What's so hard about that first sentence is that you're stuck with it. Everything else is going to flow out of that sentence. And by the time you've laid down the first two sentences, your options are all gone. Joan Didion More Quotes by Joan Didion More Quotes From Joan Didion Discovery still happens in the writing. You start in nonfiction with a whole lot more going for you, because all the discovery isn't waiting to be made. You've made some of it in the research. As you get deeper into a piece and do more research, the notes are in the direction of the piece - you're actually writing it. Joan Didion waiting writing I have an investment in not being crazy. I have a real investment in seeing things straight. This runs counter to that investment, so it required giving up an idea of myself, the idea being that I had control. Joan Didion giving-up crazy running Once in a while there were things in screenwriting that taught me things for fiction. But there's nothing in screenwriting that teaches you anything for the theater. I'm not sure I've ever fully appreciated before how different a form theater is. Joan Didion teach different appreciated I was relying on a kind of natural transition - the transitions made by someone who is slightly deranged. Joan Didion deranged kind natural Novels are almost like music or poetry - they just come to me in simple sentences, whereas I think my pieces get more and more complex ever since I've started using a computer. Joan Didion pieces simple thinking Actually, when John died, for the first time I thought - for the first time I realized how old I was, because I'd always thought of myself - when John was alive I saw myself through his eyes and he saw me as how old I was when we got married - and so when he died I kind of looked at myself in a different way. And this has kept on since then. The yellow corvette. When I gave up the yellow corvette, I literally gave up on it, I turned it in on a Volvo station wagon. Joan Didion different eye yellow When you lose someone, a whole lot of perfectly normal circumstances suddenly take on different meaning. You see it in a different light. You wonder if they knew. I wondered. Doctors have told me that people do have a sense of their own approaching death. Joan Didion perfectly-normal doctors light Most death now happens in hospitals. It's been medicalized. It happens away from where we deal with it directly. And that's a huge change. At the beginning of the 20th century most people died at home. Death was much more common. Joan Didion common home people Something I've always known about the screen is that if it's anything in the world, it's literal. It's so literal that there's a whole lot you can't do because you're stuck with the literalness of the screen. The stage is not literal. Joan Didion stuck stage world Sometimes an actor performs a character, but sometimes an actor just performs. With writing, I don't think it's performing a character, really, if the character you're performing is yourself. I don't see that as playing a role. It's just appearing in public. Joan Didion writing character thinking I can't imagine writing if I didn't have a reader. Any more than an actor can imagine acting without an audience. Joan Didion actors acting writing It's just a deep pleasure to read something you've written yourself - if and when you like it. Joan Didion ifs-and you-like-it pleasure I myself love to read those Victorian novels which go on and on, and you don't read them in one sitting. You might read one over the course of a summer, but that isn't what I want to write. Joan Didion self-love summer writing If you aren't aware of the reader, you're working in a vacuum. Joan Didion vacuums reader ifs I wanted to be an oceanographer, actually. It's a way of going underwater. I've always been interested in how deep it was, you know. Joan Didion underwater wanted way I didn’t like it [computer] when I first began using it. Where it’s helped me a lot is in nonfiction which is a kind of different process. You’ve got research, you’ve got your notes, You can block out what you want to work on for the next 10 pages and put it in another file, and then you can kind of carve it into shape Joan Didion block different fiction In terms of work, I never felt that I've done it right. I always want to have done it differently, to have done it better, a different way. Joan Didion different done want When you're writing fiction, you don't have notes necessarily. You don't carve it, it's not like a piece of sculpture, it's more like water color. Joan Didion color writing water I work every day. Sometimes I don't accomplish anything every day, but if I don't work every day, I get depressed and get afraid to start again. So I do something every day. Joan Didion accomplish ifs sometimes Everybody who undergoes a death and finds themselves grieving is obsessed with — or maybe overly focused on — the idea that they can’t display self-pity, they have to be strong. Actually there are a lot of reasons why you are going to feel sorry for yourself, but that’s your first concern. Joan Didion strong sorry grieving
