"I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking, what I'm looking at, what I see and what it means." I love this quote by Didion. I think this quote rings very true to most writers (and when I say "writers" I mean anyone who feels compelled to put words onto paper). I know that when I choose to write, maybe in a journal for example, it is a process that unfolds as I am actually writing. I discover what it is I really want to say, what I truly feel, what I think I understand and what I still feel unsure about.
If you've yet to create a picture in your mind, full of images and words and actions then you can't possibly write meaningful, passionate work. Everything will just be useless words designed to make the reader happy when indeed writing is really "the act of saying I," so the writer has to have an image in their mind already in order to create the voice of "I." That is waht Didion is saying, that we have to have a story in our mind about the way we think things should be except that the image in our mind is incomplete and so we write to uncover the answers/meanings of our mind. If we already knew the answers, we would have no business writing in the first place.
That voice of "I" is exactly what Johnny Cash talks about in his interview. He was told he was a "song stylist" becasue he took another singer's song and made it his own. He stayed true to himself. Cash heard the song with his ears one way and in his mind another and so he sang it in a way that would make it unique to him. Cash had no way of knowing how acceptable his way would be until he actually put it out there.
What Didion is reflecting on (and what you're talking about) is sometimes called "writing to learn;" that is, we write in order to learn what we have to say. We find our direction through writing. In this sense, writing itself is thinking.
ReplyDeleteNice job connecting Didion to Cash.