Notes on a Writer's Life is the author's account of his more than fifty years as a writer. It chronicles his early childhood, his high school years of turmoil and rebellion, and his uneasy relationship with both publishers and academics. Throughout, Richards records his continuous investigation into human conflict, into the chasm between the seeking of power and the knowledge of love. The book also deliberates on his examination into the nature of violence, both overt and coercive, that he has considered in thirty-five books. Richards describes his travels to various parts of the world, his love of the sea, his love of Spain, and his fight against alcoholism. Crucially and poignantly, he recounts how for years his wife Peggy has been his greatest ally and supporter.

Notes on a Writer's Life also includes his relationships with other writers — his respect for Alden Nowlan, Alistair MacLeod, P.K. Page, Joel Hines, and Patrick Lane, and his friendship with Ray Fraser among others. Here, too, are his views on writers like Orwell, Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky.

Readers will learn of his determination to write against the odds, from the early books like The Coming of Winter, Blood Ties and Lives of Short Duration, to his later works, such as Mercy Among the Children, Crimes Against My Brother, and Darkness. Richards believes that suffering is inherent and so is joy. He reflects on the absolute necessity of reaching toward a spiritual life (if not a religious one) as well as his knowledge of war and revolutions, and how both swallow humanity's greater need for justice and liberty.

According to Professor William Connor, "Judged by the quality, scope, volume and variety of his writing — his stubborn almost compulsive bravery (Richards) towers over the great majority of contemporary Canadian writers."

David Adams Richards is an award-winning novelist, screenwriter, essayist, poet, senator and member of the Order of Canada. In 1988, Richard's novel Nights Below Station Street won the Governor General's Literary Award for English-language fiction. He was also nominated for Road to the Stilt House in 1985, For Those Who Hunt the Wounded Down in 1993 and Mercy Among the Children in 2000. Mercy Among the Children won the Scotiabank Giller Prize and was shortlisted for the Trillium Award. He received the Governor General's Literary Award for English-language nonfiction for his book Lines on the Water in 1998.

His 2006 novel The Friends of Meagre Fortune received the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best Book and was longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize. In 2017, The Lost Highway was shortlisted for the Governor General's Literary Award and longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize.