Well first off, the first thing that caught my attention in this piece was the word “idiosyncratic”  which means a distinctive or peculiar feature of a certain place or thing. Dillard writes about Hemmingway and I don’t really have any prior knowledge of Hemmingway so I was pretty lost. Dillard really seems to put his heart, soul sweat and blood into his writing. I like his idea about writing as if you knew you were going to die or as if your audience consisted of terminally ill people. That reminds me, I used to be scared of boats and the ocean and one day I found out my family was going on a week long cruise. Two days prior to the trip I sat in my school’s library and wrote my will because I was certain the ship would sink in some violent storm. To my suprise It was like 6 pages long and had some pretty thoughtful words.