Book 29: The Writing Life

The Writing Life by Annie Dillard is great! She includes stories of her own struggles to write, and quotes, and advice. Dillard is extremely friendly and conversational.

I feel inspired by this book and have been actually working on my own novel again after a short break. It helps to be reminded of the same things I learned in college writing classes (where we read essays by Dillard, by the way):

*writing is really difficult
*the best, favorite part of your work is what doesn't fit and will surely need to be cut
*writing takes most of us a very, very long time
*many writers are much crazier than I am in their routines and good luck rituals (I don't even have any writing rituals!)

I will keep this little book at my desk and try to remember to flip through it sometimes and see what I marked with little sticky flags and what I underlined.