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.
Symbols & Motifs
The Line of Words
The most frequent symbol Dillard uses is the line of words. The line of words is a multifaceted tool that the writer uses and creates, but it is also a symbol of discovery. In The Writing Life, the line of words takes on many shapes to illustrate how it finds stories and ideas. The most frequent shape it takes is a laborer’s tool—a miner’s pick and shovel, a surgeon’s probe, or a workman’s hammer. As a pick, it leads a writer into the unknown depths of a story, like how it extends a mine’s tunnel. In one instance, Dillard references how she cannot manage to “pick up [her] shovel and walk into the mine” (48). Here, she represents her inability to continue writing because of difficult subject matter; she does not want to wield the line of words because she is afraid of where it will lead and what it will ask her to contemplate. As a surgeon’s probe, the line of words illuminates hidden issues, as a surgeon seeks bodily abnormalities. As a hammer, the line of words helps demolish structural errors in a work by “hammer[ing] against the walls of your house” (4). The line of words adapts its shape for each stage of the writing process, and Dillard employs its image to denote progress towards a finished work.
Dillard imbues the line of words with a degree of autonomy from the writer to depict how the writer must remove feelings of attachment to give way for the story’s organic development. In one metaphoric scenario, the writer is an interpreter at a base in Houston, Texas receiving transmissions from the line of words that probes the far reaches of Jupiter. In this instance, the writer can only “stare at the signals the probe sends back” and “later […] guess at what they mean” because pausing to interpret them would mean losing new information (21). This symbolic anecdote exemplifies momentum in early stages of writing and the importance of getting ideas out on the page before looking too deeply into how they fit or what they mean towards the work as a whole. The line of words can also enter the writer’s body in search of stories, symbolizing the personal interest writers have in their subject matter.
Painters and Painting
Writers and painters—despite a difference in materials—have similar tasks of representing their vision in physical media. In The Writing Life, the painter is often a symbolic stand-in for the writer who exemplifies the writer’s tasks and feelings through a more visual medium. Some anecdotes directly liken painting to writing. A painter covers their sketches by “overlay[ing] earlier versions” with paint like a writer must “erase [their] tracks” through editing (5,4). A painter’s dissatisfaction with their material representation of the vision on canvas directly mimics the writer’s same feelings towards the vision’s representation with words. The image of a painter also occasionally contrasts with the writer. In one example, Dillard argues that the painter gets enjoyment out of the process of their craft because it is “pleases the senses while you do it” (109). This juxtaposes with her many stories of woe about the process of writing and underscores how writing deals with the “subtlest senses” that are difficult to rouse (17).
Dillard’s anecdotes about painters also represent her advice for novice writers in practice. Her artist friend, Paul Glenn, symbolizes the momentum and dedication to learning that Dillard reveres in his months-long endeavor to perfect a painting technique that he has no end-product idea for yet. Paul’s desire to learn by doing and his faith that “following the work wherever it led” (85) would end in success exemplifies Dillard’s teachings in action: She advises writers to always follow their ideas the moment they think of them and to not despair in times of hardship. In another example, a painter says he began his artistic journey because he “liked the smell of paint” (70). Dillard explains that a writer needs to not only enjoy the field of literature, but they must like the very tools of writing—words and sentences. The image of a young painter following his scent, though humorous, symbolizes her idea that the most basic inspiration to begin writing should be a love of the materials themselves. Words are a more abstract material, and thus the image of a painter helps the reader to better visualize her statement.
The Wood Chopping Block
Dillard’s experience of chopping wood on Lummi Island becomes a symbol for the writing process. More specifically, the concept of “aiming past” the wood and instead “aim[ing] at the chopping block” (43) symbolizes how the writer must interact with their vision. The vision is a mental image that the writer “can see the world through,” but, due to it being an “imaginary object” (56), any attempts by the writer to stick too rigidly to the mental image will come up short. If the writer aims to exactly replicate the vision—or aim exactly at the wood—the material they end up with will be insubstantial, like kindling. By using the vision as a lens to be looked through—by seeing through the wood—they can complete their work even if the vision is broken in the process. The vision is used for fuel, like the wood, but ultimately does not retain its form along the way. Instead, it becomes an energy that exists in the background of a work.
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By Annie Dillard
