Joan Didion - Didion As A Writer - Writing Style and Themes

Writing Style and Themes

Didion views the structure of the sentence as essential to what she is conveying in her work. In the New York Times article, Why I Write (1976) Didion remarks, "To shift the structure of a sentence alters the meaning of that sentence, as definitely and inflexibly as the position of a camera alters the meaning of the object photographed...The arrangement of the words matters, and the arrangement you want can be found in the picture in your mind...The picture tells you how to arrange the words and the arrangement of the words tells you, or tells me, what's going on in the picture."

Didion is heavily influenced by Ernest Hemingway, whose writing taught Didion the importance of the way sentences worked within a text. Other influences include writer Henry James, who wrote "perfect, indirect, complicated sentences" and George Eliot.

Because of her belief that it is the media that tells us how to live, Joan Didion has become an observer of journalists themselves. She believes that the difference between the process of fiction and nonfiction is the element of discovery that takes place in nonfiction. This happens not during the writing, but rather during the research.

There are rituals that are a part of Didion's creative thought process. At the end of the day, Didion must take a break from writing to remove herself from the "pages." She feels closeness to her work; without a necessary break, she cannot make proper adjustments. Didion spends a great deal of time cutting out and editing her prose before concluding her evening. The next day, Didion begins by looking over her work from the previous evening, making further adjustments as she sees fit. As this process culminates, Didion feels that it is necessary to sleep in the same room as her book. In Didion's own words, "That's one reason I go home to Sacramento to finish things. Somehow the book doesn't leave you when you're right next to it."