Q: “Could I Be A Writer?” A: “Do You Like Sentences?”

You’re listening to A Way with Words, the show about language and how we use it. I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette.

In 1975, Annie Dillard won the Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction for her book Pilgrim at Tinker Creek.

And a few years later, she wrote an essay in the New York Times that was ostensibly advice for writers and artists, but really, it’s advice for all of us.

The essay is called Write Till You Drop, and we’ll of course link to it at waywordradio.org.

But one piece of advice she offers is that when you’re looking for something to write about, don’t look for what you love best, because humans all basically love the same things.

So write about what you alone love at all, your own obsession.

She puts it this way.

She says, there’s something you find interesting for a reason hard to explain.

It’s hard to explain because you’ve never read it on any page.

There you begin.

You were made and set here to give voice to this, your own astonishment.

And then she goes on to say, write as if you were dying.

At the same time, assume you write for an audience consisting solely of terminal patients.

That is, after all the case.

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?

And, Grant, I was taken aback when I first read that.

But the more I think about it, the more I really appreciate her sense of urgency.

You know, the idea of writing with a sense of urgency.

Don’t waste other people’s time and don’t waste your time and talent on trivialities.

Yeah, I love it.

And I also had a similar kind of, what?

She goes straight to death when talking about writing?

Right.

But the adicchonomy of words is for both of you.

It’s for the writer and the reader.

And we were just talking about this earlier before we started doing this show, this episode, about tossing books aside because the writer failed to be original in the first few pages.

And I think she’s also talking about that.

You have an inner voice.

You are unique.

Why follow someone else?

Why try to be someone else?

That’s a really good point.

Here’s another part of the essay that I really appreciated.

She tells this story about a well-known writer who got collared by a university student who asked, do you think I could be a writer?

Well, the writer said, I don’t know.

Do you like sentences?

The writer could see the student’s amazement.

Sentences? Do I like sentences?

I’m 20 years old, and do I like sentences?

If he had liked sentences, of course, he could begin, like a joyful painter I knew.

I asked him how he came to be a painter.

He said, I like the smell of paint.

So you have to love words.

You have to love arranging them and putting them together and the sensuality of all that.

And you also have to love just sitting there polishing a seat, wrestling with those words, wrestling them to the ground.

It is the best advice for a beginning writer because so many beginning writers are more interested in the outcome rather than the process.

They envision themselves with the published book rather than the unpublished book.

Right, right.

Embrace the process.

It’s all about the process.

I think that’s where the real joy is, you know, because what you write is never, ever going to be what you hope it’s going to be.

Not completely.

You know, there’s something that seeps out of whatever your original idea was.

But maybe you find more things in the process as you’re wrestling with those words.

I wonder if she is the kind of writer who finds her book in editing.

Some writers do that.

The book isn’t there in the first draft.

It’s there once they start editing themselves and challenging themselves.

The enemy, as she was talking about earlier, is the first draft.

The opponent is what they originally put down.

Well, I think you make a good point.

And I suspect that that is the case for her because, as you pointed out in a conversation we had the other day, this essay is so tightly woven.

It’s really hard to pull on a thread and see it coming apart.

I can’t imagine the editor that she had for this.

They must have just stamped it with good to go.

It’s perfect.

I can’t imagine cutting it for length either.

I just don’t know where they would have done a thing.

Maybe there was a double space they had to remove.

I have no idea.

Yeah, yeah.

So much of writing is in the editing.

So we’ll link to this piece from Annie Dillard on the website at waywordradio.org.

And we’d love to hear about your inspirations.

Who do you go to for advice?

Whose advice really rings true for you in the work that you do?

Whatever kind of creativity it involves.

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Email words@waywordradio.org.