Why I Write Joan Didion On Keeping A Notebook Summary

The writing life is the short story book which has seven chapters. It talks about how to become a good writer and how to create a good writing by passing through the perspective and personal experience of Annie Dillard. In the part of how to become a good writer, she tells her personal experience about what is the things that help she to become a good writer. Also, what is the things a writer should have and what is a person a writer should be. In the part of how to create the good writing, she compares the writing with other handicrafts such as painting, photographing, singing, and wood working (Dillard 3-6). In addition, she gives us about the idea of “Line of Words” that is the major part of creating a good writing.

82). The third quote is one of her notes that put the reader inside of her mind and gives proof to the fact that Didion lets her imagination take over her sense of reality. The fourth quote was another example of her starting off realistically and then she added some detail and she was off in her own world, again putting the reader in her mind. Depending on the type of detail she used made her notes realistic or imaginary.

Our contemporary society was influenced by the idea of memories and justice, obstacles and struggles can influence why a person writes, and how “the good life” can be unique to different people. First of all, people read and write in our society today because it helps them with the memories and bring justice to some struggles in their lives. For example, by writing down their memories, many authors and writers are able to overcome their fears and struggles. They do this and it helps them to express how they are feeling and what they experienced.

Writing is a powerful tool for communication and connection. As an extension and expression of the mind, writing is as much about the mental processes of the author as it is about the final marks laid to paper. As we write, we hold in mind our own thoughts on the work, anticipate the reader’s thoughts, and think both in concrete and abstract ways in order to accomplish the task at hand. Whether an academic research paper, a novel, or text message to friends, writing seeks to engage, persuade, or impress concepts upon an audience. Like language and other art forms in general, the practice of writing is ever-evolving and is subject to cultural and contextual influence, expectations, and conventions. Each writer holds a theory

In the short essay, “Becoming a Writer,” penned by Russell Baker, he spoke of a memory from his past that later changed his perception of writing. After reading his piece, I reviewed the response questions listed below the essay to further my understanding of the piece. Almost like looking through a list of prompts as Russell did.

There are many aspects for my mind to conceive while reading the articles why I write by George Orwell and Joan Didion. There are many different factors in triggering an author’s imagination to come up with what they want to write, and why they want to write it. In most writings a purpose is not found before the writer writes, but often found after they decide to start writing.

The point of keeping a notebook has never been, nor is it now to have an accurate factual record of what I have been doing or thinking. Author, Joan Didion, in her essay, “On Keeping a Notebook” explains how to keep a notebook and why. Didion’s purpose is to inform us on how she keeps a notebook and why notebooks are useful in helping us to remember events that happened in the past. She adopts a sentimental tone in order to emphasize how many memories are kept alive by keeping a notebook. Didion uses ethos, pathos, and different rhetorical devices in her essay to explain her point.

Throughout the essay, Didion describes multiple random things that mean nothing to her, but were emotionally significant at the time she wrote them. Personally, I thought the tone used for both telling and talking about those memories seemed very nostalgic to her. Journals can be a way to remember who we were in the past, how we had thought and things we’ve done. Over time we forget things, and keeping a journal helps us relive both significant and insignificant events in our life that otherwise would have been blurred, or forgotten over the course of our lives.

Everyone knows what writing is to one extent or another, but we all have different definitions of how it should be done and varying degrees of seriousness about the art. We all have a process of writing, but each is unique to ourselves and our own experiences. Annie Dillard and Stephen King are two well known authors who have published many pieces, two of which describe how they view the writing process and let their readers get a peek of what goes on through their minds when they write. These two pieces are Dillard’s The Writing Life and King’s “What Writing Is.”

This is one of the reasons why keeping a notebook is favourable, as “memory is of the highest importance to men in every sphere of life” (Mnemon, 361-62). The sentiment one feels at a specific moment is evident through writing. It is “not a mere record of what we’ve done or what we’ve seen; it is a record of our reactions” (Smith, 26). However, writing does not always mean there is a purpose for it. It is sometimes done to release what has been irritating or affecting a person. Didion, for instance, discusses minor events where she remembers meeting people, even though this acquaintance will not affect her emotional capacity in the future. She was not sure “how much of it actually happened”, or the reason behind her writing it but it should not matter what part of it occurred. Didion suggests that if a piece of writing has a sense of association with a person, regardless of whether it produces a good memory or not, recording its detailed episodes. She succeeds in getting this point across by her several uses of

Didion’s writing shows a great deal of knowledge through her grammar usage and sentence structure. The reader can assume that she has completed high school and went to college to further her studies, perhaps somewhere in California, close to her family. Based off of her writing, I know one of Didion’s strongest values is family. An example is on her daughter’s first birthday and she states that she is at home, but not her house in L.A., it is actually where her family lives (164). Earlier in the book, Didion appears to be financially stable with her statement, “I live not far from 7000 Romaine, and I make a point of driving past it every now and then… A few weeks ago I lunched with an old friend at the Beverly Hills

Writing may be an enthralling experience for one and a clever way to decompress for another. In general, however, writing has different purposes for a variety of people. “Why I Write,” written in the late 20th century by Terry Tempest Williams, describes various reasons for writing narrated from a female’s perspective. The short essay begins in the middle of the night with a woman engulfed in her own thoughts. She abruptly goes forth by reciting the multiple reasons why she continues to write in her life. Through a variety of rhetorical devices such as repetition, imagery, analogies, and symbolism, Terry Tempest Williams produces an elegant piece of writing that offers the audience insight into the narrator’s life and forces the audience to have empathy for the narrator with the situation she is incurring.

During the course of a person’s life, a decision is made as to which direction their life should follow. Most people are encouraged by their loved ones to make this choice for themselves. When Kelly Cherry was twelve, she announced to her musically devoted, string quartet violinist parents that she was going to quit piano lessons and become a writer, in response, “[her] mother said that she would rather kill [her] than have [her] turn out like [her] big brother, a beatnik. She ran to the kitchen to get [a] butcher knife” (“Kelly Cherry”). Needless to say, she was not supported in this career path. Throughout the course of her early writing career, she would hear that she “had no talent for writing” (“Kelly Cherry”). Still, she continued to write, occasionally quitting again and again, like a smoker, only to pick it up again (“Kelly Cherry”). Continually she told herself, “You are not a writer” until one day she revised this to, “If you don’t write your books, no one else will” (“Kelly Cherry”).

Memory – what it is, how it works, and how it might be manipulated – has long been a subject of curious fascination. Remembering, the mind-boggling ability in which the human brain can conjure up very specific, very lucid, long-gone episodes from any given point on the timeline of our lives, is an astounding feat. Yet, along with our brain’s ability of remembrance comes also the concept of forgetting: interruptions of memory or “an inability of consciousness to make present to itself what it wants” (Honold, 1994, p. 2). There is a very close relationship between remembering and forgetting; in fact, the two come hand-in-hand. A close reading of Joshua Foer’s essay, “The End of Remembering”, and Susan Griffin’s piece, “Our Secret”, directs us

Writing is not just a way of inventing new characters; it’s a way of exploring yourself and finding new ways of thinking. Didion enjoys writing about the people who she invents and then putting her self in their shoes, when she does this she is discovering new feelings and characteristics about herself. Hoffman’s also does something similar; she creates a self - image of herself by writing her diary. By doing so she’s not