On Keeping a Notebook - Joan Didion

        A notebook is a creation that only its creator can understand. Multi-Genre writer, Joan Didion, in her essay, “On Keeping a Notebook,” writes to inform the reader of what keeping a notebook has done to her life. Didion begins her essay by explaining how keeping a notebook has impacted her life, permitting her to express her feelings, and assuming herself with her entertaining accounts, however, because she uses so much imagination and bias in her writing, only she can unravel what she’s written.

        In her essay, Didion describes how keeping a notebook has permitted her to express her feelings. “I write entirely to find out what’s on my mind, what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I’m seeing and what it means, what I want and what I’m afraid of (paragraph 2).” When she writes, she doesn’t usually write with a purpose other than to express what she’s feeling into words on paper. The quote supports this statement; by implying that writing gives her a clear visual of what she’s feeling, giving her that closer connection that allows her to further understand why she felt that way, and how she took it. “So the point of my keeping a notebook has never been, nor is it now, to have an accurate factual record of what I have been doing or thinking (paragraph 8).” It’s not about the facts or what actually happened or what she was exactly doing, but how it made her feel. Writing gave her the opportunity to express how that daily event in life made her feel, but in a way she may only understand. This gives her this sense of security, of amusement, when she pulls them out later in life to examine or study. For example, in paragraph 9, it says, “The cracked crab that I recall having for lunch the day my…must certainly be embroidery…And yet it is precisely that fictitious crab that makes me see the afternoon all over again…” This quote states an example from the essay of way she was able to put her feelings into words, of not what actually happened, but how it made her feel. It gave her a way to connect with her emotions.

        Throughout her writing, she states it amuses herself with her entertaining account. The text states, “…with the sensible suggestion that I stop whining and learn to amuse myself by writing down my thoughts (paragraph 7).” The author feels as writing her feelings down instead of complaining about it, gave her a sense of amusement. It gave her the chance to express those thoughts into something hilarious. When she went back to read what she had written as a five year-old, she had no idea of what she was thinking back then, but she could definitely point out that she was amusing herself with those thoughts back then. It led her to realize why she is the way she is as an adult. It transformed her life, being capable of writing these thoughts down with her broad imagination. Writing in the notebook has taken away from the boredom in her life. When she feels like she’s going through the motions of life, she’ll pull out her notebook to reflect on her past and it allows her to remember who she was then and is now. “I tell myself, and then some morning when the world seems drained of wonder, some day when I am going through the motions of doing what I am supposed to do, which is write—…, paid passage back to the world out there (paragraph 10).” This refers to how every now and then she’ll get bored of life; however, reading her notebook gives her amusement that authorizes her escape from the world outside.