Learning to Chop Wood in a World of Screens
How the Writing Life has Changed and Not Changed
Recently I picked up Annie Dillard’s The Writing Life and noticed particularly the section in which she encourages us would-be writers to “aim for the chopping block.” It’s an instructive passage if you have time for it: she recounts her struggle learning to chop wood, including the way the neighbors used to gather and watch her do it as entertainment because she was so awful at it. And then one day she realized she had to aim for the chopping block rather than the wood. And, of course, being Annie Dillard, she immediately turns that idea to a useful metaphor for writing, and aiming through one’s art at the pure idea in order to achieve something workable.
But more than that I’ve been turning over the imagery of the way she presents her time: she writes of spending hours a day pacing the room, thinking about a page, reading, thinking more, writing a few sentences, then cutting half the sentences or more. She is on an island and she rents a small cabin down the island as her office and she has to chop wood to keep it warm. These scenes depict very much the writing life that I imagined for myself: comfortably isolated, with long stretches of time and no interruptions, close to nature. And I am suddenly, starkly aware that such a writing life is part of a bygone era…
