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1-Page Summary of The Writing Life
Overall Summary
The Writing Life is a non-fiction book that offers advice to writers. It was written by Annie Dillard, who won the Pulitzer Prize for her writing in 1975. The author’s style is free associative and does not follow a linear structure. While some critics call it “a spiritual Strunk & White”, she calls it an embarrassing nonfiction narrative fixed somewhat and republished by Harper Perennial in 1998.
The author begins by comparing the writing process to manual labor, and she compares it to a honeybee searching for a honey tree. She also references other writers such as Henry James and Henry David Thoreau.
She starts by describing the writing process. She notes that writers sit at a desk and throw away their work if it’s not good enough. Some writers read over their own work so many times that they get tired of it, while painters can correct mistakes with new layers.
Dillard makes a few observations about writing books. She claims that writing is freeing because nobody has to show up and do it for you, but yet authors still show up every day to write their manuscripts. Dillard details how some writers have very rigorous schedules while others take their time with the process. She also states that only twenty people in the world can write a book in one year.
The author admits that the reader may be bored by a book because it’s hard to keep people attentive through written words. She tells a story about an Algonquin woman who cut off her own flesh so she could fish, and compares this to how authors sacrifice themselves for their books. The line of words is like the author’s beating heart, and they just need to follow it.
Next, she explains the importance of a writer’s studio. She describes her own writing space and emphasizes how important it is to isolate yourself from distractions in order to be productive. She longingly recalls her college days when she had a writing space in the University library where there were no distractions at all. She also admits that once she covered up windows of her studio with blankets because she was distracted by a baseball game on TV.
The author recalls her time as a writer on an island in the Haro Straits off the coast of Vancouver. She didn’t see many people while she was there and had to learn how to chop wood by aiming for the chopping block instead of the wood itself. The author then explains that she used to avoid writing, but now she doesn’t anymore.
Dillard had a dream about her typewriter exploding. She went to get water to put the fire out, but she discovered that it was contained and wouldn’t spread. In the end of the dream she picked up the pieces and never had trouble with her typewriter again.
She then says that an author can change their style by emulating the work of someone else. She also says that an author may have a vision for what they want to write, but it might change as they write. However, if they follow the line of writing, even if it changes over time, then they will be fine.
In the last section of the book, Annie Dillard describes her relationship with a man named David Rahm. She often watches him fly his airplane and she realizes that he is able to give up on writing and follow the line where it leads in order to be successful at flying. He seems to entertain himself while doing this, just as she tries to do when writing. This becomes another metaphor for giving up struggle and following the line where it leads in order to create something great.
