So the point of my keeping a notebook has never been, nor is it now,to have an accurate factual record of what I have been doing or thinking.That would be a different impulse entirely, an instinct for reality which Isometimes envy but do not possess.

So the point of my keeping a notebook has never been, nor is it now, to have an accurate factual record of what I have been doing or thinking. That would be a different impulse entirely, an instinct for reality which I sometimes envy but do not possess.

Joan Didion • On Keeping a Notebook - Joan Didion

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Didion has defined a writer as “a person whose most absorbed and passion ate hours are spent arranging words on pieces of paper. I write entirely to find out what’s on my mind, what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I’m seeing and what it means, what I want and what I’m afraid of.” She has also said that “all writing is an attempt to find out... See more

Joan Didion • On Keeping a Notebook - Joan Didion

How it felt to me: that is getting closer to the truth about a note book. I sometimes delude myself about why I keep a notebook, imagine that some thrifty virtue derives from preserving everything observed. See enough and write it down, I tell myself, and then some morning when the world seems drained of wonder, some day when I am only going throu

Joan Didion • On Keeping a Notebook - Joan Didion

But sometimes the point is harder to discern. What exactly did I have in mind when I noted down that it cost the father of someone I know $650 a month to light the place on the Hudson in which he lived before the Crash? What use was I planning to make of this line by Jimmy Hoffa: 6 “I may have my faults, but being wrong ain’t one of them”? And al t... See more

Joan Didion • On Keeping a Notebook - Joan Didion

Writers and Their Notebooks

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"Why do I keep a notebook at all?"

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