About those plants…
In The Writing Life, Annie Dillard says:
"During that time, I let all the houseplants die. After the book was finished I noticed them; the plants hung completely black dead in their pots in the bay window. For I had not only let them die, I had not moved them. During that time, I told all my out-of-town friends they could not visit for a while."
I read this passage in college, or shortly thereafter, and I think it did quite a lot of damage to my writing. I interpreted it as Dillard saying that if you didn’t have the single-minded passion for writing that let you turn away your friends and let your plants die, then you were never going to be a real writer, and you might as well not try. And so for years, I didn’t write.
My houseplants aren’t quite dead, but they’re pretty close. I don’t water them nearly enough, and the cat gnaws on their leaves when she gets the chance. My garden is vibrantly green, but only because it’s totally overgrown with weeds. There simply aren’t enough hours in the day to do everything I’d like to do, and plant care is pretty far down in the list. But writing — at least in the form of this blog — has become part of my routine, something I do even if I’m not fully in the mood.
August 27th, 2005 at 11:57 pm
I hear you on this one. I have always found it difficult to motivate myself to write on a regular basis, and having a readership, even a limited one, is pretty motivating.
August 28th, 2005 at 8:17 am
It seemed like everything I read about writers and their practices was like that when I actually called myself a “writer” and I felt doomed. Where was the time to fall in love? To have friends? To keep up with family? Was a writer destined to be a hermit living in squalor? I’m so glad to have found that that is not the case. And yes, the blog is one way I keep writing part of my life, routine like eating breakfast.
August 28th, 2005 at 11:11 am
I am sure you have, but have you read Bird by Bird? You must. It’s a much better and funnier look at the process. I work with writers every day, I require them to read it.
August 28th, 2005 at 6:44 pm
The Annie Dillard quote that shut me up for years was “Why not shoot yourself, actually, rather than finish one more excellent manuscript on which to gag the world?” I didn’t have an answer for that question (though I did, indeed, like sentences), so there seemed to be no point in continuing to write. In fact, I used that for my tagline when I first started my blog.
Bird by Bird is one of my favorites. Annie Dillard is probably the writer I admire most in the world, but I suspect that Anne Lamott would be a lot more fun to spend time with…
August 29th, 2005 at 4:54 pm
It’s so interesting to read this after seeing so many bloggers in the past week or so say they are backing off. In fact I didn’t blog for several days myself last week, and although that shouldn’t necessarily mean I don’t write other things, that’s what happened. I know I’ve told other people that writing is something you have to do every day if you think of yourself as a writer, but I didn’t realize how important it had become to me. I’m beginning to think that rather than being a pastor who writes sermons, I’m a writer who preaches.
And Phantom, I’m glad you’re writing!
August 29th, 2005 at 5:17 pm
I hear you. I blog just to practice writing, too.
I think Annie Dillard herself has retracted a lot of what she wrote in The Writing Life. On her website she calls it “an embarrassing nonfiction narrative.” I like to think that she wrote it in her youth, when we are all hard-nosed about things. But I don’t know that for sure.
August 29th, 2005 at 5:53 pm
Ooo, thanks for the tip, Jennifer. Her website is quite a find!
And thanks, Songbird. I must admit that I’ve been thinking of you as a writer who preaches, myself…