THE ICE PICK

The Writing Life, by Annie Dillard. New York : Harper Perennial, 1990. ISBN 0-06-091988-4 (pbk). $11.00.

Why do we read, Dillard asks, "if not in hope of beauty laid bare, life heightened and its deepest mystery probed? . . . What do we ever know that is higher than that power which, from time to time, seizes our lives, and reveals us startlingly to ourselves as creatures set down here bewildered?"

That sets up a breathtaking goal for us as writers, but one which we can aspire to if we choose.

In this collection of lyrical short essays, Dillard gives us a mixture of practical tips and deeper insights on "the actual process of writing."

Among Dillard’s technical tidbits, she recommends that you always use the best you have right now rather than "hoard" it for later and warns that you must tend a work in progress every day lest it "turn on you" and become a lion you cannot "assert your mastery over." She explains how to know when you are going in the wrong direction and need to begin anew, and in complaining that commercialism is overrunning and crushing us, she slams those who use "advertising slogans and brand names" in their writing "as a quick, cheap, and perfunctory background."

She speaks poetically of the problems all writers face, of the inevitable gap that develops between our vision and the words we put on paper, explaining that although we are driven to create, to write, "you cannot fill in the vision. You cannot even bring the vision to light. You are wrong if you think that you can in any way take the vision and tame it to the page. . . . You can fly higher than you thought possible--but you can never get off the page."

And in between, she tells her fascinating anecdotes of flying barrel rolls with a stunt pilot over a salt chuck; of learning how to chop wood outside her one-room log cabin on Puget Sound ("Aim through the wood; aim for the chopping block."); of working late at night in a dark, deserted library in Virginia; of an electric typewriter that explodes in her face, and much more.

This is an excellent book for entertainment, inspiration, and reassurance. And if you’d like to take a "writerly" book along on your vacation to the mountains or the beach, I recommend this one highly.

{Published in GPIC, the Oklahoma Science Fiction Writers Newsletter, July 2000. Reprinted in SF & Fantasy Workshop Newsletter, Aug. 2005.}