On Keeping a Notebook: Didion
We tell ourselves stories in order to live. — Joan Didion
Jean Didion, an American writer and journalist, wrote about the importance of keeping a notebook in her essay “On Keeping a Notebook,” which was first published in 1968. In the essay, Didion reflects on the various reasons why she keeps a notebook and the role it plays in her writing process.
“And so we do. But our notebooks give us away, for however dutifully we record what we see around us, the common denominator of all we see is always, transparently, shamelessly, the implacable “I.” We are not talking here about the kind of notebook that is patently for public consumption, a structural conceit for binding together a series of graceful pensées; we are talking about something private, about bits of the mind’s string too short to use, an indiscriminate and erratic assemblage with meaning only for its maker.”
Didion finds the purpose of keeping a notebook not to record events or to capture thoughts and ideas to use later, but to “jot down what I see, what I hear, what I remember, what I think.” She believes the act of writing things down helps her clarify thoughts and discover connections between seemingly unrelated things.
Didion also notes her notebook serves as a kind of “arbitrary” or “random” record of her life and experiences. She writes,
“I think we are well advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find them attractive company or not. Otherwise they turn up unannounced and surprise us, come hammering on the mind’s door at 4 a.m. of a bad night and demand to know who deserted them, who betrayed them, who is going to make amends.”
For Didion the notebook serves as a “holding place” for the various fragments of experience and memory that make up our lives. It allows us to hold onto these things, to reflect on them, and to understand them more deeply.
“It is a good idea, then, to keep in touch, and I suppose that keeping in touch is what notebooks are all about. And we are all on our own when it comes to keeping those lines open to ourselves: your notebook will never help me, nor mine you.”
