Hurry, Write Everyday...Before it Becomes Feral

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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.