“Admire the world for never ending on you as you would admire an opponent, without taking your eyes from him, or walking away.”

*audio

Favourite quotes:

“You are a Seminole alligator wrestler. Half naked, with your two bare hands, you hold and fight a sentence’s head while its tail tries to knock you over.”

“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?”

I had not read any of Annie Dillard's previous work; her description of writing both fills me with awe and fear - it is such an intense struggle of words and thoughts and vision for her, a struggle carried out alone, often in a place away from where she lives (a cabin on an island, where it is very very cold, for instance), and often late into the night.

I found this book rather strange, as it is called 'The Writing Life', and yet the author spends the book (at least the very few parts that are not memoirs) talking about why writing sucks, how it's really hard, and why no one should ever do it. She also managed to impale every single bit of good writing wisdom I've ever heard. It was truly quite bizarre! I'm not sure why someone would use such a great amount of energy to ultimately hate on writers and writing. What a sad little book.

“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…Anything you do not give freely and abundantly becomes lost to you. You open your safe and find ashes.”

Fast, enjoyable book about the writing process. Will want to read more from Dillard in the future.

Not a book about how to write but a book about what it is like to be a writer. There are some sage passages, but I sometimes lost interest. This may have something to do with this being an audiobook. I can't seem to immerse myself in audiobooks the same way I can print books.

“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.”

One of the most helpfully inspiring little books I’ve read since Bradbury’s Zen in the Art of Writing.