Joan Didion is a renowned novelist, playwright, reporter, and screenwriter most famous for her novels, "The White Album" and “The Year of Magical Thinking.”
Didion started writing at a young age. At five years old, her mother gave her a journal directing her to 'stop whining and start writing'. Didion got her bachelor's in English at UC Berkeley and then went on to work at Vogue post-graduation after winning a writing contest for them. Her talent quickly revealed itself and she rapidly rose In the ranks to become a contributing writer. She remained at Vogue for two years and in that time published her first novel, “Run River” in 1963.
Didion's creative writing process is not without its quirks. When working on novel's Didion retypes her sentences over and over. “Every day I go back to page one and retype what I have.” Didion says she rewrites until she feels she is immersed in the story, back into the rhythm of writing again. Didion also says she edits everyday. When finished with writing, she pours herself a drink and goes back in to edit and annotate the day's work. Didion claims the drink helps to loosen her up and helps dissipate the sense of terror and dread she feels when writing fiction. Preliminary notes only help so much when creating a fictional world, at the end of the day you just have to make it up.
So why does she write if she feels so much dread and terror at the thought? For Didion, writing is a way of thinking, a way of understanding her own mind. It's an attempt to put into words the pictures she sees in her mind's eye, a way of interpreting the world around her. In her essay “Why I Write” she said she saw “pictures in my mind … images that shimmer around the edges.” Writing was a way of deciphering those images, trying to interpret what is in the mist.
This parallels Nick Cave's relationship with songwriting. Cave feels similarly in that through writing songs he is able to make sense of his life and the world around him. Through his long career as a musician Cave feels he has been able to document his life through creation. In the book Faith, Hope, and Courage, Cave says that the songs “are a dynamic core of my life, and maybe to start writing them would be to somehow abandon the active engagement with that life. The songs give my life character.” Although creation can be a difficult, terrifying process at times, for creatives such as Joan Didion and Nick Cave, it is an essential method of understanding and interpreting the world in addition to making sense of their own minds.
https://www.vox.com/culture/2017/10/25/16526428/joan-didion-documentary-center-will-not-hold-netflix
It's interesting that many creatives, like Joan Didion and Nick Cave, are compelled to create in order to make sense of their lives and feelings. I think the quote you included from Didion speaks to her creative motivation, that despite fears and anxieties in creating, the desire to realize the idea in her mind pushes her to continue writing.
ReplyDeleteThis is such an interesting form of creativity. The way that it stems from something that was supposed to control and contain her feelings is so unique. The fact that she is able to twist something that fills her with terror and dread into a way to cope with her thoughts is really amazing. I like how you highlight creativity as not just an enjoyable past time, but also a tool to interpret the world with.
ReplyDeleteI've never heard of this creative or her work, but I find her creative process very thought-provoking. She seems very open about her process and how she feels about it. It's interesting that she considers writing so terrifying when she is doing it to understand her own mind. This definitely speaks to how scary it can be to work on yourself, process your emotions, and be aware of your own feelings instead of repressing and just coping with what life throws at you. But in the end, it's better to put in that work.
ReplyDelete