The Writing Life Analysis

The Writing Life Annie Dillard’s, The Writing Life, gives the aspiring writer bits and pieces of her own experience to help fuel the creative process an eager learner needs to get their own desires from literature onto paper. With frankness, Dillard gives advice on how one should begin to write, revealing an insight into the reality of the beautiful yet difficult process of the written word. One piece of advice is simply just to write down anything and everything. Without putting yourself out there on that sheet of paper, your writing will go nowhere. It is also important to be able to let your knowledge lead you to your writing; it should come and take over you to fully understand how to write. Finally, to improve your writing, start at the …show more content…
One way the writer can get their inspiration comes from all the knowledge learned in life. It is all of the literature and knowledge that teaches us how to write. Once we can capture it and turn it into our own writing then we can truly express what we want and put our entire being into the craft. Dillard describes this feeling of learning first by saying that “only after the writer lets literature shape her can she perhaps shape literature” (69). We must absorb all of the knowledge first and then make our own from it. We are a mixture of everything we learn and it must be tweaked to fit into our own writing. When we do begin to write, we must know that it has to be within us and take over the body to let us fully focus on the writing and know exactly what it is to write. Dillard also uses stories from the past to describe how we should feel about writing. She describes how in working-class France, when an apprentice was either hurt or tired, “It is the trade entering the body” (69). This part stood out to me because it was believed that learning something new or becoming so close to something that was inspiring had the power to enter your being and take over. It can become overwhelming to have a craft you love so much become a part of you. However, that is when you know that you are doing it right. If you feel like you are dealing with too much or that all the …show more content…
Even the smallest most intricate details can affect the bigger picture, and it can even make it that much better. Dillard compared the process of writing a sentence with wrestling an alligator. Her experience tells the reader there was once a wrestler who fought an alligator with all his might and ended up dead under the water with the animal. That is how the reader should be with the sentence. We should try to understand it and then let it come to us. The way Dillard says we should look at sentences reminds me of a George Seurat painting where small details of color create an image much greater. It can also be like a puzzle, in which we cannot go anywhere without connecting the small individual ones together first. It is also like a couture collection, filled with small and intricate details cautiously placed here and there to make a luxurious and beautiful gown. It’s the small things that help make the big things look better. There could be so much significance in just one sentence that it could help shape another. Its potential is much greater than most people think. Dillard says that we must “tap in the others around it with a jeweler’s hammer” (76) and find the rest of the sentences. It is a great deal to find what works and what doesn’t from the smaller scale in order to keep it clear without messing up the overall