Writing

I cannot find any patience for those people who believe that you start writing when you sit down at your desk and pick up your pen and finish writing when you put down your pen again; a writer is always writing, seeing everything through a thin mist of words, fitting swift little descriptions to everything he sees, always noticing. Just as I... See more

Shirley Jackson: Memory and Delusion

Truth is provisional, and the only thing backing it up is who you are at the time you wrote this or that, and that your joys and biases and prejudices are part of writing too.

Let Me Tell You What I Mean, Joan Didion

Creative Living is a space by creatives, for creatives. If the world needs ANYTHING RIGHT NOW, we believe it’s this. Creative community. Challenging biases. Welcoming complexity. Safe space. Exploration. Play. Connection. Gentle self inquiry. Daily practice and ritual, weekly reflection +... See more

instagram.com

What Didion sought was a naturalness of expression as controlled by a true understanding of ones craft, the better to describe the ineffable, the uncanny in the every day.

Let Me Tell You What I Mean, Joan Didion

Part of Didion’s brilliance is not so much to define menace or the uncanny as to show it.

Let Me Tell You What I Mean, Joan Didion

To put it simply, ethos is about the writer, pathos is about the reader, and logos is the shared fabric between them. This speaks to the tradition of literature as communication, as a bridge between writers and readers across space and time.

A Pattern Language

Didion the novelist taught Didion the nonfiction writer.

Let Me Tell You What I Mean, Joan Didion