'The act of saying I'

 

“Novels are like paintings, specifically watercolors. Every stroke you put down you have to go with. Of course you can rewrite, but the original strokes are still there in the texture of the thing.” – Joan Didion

 

Born in Sacramento, CA on this date in 1934, Didion blended a career in journalism, creative writing, nonfiction and screenwriting, earning many accolades along the way, particularly for her acute attention to fine detail and for honing each and every sentence into a work of art.  She was the winner of a National Book Award for Nonfiction for her much-acclaimed The Year of Magical Thinking, also made into a Broadway play.

 

The author of 19 books and 6 plays or screenplays, Didion died of complications from Parkinson’s Disease in December of 2021 just as her (ultimately) best-selling collection of essays Let Me Tell You What I Mean was released.  This year, her journal/diary Notes to John – discovered in 2022 – has been published by her literary trustees. 

 

Didion started writing at age 5 but claimed that she never saw herself as a writer until she went to work for Vogue magazine in the 1950s and had her first articles published.  Her first novel Run, River, a critical and popular success, was published in 1963.   She recommended reading great writers like Hemingway – whose work she idolized – as “good tutoring in the writing arts.”
 

“In many ways,” she noted, “writing is the act of saying I, of imposing oneself upon other people, of saying, 'Listen to me, see it my way, change your mind.' It's an aggressive, even a hostile act.”