THE WRITING LIFE

I am just reading (among my list of many other books for this month) "The Writing Life" by Annie Dillard. I remember reading an excerpt many years ago, and had forgotten how compelling her writing is. She writes:

The setting of our urgent lives is an intricate maze whose blind corridors we learn one by one...You travel, settle, move on, stay put, go...

I have added it to my list of books for January. (See earlier January post). And will begin a new post listing the February selections. I do invite you into my virtual library, and would love to know what imaginary friends you are interacting with these days. My mother tells me that as a very young child I would sit on the bottom rung of the hall stairs and chatter away, is if there were someone sitting with me. I am sure most of you had similar childhood "tea parties".

Now, as adults, it is not much different. I find myself making strange gutteral noises, sighs, head nods, responding to the very best writers, (like Annie Dillard), who draw us generously into their worlds, tease us into thinking how easy and fluid the writing, feeling, thinking flows. I could do that, I say, I just have to sound genuine. And then I try, and learn otherwise.