Place, I believe, is important to every writer, whether the writer recognizes that, is what makes the difference. What might be very respected in one place for it's creativity could be despised in other cultures and areas. I do agree that Annie Dillard's perception of what it means to be a writer was rather cynical, but at the same time I felt that it worked for her, as a writer. The fact is that Annie Dillard and Scott Russell Sanders are two different people with two very different writing styles. It seems like Sanders draws more from the optimistic and Dillard the opposite. Either way, both writers were greatly affected by where they wrote. Despite Dillard's bad experience in the Pacific Northwest it still seemed to affect her writing in some way (after all she brought it up when talking about the writing process). Even the bad experiences change the way a writer, or even a person, perceives a place. The difference with Dillard and Sanders is that I think that Sanders saw the impact of the Midwest on his writing and respected it, while Dillard did not respect of her time in her isolated cabin on the Puget Sound in the same way.