Aim for the chopping block

In reading Annie Dillards "the Writing Life" I found her paragraphs were full of words that painted funny and strange pictures in my mind. One paragraph i particularly liked was the second to last one. "the page, the page, that eternal blankness, the blankness of eternity which you cover slowly, affirming time's scrawl as a right and your daring as necessity; the page, which you cover woodenly, ruining it, but asserting your freedom and power to act, aknowledging that you ruin everything you touch but touching it nevertheless, because acting is better than being here in mere opacity; the page, which you cover slowly with the crabbed thread of your gut; the page in the purity of its possibilities; the page of your death, against which you pit such flawed excellences as you can muster with all your life's strength: that page will teach you to write.
There is another way of saying this. Aim for the chopping block. If you aim for the wood, you will have nothing. Aim past the wood, aim through the wood; aim for the chopping block."

This passage was interesting to me because throughout her writing she is always asking and questing why she writes. She says things like how she doesn't like to write. And how she sits at the desk for days not writing a single thing and feels like a failure for it. In these paragraphs she answers those questions, in a very interesting way.

When she calls the page "that eternal blankness" and "the blankness of eternity" you visualize a blank sheet of paper, and it makes sense that unless someone begins to be creative and writes on the page it will remain blank forever. When you begin to cover the page with your thoughts you ruin the purity of the page but you use your "freedom and power to act, acknowledging that you ruin everything you touch but touching it nevertheless" You can see yourself pouring your thoughts onto a blank page, and you know that by getting those thoughts out, no matter how random or stupid they may seem somewhere inside you they make sense. By taking chances and writing them your expressing yourself outloud but noone has to listen. "The page, which you cover slowly with the crabbed thread of your gut; the page in the purity of its possiblities" You can take a blank page and you can write about anything. You don't have to be a fabulous writer to fill a page. The possiblities of writing are endless. "That page will teach you to write" the more you look at what your writing or thinking about, the better you become at organizing your thoughts and ideas on the page. It's like this blog entry-the more times I read Annie's words the more i understand them, the more I learn about them. For us while writing we learn more about ourselves. We learn that although we think something as simple as blog entry seems difficult, the more we try and the farther down on the page we get the easier it becomes, and the more enjoyable it is to write about.

The last paragraph of the story really intrigued me because it is one of the most helpful things I've ever learned about writing. "Aim for the chopping block. If you aim for the wood, you will having nothing. Aim past the wood, aim through the wood" I understand this passage as this: if you just try to write something because you have to do it or you write quickly simply to get the writing done, your writing will be awful. Because you haven't tried to understand yourself or understand what you wanted to write about. You cannot focus on the short goal of getting something done. You have to look for the long term commitment to a great piece of writing, no matter how many pure pages you ruin, your thoughts are never wasted. You must, as Dillard says, "Aim for the chopping block".