces when trying to create quality prose, seem to be Dillard's greatest enemy. Who could tell that Annie, for example wrote "Pilgrim at Tinker Creek" while cooped up? That's unbelievable! Dillard, it seems, writes best when alone in a small, windowless room where, without any stimulation to distract her, she is forced to focus on her writing. It is during such times that she produces her most beautiful and memorable work. This is a profound lesson that I am trying to find the discipline to follow. Only then, will my work be as good as it can be. I thank Annie Dillard for sharing and for her honesty.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Refusing to be pigeon-holed, August 22, 2000

By	Todd C. Truffin (Tiffin, OH USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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.