Dillard's "The Writing Life"

“Almost everything on Wikipedia about me is wrong.  I’m not a real painter.  Nor am I an “eco” anything, nor have I ever been.  I have no religion, or many religions.  The teacher in my says, “the way to learn about a writer is to read the text.  Or texts.” ~ Annie Dillard

While reading “The Writing Life,” I couldn’t help but think how it serves as condensed manual or bible for writing.  As Dillard recounts the writing process as a whole she imparts on the reader a laundry list of items that we must keep an inventory and apply to our own work.  What I admired most was Dillard’s format was that given the context it did not come off as preachy.  She speaks freely, candidly, smartly, and strategically.  The vignettes reach out to us with vivid metaphors and sage advice as she goes through the motions, the place, the faces, and the spaces leading her to where she is today. 

One section that captured what I feel is a great display of Dillard’s style begins on page 44 where she explains the life of a writer in terms of one “recalling the real world.”  She posits this as the reasoning behind many writer’s describing their childhood.  Though Dillard begins the section with a comment on the “mind of a writer”—this is bridged with real world ideas that beautifully showcase her style as she journeys into an instance where a burnt tea kettle, jerry rigged in such a way that it could not be heard turns into an instance where a clothes pin plays a pivotal role to result in, “This action, and the pain, kept me in the real world until the water actually boiled.  This was the theory, and it worked.  So that is how I wrote those nights…” (45).  She postulates on an idea, reels us in with a real life example, then ties back into her original thesis so effortlessly that we wonder if she battles with writing so much as she describes then how does she make it look so easy?