Reflection: Anne Dillard’s Notes for Young Writers Introduction

It wouldn’t be a bad idea to take notes of Anne Dillard’s…notes.  Most if not all of her ideas make sense from one viewpoint or another.  While reading and rereading, I found myself thinking a little more about the things she mentions and agreeing with most everything else.  However, I can’t as easily agree with two of her notes: “Don’t misspell dialect” and “Don’t describe feelings.”  I’ve seen published works that had misspelled dialect before – all too often, actually – and the second one seems contrary to the old rule of “Show, don’t tell.”  I can still see how these two notes make sense; I just can’t agree with them as readily as with any other note in this piece.

Those are the only two notes that I can’t agree with.  Many other notes made me think and agree with Dillard’s views.  It’s also interesting to hear from someone more experienced that “Publication is not a gauge of excellence” and, for someone who’s as much of a fan of fictional stories as I am, “Eight books of nonfiction appear for every book of fiction.”  I haven’t explored many nonfiction aisles of bookstores and libraries, but I have always been able to find something that’s at least somewhat based on the author’s real life and past.

In short, I mostly follow Dillard’s lines of thought, learn some new things from her, and only get confused on two out of almost forty tidbits of her experiences.

---Idida Z. Casado