When I write I often do so in large brushstrokes. I cover entire mountains in a moment and write like I am running out of time. I sometimes feel like I am running uphill when I write. Adding more and more just to reach a word count. Annie Dillard has shown me that writing is more about finding the meaning of the piece and fully understanding what you see. She goes into minute detail when describing the natural world, for example on page 127 of Pilgrim at Tinker Creek when she explains elodea and the chloroplasts inside each cell she describes the plant in incredible detail, sparing nothing. Dillard zooms in on individual cells then keeps going by discussing the atoms inside the chloroplast. However, she still includes the big picture she explains that “All the green in the world consists of these whole, rounded chloroplasts wending their ways in water.” Her writing includes every detail, but it isn’t erratic and hurried. She focuses on the bigger picture by creating it herself. It’s not just a plant, its atoms that have formed into cells that have become a plant. She revels in the details, she makes them important. And when she finally reaches the largest image the reader can understand it because she has shown the journey of how she got there. She creates new meaning and pushes the things we know into strange and beautiful metaphors. This makes me want to do more than reach a word count. Dillard’s pure admiration for nature pushes me to understand and know what I see instead of just observing it.
I never thought of Dillard’s writing style in this way! This is spot on with how I feel about writing papers sometimes. I find myself structuring content and approach around how many words or pages I need to meet, rather than forming my opinion and focusing in on what I believe is important to me. Attempting to have intricate knowledge about everything is futile, and Dillard shows this by exposing how it is useless to know everything about even one certain thing. There is just far to much detail about every single thing that exists. Picking and choosing things to focus in on and drawing overarching connections between broader concepts is a difficult thing to do well, and I see this as Dillard’s specialty.