Guess what, y'all?
Annie Dillard's fourth chapter is five paragraphs long — shorter than my blog posts. Honestly. What a showoff.
The chapter was so short, we weren't even supposed to write a post today, but I wouldn't be able to sleep tonight if I had an odd chapter out. I'm not kidding. I think I'm allergic to ducks when they aren't in a row.
So, in honor of her scant five paragraphs, I offer five things I learned from chapter four:
- Things will go wrong. Just give it a little time. And plan accordingly.
- I sound like an insurance agent; she didn't. (which means my writing still needs work.)
- Chapter length doesn't have to be uniform, although that's what every expert except Dillard will tell you. I think she's having trouble conforming to convention again.
- When things go haywire, the truest you will be on display. (Do you like that person?)
- The burning typewriter in chapter four that isn't consumed is NOT holy ground like Moses' burning bush was. But, when a writer is on fire in front of his keyboard, it does feel a little miraculous.
1 comments
Oh, yeah, do things ever go wrong sometimes! I've been trying to write all week, but nothing happened until yesterday morning, thirty minutes before I needed to be leaving to go to work. Then my laptop began to explode with words! I had to finish my piece before I left. Thank goodness, class didn't start until 12:00 noon. (I allow 1.5 hours to get to work so that I can adjust for traffic and still have time to prepare before class starts.)
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