I absolutely adored this little book!

It truly made me realize the importance of putting in the time and having the courage to let go of our precious creations. She uses such powerful words like servant, death, burden, and hatred when discussing the writer's job. It's a reminder that we shouldn't strive for perfection right from the start.

The mysterious writing process becomes more comprehensible through her wonderful analogies, metaphors, and charming little anecdotes. I'll never forget the image of her moving a wooden clothes pin from pinky to pinky every 20 seconds. Reading this has rekindled my passion for why the written word has such a profound impact on me.

She had a fascinating dream about splitting wood, where she learned that you should aim at the chopping block, not the wood itself. It's a great lesson about how we need to look beyond the obvious to achieve our goals.

The sphinx moth, with its large size, has to supercharge its wings before it can take flight. Similarly, as writers, we need to convert our intellectual passion into physical energy and master the art of narrative from the very beginning.

I don't just write a book; I sit up with it like a dying friend. During those visiting hours, I enter its room with a mix of dread and sympathy for all its flaws. I hold its hand, hoping it will improve.

Willa Cather wrote "My Antonia" in New York City? That's quite astonishing!

Why do we read if not in the hope of uncovering beauty, enhancing life, and delving into its deepest mysteries?

Why do death and love always catch us by surprise?

At its best, the feeling of writing is like receiving unmerited grace. It's given to you, but only if you actively seek it. You search, you put your heart, back, and brain into it, and then, and only then, will it be handed to you.

One of the few things I know for sure about writing is this: don't hold back. Spend all your creativity, shoot your ideas, play with your words, and don't be afraid to lose them. Give it all away right away, every single time. Don't hoard what you think is good for a later part of the book or for another project. Just give it! Give it all, and give it now. The urge to save something good for a better moment later is actually a sign that you should use it immediately. Something even better will come along later. These things fill up from behind, like well water. Similarly, the impulse to keep what you've learned to yourself is not only shameful but also destructive. Anything you don't give freely and abundantly will be lost to you. You open your safe, and all you find is ashes.

Filled with superb advice, inspiration, and warnings, this piece is a treasure trove for authors or for those who have a deep appreciation for a fine piece of literature. It has the potential to be life-changing if you are in the right mood to receive its wisdom.

Take, for example, the profound statement: "The feeling that the work is magnificent, and the feeling that it is abominable, are both mosquitoes to be repelled, ignored, or killed, but not indulged." This encourages us to not let our emotions, whether of extreme pride or self-doubt, derail our creative process. We should focus on the work itself and not get overly swayed by these fleeting feelings.

Another thought-provoking passage is: "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?" This challenges us to think deeply about the significance and impact of our words. It makes us realize that every word we write should carry weight and meaning, as if it were the last thing we would ever say.

I've read countless books about writing throughout the years. There are textbooks that provide structured guidance, how-to manuals that offer practical tips, memoirs that share personal experiences, and so much more. And truth be told, I have liked nearly all of them. However, this particular book is the first one that I can vividly remember not being able to appreciate at all.

The short book mainly consists of meditative, drawn-out metaphors about writing and meandering stories. These stories seem to lack much justification, often arriving at a rather simplistic "writing is like this, too" conclusion. To me, it came across as pretentious and a bit self-serving. I simply didn't find much substance or anything truly valuable that I could take away from it.

In one section, writing is compared to wrestling with an alligator. Dillard then proceeds to recount an alligator wrestling match that took place in Florida in front of a paying crowd. A young man engaged in a fierce grapple with the alligator, with their bellies pressed together. Eventually, both the man and the beast disappeared beneath the surface of the water. Then bubbles emerged, followed by blood, and finally the water stilled. The crowd of onlookers quietly dispersed. And the author concludes, "This is your life. You are a Seminole alligator wrestler." Really makes you eager to be a writer, doesn't it?

I listened to the audio version of the book, which could potentially be part of the problem. I wasn't particularly keen on the narration (not the author's). It simply didn't sound authentic to my ears. Perhaps if I were to read the text for myself, I might have a different experience.

The basic message here is that writing is like wrestling alligators, if you're doing it right.

This is indeed a very vivid and powerful reminder. Writing is not an easy task; it requires great effort, concentration, and determination.

Just like when wrestling alligators, you have to be fully committed and ready to face all the challenges and difficulties that come your way.

The only way to do it well is to be immersed in it. You need to spend a lot of time and energy on it, constantly thinking, researching, and writing.

You have to be willing to put in the hard work and not give up easily.

Only in this way can you hope to produce high-quality writing that can truly touch the hearts and minds of your readers.

So, the next time you sit down to write, remember this analogy and approach it with the same level of intensity and focus as you would when wrestling alligators.

I think that if I had picked up this book out of pure curiosity, rather than in the midst of a class where I am engaged in writing and have to revise that very writing (which is by far the hardest part for me), I might not have given it such a high rating. However, every single word that Annie Dillard includes within these pages is of utmost importance. Some of the stories she tells are not immediately obvious in their significance. For instance, why am I reading about chopping wood, skipping fireworks, and alligators? But she always manages to bring it all back around to the discipline of writing, a discipline that I don't truly possess... yet (?).

I firmly believe that anyone who writes or dreams of writing should take the time to read this book.

"You must demolish the work and start over. You can save some of the sentences, like bricks. It will be a miracle if you can save some of the paragraphs, no matter how excellent in themselves or hard-won. You can waste a year worrying about it, or you can get it over with now. (Are you a woman, or a mouse?)"

"On plenty of days the writer can write three or four pages, and on plenty of days he concludes he must throw them away."

"Who would call a day spent reading a good day? But a life spent reading - that is a good life."

"I do not so much write a book as sit up with it, as with a dying friend... I hold its hand and hope it will get better."

"A work in progress quickly becomes feral. It reverts to a wild state overnight... You must visit it every day and reassert your mastery over it."

"You were made and set here to give voice to this, your own astonishment."

"Examine all things intensely and relentlessly. Probe and search each object in a piece of art. Do not leave it, do not course over it, as if it were understood, but instead follow it down until you see it in the mystery of its own specificity and strength."

Yes ma'am. I will most definitely try.

This book appears to be nothing more than a series of musings on writing and being a writer (and also on avoiding writing and being a writer). I use the term "simply" because, in the end, this is a rather uncomplicated book. It's not stupid, but no profound revelations are made, and nothing emerges to offer any novel or eye-opening description of The Writing Life. Instead, the book seems to be a compilation of thoughts on writing and any other topic that happens to come up. It's almost as if Annie Dillard assembled this book to avoid working on a more demanding, and probably more rewarding, literary or narrative endeavor.

This book is far too concise to be forgivably meandering. It's difficult to discern from the start where we're going, but by the conclusion, it's evident that we haven't reached our destination. The entire final chapter is devoted to the (albeit brief) tale of the career and downfall of flight acrobat Dave Rahm. While I understand that Dillard presents his story as an elaborate metaphor for the writing life, it seems completely out of place with the rest of the book. This chapter almost entirely diverges from the path she has otherwise set for her meditations and does not bring the reader back to the larger discussion. Given the abrupt and ill-planned beginning of the book, this ending gives the book a haphazard feel.

Is it a worthwhile read? I'm not convinced... but during NaNoWriMo, it might give writers a sense of kinship while being short enough not to be an overwhelming distraction.

Sometime after the excitement of commencing her book, a serious writer will unearth her work's own "intrinsic impossibility," as Annie Dillard remarks in The Writing Life. Eventually, she'll likely discard the main point, her grand vision, and instead settle for the more modest discovery she made during the writing process.

If a writer had any sense, she'd dedicate herself to a career selling catheters. The Writing Life is about unwavering inquiry and love. It's a sort of commiseration that contains rules of thumb: toss out the beginning; the book commences in what you thought was the middle. It can take years and heartbreak to realize that—yet another given.

"Once, for example, I learned from a conversation with a neighbor that I had been living in a fool's paragraph," Dillard states.

Neighborly advice is inadvertent, though. Anyone who has penned a creative book is filled with woe and wonder, but Dillard notes in her dry manner that ordinary people really don't care. (How much do you long for tales of your brother-in-law's plumbing supply business?) However, as a veteran, she offers this: "It makes more sense to write one big book—a novel or nonfiction narrative—than to write many stories or essays. Into a long, ambitious project you can fit or pour all you possess and learn. A project that takes five years will accumulate those years' inventions and richnesses."

There's a great deal of reading involved: a writer must study literature, must know what has been accomplished so she can attempt to surpass it. Dillard adds this eerie caution:

"He is careful of what he reads, for that is what he will write. He is careful of what he learns, for that is what he will know."

She's on record elsewhere as advising writers to read history. She deems a life spent reading as a good one, although her fascination with bugs, rocks, and stars draws her outside. She's the feisty one with binoculars around her neck. When writing her books, she stared at the wall:

"Appealing workplaces are to be avoided. One wants a room with no view, so imagination can meet memory in the dark."

Years after The Writing Life, she worked on a novel set on Cape Cod. She amassed 1,200 pages. It took ten years. Then she realized the book's heart, a love story, couldn't bear the weight of geologic history and began cutting. The Maytrees, a shimmering work of art published in 2007, is 216 pages. [Since reviewed here.] She said it almost killed her and announced her retirement after twelve books.

Her book on writing is unique because it isn't targeted at complete beginners—of course, she calls it a memoir. Sometime during the two to ten years it takes someone to pen a decent book (another precept), the writer should read The Writing Life. The book (Dillard's, that is) won't make much sense otherwise. It isn't much of a how-to guide unless someone has sweated through a manuscript, and then it's the best.

I do not so much write a book as sit up with it, as with a dying friend.

During visiting hours, I enter its room with dread and sympathy for its many disorders. I hold its hand and hope it will get better.

As with much of Dillard, this book captures the stark and the brutal—as applied to writing.

This focus made it a little more comprehensible for me than her usual work.

For Dillard, writing is an interminable struggle, and she (supposedly) hates it, yet she can’t help but return to it, day after dire day.

I’ve never related more to a book on writing.

Perhaps ironically, no other book on the craft has stirred in me that same agonizing desire to write quite like this little book.

I find myself constantly reflecting on the words and ideas presented here.

It makes me think about my own writing journey and the challenges I have faced.

Just like Dillard, I have had those moments of dread and frustration when sitting down to write.

But also like her, I keep coming back, hoping to make my words better, to bring my ideas to life.

This book has become a kind of companion for me, a source of inspiration and understanding.

It reminds me that writing is not always easy, but it is always worth the effort.

It wasn't the right time for me to read this book, and thus not to appreciate it either. Too often distracted and too busy with other things, I couldn't get into it, no matter how thin it was. Still, the somewhat intangible power of Annie Dillard's intelligent writing style seeped through, and I caught a few glimpses of the cleverness with which she tells things that seemingly have nothing to do with writing but indeed deal with essential and underlying characteristics of it.

Not infrequently, she talks about the writing locations where she has worked, their influence, the environment, the interior, the local residents she meets there. She talks with a neighbor/artist who tells something about his work process that also hints at the writing process. Or she flies with an extraordinary stunt pilot/geologist and describes in such a unique, literary way the difficulties and pitfalls of that profession that you intuitively feel she is already talking about her own field.

So yes, even if I had read this under better circumstances, it seems to me anyway a book that you sometimes reach for again when you yourself or one of your students is struggling with a block or writer's cramp. 3.5* that could just as well have been 4.5*...

My rating is 4.5.

This is a truly great series of essays that delves deep into the dedication required to be a writer. It explores the arduous task of making a living from writing, which is no easy feat. It also examines what makes a writer tick, the inner drives and motivations that push them forward. In addition, it looks at how they find their inspiration in those in-between periods of failed attempts. It's important to note that this is not a how-to guide in the traditional sense. Instead, it offers a fascinating glimpse into the mind of a writer. We get to see the struggles, the joys, the doubts, and the perseverance that come with this unique profession. It's a must-read for anyone who has ever dreamed of being a writer or who simply wants to understand the creative process a little better.

It should come as no surprise that the life of the writer - insofar as one can speak of it - is so colorless that it borders on sensory deprivation.

Many writers do little else but summon the real world in their small rooms. This explains why so many books describe the youth of an author. The youth years of an author might well be his only authentic experiences.

Writers read literary biographies and surround themselves with other writers, willingly and knowingly entertaining the absurd idea that one spends one's time reasonably well in the underworld by wearing away one's life in a room with sheets of paper as the only company.

Perhaps this isolation and focus on the inner world is what allows writers to create such vivid and imaginative works. However, it also comes at a cost, as their lives may seem dull and uneventful to those on the outside.

Nevertheless, for the writer, the act of writing is a passion and a calling, and they are willing to endure the monotony and solitude in order to bring their stories to life.

The original text seems rather disjointed and lacking in a clear narrative. Here is an expanded and rewritten version:

We often find ourselves bombarded with a plethora of information. There are a ton of stories being told, but unfortunately, many of them are irrelevant and uncompelling. Amidst this chaos, however, there are a number of on-point observations that manage to stand out. These precious insights cut through the clutter and offer us a glimmer of understanding. They have the potential to change our perspective, challenge our assumptions, and lead us to new discoveries. It is essential that we learn to sift through the mountain of uninteresting tales and focus on these valuable observations. By doing so, we can gain a deeper understanding of the world around us and make more informed decisions.