by Annie Dillard

isbn: 0060919884
subject: Nonfiction, Writing
finished: 11/1/1999

I picked up The Writing Life on the strength of a single quote: "A schedule defends from chaos and whim." I'm not far from beginning to write a dissertation on scheduling (in the computer science sense), so I figured I couldn't go far wrong reading a book about writing that mentions scheduling. It's a good book. In between anecdotes about her love/hate relationship with writing, Dillard manages to convey a lot of information about what exactly is so challenging about putting thousands and thousands of words together into a coherent whole that somehow lives up to what we originally wanted it to be. Recommended.