Finish and Flourish
  • Home
  • About
  • Coaching
  • Blog
Sarah Federman, PhD

How to Finish and Flourish!

Some snippets of writing wisdom to keep you chugging along

Hurry, Write Everyday...Before it Becomes Feral

2/9/2016

0 Comments

 
Picture
.

Writer Annie Dillard warns us...sit up with our writing, lest it become feral..


"I do not so much write a book as sit up with it, as a with a dying friend. During visiting hours I enter its room with dread and sympathy for its many disorders. I hold its hand and hope it will get better soon.

This tender relationship can change in a twinkling. If you skip a visit or two, a work in progress will turn on you.

A work in progress quickly becomes feral. It reverts to a wild state overnight. It is barely domesticate, a mustang on which you one day fastened a halter, but which now you cannot catch. It is a lion you cage in your study. As the work grows, it gets harder to control; it is a lion growing in strength.

You must visit it every day and reassert your master over it. If you skip a day, you are, quite rightly afraid to open the door to its room. You enter its room with bravura, holding a chair at the thing and shouting, "Simba!"

Dillard, Annie. The Writing Life. Harper Perennial, 2013.

0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Author

    Sarah Federman, PhD
    scholar, consultant, writing adviser, freelance writer.

    Clients include:  University of Pennsylvania, the American University of Paris, the publisher Bedford St. Martins, and a myriad of students.

    Archives

    June 2017
    May 2017
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015

    Categories

    All
    Dissertation
    Graduate
    Planning
    Research
    Thesis
    Trauma
    Writing
    Writing Advice

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.
  • Home
  • About
  • Coaching
  • Blog