The Writing Life

Dillard begins Chapter 3 by illustrating two more of her various workspaces. One was on Lummi Island in Washington’s remote Haro Strait, where she learned to chop wood to stay warm while she worked. The other was in a university English Department where she kept a clothespin attached to her finger to remind her of the water boiling in a silent kettle. The writing life is a “life of the mind” (44) that the writer can easily get lost in, but Dillard also explores the necessity of a material space for the work to happen. A writer may need to lay out the pages of a work and walk around them to grasp the full extent of their story. In this way, the writer’s work is both mentally and physically exhausting.

Dillard tells three anecdotes to exemplify the immense motivation needed for the task of writing, due to the strenuous threat it can pose. A Zulu warrior and an ancient Aztec human sacrifice would have the motivation to write because they are both in life threatening situations; the average writer doesn’t work under such dire external conditions, and thus must find some strong internal incentive to write.