Quote: Write one big book (Dillard)

March 30th, 2006  |  Published in Quotes, Writing

It makes more sense to write one big book—a novel or nonfiction narrative—than to write many stories or essays. Into a long, ambitious project you can fit or pour all your possess and learn. A project that takes five years will accumulate those years’ inventions and richnesses. Much of those years’ reading will feed the work…. It is no less difficult to write sentences in a recipe than sentences in Moby-Dick. So you might as well write Moby-Dick.

—Annie Dillard, The Writing Life (1989), p. 71

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