The Writing Life

Reader Response


Reading Annie Dillard's "The Writing Life" is like sitting around with a friend and just talking about writing and reading. As the Boston Globe said on the back cover, "It's like a spiritual Strunk and White." I read this book when it first came out in 1989, the year I graduated with a degree in communications from Salem State. I think I enjoyed the book much more this time around. I think it is because I have more years of writing under my belt. I think Dillard's writing show the difference between writing now and writing back in the 70s and 80s. She starts out on page 5 talking about talking about the writing process and throwing things away. Yeah, we did that with typewriters but today with computers nothing is thrown away, it is just deleted or moved and not printed either until the end or at all. The computer has made a huge difference in the writing life. We no longer crumple up paper when we make a mistake. We no longer use White-Out with a type writer. Some of us were raised drafting on legal pads or spiral notebooks. To us it seems strange to begin to tell a story and cross out words not needed. Now we adapt the writing process to technology. Don't like a word, just delete. Don't know how to spell something, use spellcheck. Use a grammar check. I prefer pen and paper. Dillard creates her own writing space by using the shed. Writer's have always needed their own space but Dillard's now includes a computer in hers. She also talks about the importance of having a schedule when it comes to writing. When it comes to writer's writing about writing like Dillard does she stresses that writing is about writing about what you know.