Another Reason to Love Joan Didion

"The peculiarity of being a writer is that the entire enterprise involves the mortal humiliation of seeing one's own words in print." ~Joan Didion, "Last Words"

I haven't written seriously in over a year. On occasion, I've sent out a long and descriptive e-mail, and thought to myself, "There. That wasn't so hard." But when I sit down to write, like I am now, I get stuck. I'll tinker with some sentences, move around a few paragraphs, make a general mess of a draft, if I create anything at all, and then I'll panic and walk away.

Didion's essay "Last Words," which I just read in The Best American Essays 1999, is a great read for anyone like me. She looks at the posthumous publication of Hemingway's last novel, but more than that, she explores how hard it is to write--not just novels, but letters and correspondence--knowing that you'll be read.

When I e-mail, I imagine a very specific reader, and it's mostly easy to write, when I'm in the right mood, because I mostly know what they'd like to hear. (Though even with e-mail I struggle, which is why most of my friends would rightly describe me as terrible at keeping in touch.) When I write, I find that reader elusive, mainly because I'm afraid of what--or who--I don't know. This fear and self-consciousness have got to go--I've got to find a way to plow through them.

Another reason to love Joan Didion: she knows it's hard to plow through, but her writing is so graceful and elegant that I feel understood, comforted and encouraged. Nothing beats reading an essay written by a master, and thinking that maybe I can do this. Maybe not as well as Didion, but better than I'm doing it right now.

(Really, though, there aren't many ways to do it worse, unless you count not writing at all.)