43 pages • 1 hour read
Annie DillardThe Writing Life
Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 1989A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapter 5Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 5 Summary
Dillard analyzes the origin of a writer’s inspiration with a catalogue of what different famous authors liked to write about. The subject matter is always something that the individual enjoys and wants to share in a way they believe only they can tell it. Many famous writers wrote about subjects beyond their direct experience or surroundings, so Dillard encourages writers to not feel restricted about their topics. However, Dillard notes that the writing must be so personal that it becomes part of the body. The writer’s brain changes its functions to incorporate literature, like how paint runs through a painter’s veins. Due to this bodily change, the writer must like their materials and should enjoy absorbing the literary work of others. Dillard observes that young writers often don’t want to be viewed as emulating anyone else, but she dismisses this naivety through a list of noted authors who were shamelessly inspired by the work of others. Constantly learning about literature and feeling the desire to expand upon and share what one has learned, she states, is not something to suppress.
Dillard then gives advice to aspiring writers about book-length projects. She prefers struggling towards a longer work because it offers a longer period to learn and develop as a writer. A full-length book can allow more room to explore one’s ideas without needing to make more than one introduction, like a collection of short stories would demand. Many writers fear full-length books because of the daunting structure, but Dillard asserts that the personal nature and passion of each story compels the writer to overcome this obstacle. She also advises against including brand names and commercialism in books. Dillard would rather that a story reveals something about the wisdom, mystery, or beauty of the world than simply representing the images of society incuriously.
A writer wrestles with themselves to find a story, Dillard explains, as if wrestling with an alligator or trying to crack into a fruit’s pith. Once the writer goes through this trial, finding the story feels like a gift-wrapped package that falls perfectly into place. When Dillard wrote the final passage of one of her books, she felt as if she was in a trance—and recalls, too, several other days along her writing journey that felt “trancelike” (76). She cannot, however, imagine living any other way knowing that she can endure the writing lifestyle. Dillard ends the chapter with a series of commands entreating the writer to begin as soon as they can, to never leave an inspired idea for later, and to always share what they’ve learned with their audience.
Chapter 5 Analysis
Dillard highlights the personal nature of stories and encourages the writer to write about the things they feel drawn to “for a reason hard to explain” (67); their writing will then attempt to explain their passion for the subject to their audience. A writer should begin with their “own astonishment” (68) that the story hasn’t been told before. Dillard asks a series of questions that bring back the element of life-and-death motivation: “What would you begin writing if you knew you would die soon? What could you say to a dying person that would not enrage by its triviality?” (68). These prompts help uncover, as a quote from Anne Truitt states, “one’s own most intimate sensitivity” (68). Dillard insists that stories worth devoting time to should not be frivolous and should instead investigate the very truths of life.
This idea connects to the later passages that warn against including “advertising slogans and brand names” into a novel as a “quick, cheap, and perfunctory background” (73-74). In Dillard’s opinion, readers choose to read to find “beauty laid bare, life heightened and its deepest mysteries probed” (72). The “commercial intrusion” that tries to accurately represent society in novels (73), Dillard believes, is in direct conflict with these readerly aims. Dillard includes herself in this group of readers by using the first-person plural, indicating that the writer is a reader, too. The writer must therefore keep the reader’s perspective and desires in mind when they craft their work to not trivialize their subjects or inhibit their writing.
In previous chapters, Dillard used corporeal imagery to show how a story stems outward from within the writer, but in Chapter 5, she expands these images to illustrate how a writer must also absorb literature into their bodies. A writer must “let literature shape [them]” before they write for themselves (69). Dillard uses painting as an example that can be extrapolated onto the writer. The painter’s brain “changes physical shape to accommodate and fit paint” in a process of adaptation that allows the paint to act “like fingers” (69), like extensions of the body. So, too, does the writer’s brain have to change “cell by cell” in order to let “the art […] enter the body” (69). Dillard warns that the writer should therefore be “careful of what [they read]” because the words will change their brains, for better or worse (68).
Dillard utilizes three famous artists—Shakespeare, Tolstoy, and Gaugin—to illustrate the need to love one’s chosen field to excel in it. These three men “loved the range of materials they used” (71) and were constantly excited to expand their learning. She claims their works endure over time because of the evident “love and knowledge” (71) imbued within them. Dillard lists other writers—like Hemingway, Thoreau, Faulkner, and E.M. Forster—and their major influences to further prove that writers traditionally want to emulate other writers they idolize. She contrasts this list with a young writer who naively claims to not be inspired by anyone. The section aims to dispel the idea that great writing is wholly original: If these famous artists openly took inspiration from others, a young writer should not avoid learning from the writers they enjoy.
Dillard expands upon the absurdity of the writing life through symbolic images of various writing stages. Finding the story feels like “dissect[ing] out the very intolerable, tart, hard, terribly sharp Pith or Kernel” (74), and then writing the story can feel like blind spinning or alligator wrestling. Sometimes, she explains, everything seems to fall easily into place, “like something you memorized once and forgot” (76). She compares these feelings to the final days of writing one of her books, where she felt “scarcely alive” and “light, dizzy, barely there” (77). Through these images, Dillard illustrates the inconsistent and frightening feelings a writer navigates and endures during their work.
Dillard ends Chapter 5 with a quote from Michelangelo that exemplifies the chapter’s central topic of learning: “Draw, Antonio, draw, Antonio, draw and do not waste time” (79). Likewise, Dillard writes a series of declarative statements that command the writer to begin writing, learning, and exploring their ideas right away. Michelangelo’s statement encapsulates the theme of the constant effort necessary to develop one’s craft. Dillard’s commands to the reader create a relationship of mentor and mentee, like Michelangelo and his apprentice.
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By Annie Dillard
