The Writing Life

I recently re-read Annie Dillard's "The Writing Life." I first read it in college, when our journalism professor, who was really just a writer with a stubborn practical streak, made it a textbook for one of our classes. It's a short, almost ethereal book that's packed with scores of nuggets like this:

Remarkably material also is the writer's attempt to control his own energies so he can work. He must be sufficiently excited to rise himself to the task at hand, and not so excited that he cannot sit down to it.

Like a good little narcissist, I see about ten shades of me in that quote. It has that moment of recognition -- the clarity of seeing something I couldn't name be called out by someone else.

Here's another bit I loved:

One of the few things I know about writing is this: spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time. Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book, or for another book; give it, give it all, give it now. The impulse to save something good for a better place later is the signal to spend it now. Something more will arise for later, something better. These things fill from behind, from beneath, like well water. Similarly, the impulse to keep to yourself what you have learned is not only shameful, it is destructive. Anything you do not give freely and abundantly becomes lost to you. You open your safe and find ashes.

It applies as aptly to life as it does to writing, does it not? We only have today.

Lord, teach us to savor each moment and to day by day with holy abandon.