Why I Write

by Joan Didion

I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking, what I'm looking at, what I see and what it means.

Acting as both a personal narrative and a reflection, the essay describes Didion's unique creative method and details the reasons why she became a writer. In order to demonstrate her creative process, Didion describes the inspiration behind two of her novels, Play It As It Lays and A Book of Common Prayer.

Genres: Writing, Nonfiction, Essays, Short Stories

4 pages, ebook

First published January 1, 1976

About the author

Joan Didion was an American writer and journalist. She is considered one of the pioneers of New Journalism along with Gay Talese, Hunter S. Thompson, and Tom Wolfe.
Didion's career began in the 1950s after she won an essay contest sponsored by Vogue magazine. Over the course of her career, Didion wrote essays for many magazines, including The Saturday Evening Post, Life, Esquire, The New York Review of Books and The New Yorker. Her writing during the 1960s through the late 1970s engaged audiences in the realities of the counterculture of the 1960s, the Hollywood lifestyle, and the history and culture of California. Didion's political writing in the 1980s and 1990s often concentrated on the subtext of political rhetoric and the United States's foreign policy in Latin America. In 1991, she wrote the earliest mainstream media article to suggest the Central Park Five had been wrongfully convicted. In 2005, Didion won the National Book Award for Nonfiction and was a finalist for both the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Pulitzer Prize for The Year of Magical Thinking, a memoir of the year following the death of her husband, writer John Gregory Dunne. She later adapted the book into a play that premiered on Broadway in 2007. In 2013, she was awarded the National Humanities Medal by president Barack Obama. Didion was profiled in the Netflix documentary The Center Will Not Hold, directed by her nephew Griffin Dunne, in 2017.

Reviews

[Lizzie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not me out here trying to find the shortest books on Goodreads to complete my challenge 😅

[rainydae · Rating 5 out of 5]

loved loved loved. the introduction, where she points out the assonance in the title, and segues so naturally into the meaning of writing. her insights on how writing is born from an acute awareness of the tangible, of details, of things and places and people. the glimpses into her writing process — how she lets a vision and her subconscious dictate an entire novel, how the curiosity to understand these abrupt visions drives the entire writing process.

&shout out dear rheader post for the rec

[Violet-May Davey · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoyed reading these 4 pages as they tell you a lot about what it means to be a writer. These pages cover both the writing process and answer the question, which coincidentally is also the title: Why I Write. Would 100% recommend it to anyone who wants something to read and is thinking of becoming a writer.

[Walter Schutjens · Rating 2 out of 5]

Why do you Didion

[Harriet Lili]

Really enjoyed!! At this point I’m not sure how I’m going to rate this, I think that I’ll need to read more Didion before I do.
Also I read this on a train in Ireland with pretty scenery and I just think that’s important to specify because #vibes 😜😜
ANYWAYS, her essay style is so captivating and this one was really interesting, so I recommend it! Having read bits and pieces of her work before (in uni), this essay about her process was interesting because I think it will inform future reading of her other work in a really cool way 😌😌


“When I talk about pictures in my mind I am talking, quite specifically, about images that shimmer around the edges.”

[Léana · Rating 4 out of 5]

(course read)

[cassandra · Rating 5 out of 5]

So good

[Ferhat Elmas · Rating 3 out of 5]

Literally to answer this question. Lovely to see that she is laughing at herself between the lines.

[Kaamya · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Had I been blessed with even limited access to my own mind there would have been no reason to write. I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear.”

[sodium · Rating 4 out of 5]

Definitely did not discover and then read this in a span of 24 hours now that the year is ending. I’ve never read Joan Didion before, but am now inclined to after this essay. She is candid about her weakness: “I knew I couldn't think. All I knew then was what I couldn't do. All I knew then was what I wasn't, and it took me some years to discover what I was. Which was a writer.”

I deeply relate to that. As a video creator, perhaps my biggest insecurity is not being an expert on any particular subject (apart from my lived experience, which I often have to convince myself is worth documenting). Didion admits to as much, but also that writing is her subject matter — she is an expert on writing, and that is all she needs to be.

She then goes on to talk about her natural inclination for the periphery, and a “shimmer” she sees around objects of interest — things that eventually take shape into a story. The best stories are in the details that draw you in, and Didion’s strength lies in her ability to notice and breathe life into these details.

[sneha · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’ve read these four pages multiple times and they really speak to me partly because I relate but mostly because I think they way Didion uses words is beautiful. Every word is intentional and the way they flow with each other even in an essay that’s just four pages (!!!) is incredible.

Side note: this essay is available online for free on multiple websites and is a short and fun read.

Didion is interesting because she has become the face of smart, politically conscious writers when she really was not (politically conscious that is, she was very very intelligent). Her writing is phenomenal, every essay she wrote is deeply impactful (On Self Respect is another regular re-read), but she doesn’t say anything particularly political or radical. She is as neutral and safe as you can get. You can look into the personal life section of her Wikipedia page for further proof which is why I don’t quite understand why she has become the “It girl writer” figure.

[alex · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Had I been blessed with even limited access to my own mind there would have been no reason to write. I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means."

Not quite as straightforwardly, undeniably brilliant as its predecessor (me, giving George Orwell credit? Someone, take a picture!), but an excellent statement of intent and a delicious sample of Didion's writing nonetheless

[Nellie Colberg · Rating 5 out of 5]

"I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking, what I'm looking at, what I see and what it means"

Didion says that writing is an aggressive, hostile act - that writning is the act of saying I, of imposing oneself upon other people. She puts all thoughts on paper, rearranges them in just the right way. Inspiring to read as an aspiring writer - a luxury to dive into someones mind, no one does it quite like Joan Didion.

[Margaret Anne · Rating 5 out of 5]

In vibrant, intriguing prose, Didion deconstructs the phenomenon of using curiosity and observation about the surrounding world to drive writing forward and let pieces unfold naturally. This is a work that is gorgeous in its use of language and description and very thought-provoking in its arguments. I’m already planning to reread this to really appreciate and delve deeper into the amazing points made in it.

[Isi · Rating 4 out of 5]

yk it was really short and stuff but idk, i liked it. it wasnt hard too understand, it also wasnt too poetic or anything like that. but near the end i just started liking how she kept inventing stuff for the book lol

maybe its a 3,5 but just because its too short for me to think about it too much

[mia · Rating 5 out of 5]

"All I knew then was what I couldn't do. All I knew then was what I wasn't, and it took me some years to discover what I was.
Which was a writer.
By which I mean not a "good" or a "bad" writer but simply a writer, a person whose most absorbed and passionate hours are spent arranging words on pieces of paper."

[Dasha]

“Had I been blessed with even limited access to my own mind there would have been no reason to write. I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear.”

[vi · Rating 4 out of 5]

joan didion: because

[A N N A · Rating 5 out of 5]

An all time favorite.

[Yamin Hakawati · Rating 4 out of 5]

joan didion is so smash

[Ana Grzesiak · Rating 5 out of 5]

You can’t think too much about these pictures that shimmer. You just lie low and let them develop.

[s · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read for my writing as exploration class, not the biggest fan.

[ximena]

quisiera escribir como joan

[valen · Rating 5 out of 5]

"All I knew then was what I couldn’t do. All I knew then was what I wasn’t, and it took me some years to discover what I was.
Which was a writer."