Writing Life/Lives

"How we spend our day is, of course, how we spend our lives."

"Who will teach me to write?....The page, the page, that eternal blankness, the blankness of eternity which you cover slowly, affirming time's scrawl as a right and your daring as necessity; which you cover woodenly, ruining it, but asserting your freedom and power to act, acknowledging that you ruin everything you touch but touching it nevertheless, because acting is better than being here in mere opacity; the page, which you cover slowly with the crabbed thread of your gut; the page in the purity of its possibilities; the page of your death, against which you pit such flawed excellences as you can must with all your life's strength: that page will teach you to write."

--Annie Dillard, The Writing Life

Occasionally, I need a little zip from a writer who tells me it's okay to write crap, and it's okay to wonder why you write when no one will ever care to read your work, it's okay to miss the vision of your original hopes as long as you strive after that vision. And, frankly, I enjoy reading along the lines of other writers' lives. I want to discover the hows of what they do, even though I know there is no magical ritual that will form good writing--other than writing writing writing.

All of Dillard's writing makes me reexamine the blade of grass, the arc of the sky, the walk of caterpillars with new awe. She reminds me to open my senses--which is too necessary, too often. After reading her work, I look at the world and can say, "WOW!" more often because I notice it. (How awful that there are long moments of existence that I forget to notice).

And sometimes I get stuck in the rut of myself: although I don't always believe it, the worth of the world does not depend on my little family. The worth of my world does, but there's a lot more going on. I know that. I overlook that fact too often as I obsess about due dates (TOMORROW!) and parenthood. Those are my daily thoughts--in constant need of expansion, but not too bad. The writing life is the life that records the wonder, and then sorts through the records to find gems worth sharing.

Or is that just every life?