Ashleigh Kennedy--response to Annie Dillard #1

Annie Dillard: The Writing Life

While reading Dillard's, "The Writing Life," I found her to be a very peculiar yet interesting person in her ways of writing and her thinking toward the process. She began by describing how you write something--spending so much time and admiring your words--but later on down the path your words can be the process of nothing. Therefore, you revise. It is as though you mature with your work and are in constant criticism of your earlier childish behavior. I also find it interesting how she explains that writers are free (giving their opinions and voice as much or little as they want) yet at the same time she contradicts that by explaining she always had a need to write--she could never get away. So exactly how free is a writer? Lastly, I also found it different that she isolated and seculed herself from the outside world in order to write about it. Normally, I hear about artists and writers engulfing themselves in the environment they so strongly desire to explain as a source for inspiration. Yet, Dillard in fact does the opposite--she stays away from it and pulls the characteristics of her writing from her memory. It is interesting how different people's styles and ways of writing are. So exactly who is to tell us the right or wrong way to express ourselves?