Annie Dillard Gave It All

Following this week’s news that the brilliant writer Annie Dillard has died at age 81, some Defector staffers wrote about what her work and example have meant to them.

Much is made of Dillard’s genius, her wizardry with language, her talent. But the Dillardism that has stuck with me strongest over the years comes from Alexander Chee’s essay “The Writing Life,” in which he describes taking an undergraduate course with her at Wesleyan in 1989: “Talent isn’t enough, [Dillard] had told us. Writing is work. Anyone can do this, anyone can learn this. It’s not rocket science; it’s habits of mind and habits of work.”