Summary
'Why I Write' is an argumentative essay written by Joan Didion in which the title is borrowed from George Orwell's essay with the same title . She took this title because the idea and the title attracted her . In the entire essay, Didion tries to build up a rationale : Why someone has to write . As a creative writing , Didion spends her time by writing . She in this essay describes how she writes and why she writes .
In the essay , she describes the way she writes by using some images in her mind . Didion begins her writing with a few thoughts and images . She says writing is a description of life around her superimposing her mind view on someone else's blank . Didion describes , "In my way writing is the act of saying , of imposing oneself upon another people , saying listen to me, see it my way, change your mind" . Didion creates some mental images for her writing process . The concept of images tell her what is wrong and what is right.
When she writes her novel, she doesn't use the sequence of time or character . She draws something in her mind before she starts writing . Didion said , "Let me show what I mean by pictures in my mind . I began 'Play it as it Lays' just as i have begun each of my novels, with no notion of 'character' or 'plot' or even 'incident' . She has two pictures in her mind . The first is empty white space and second is something actual, a young woman with long hair walking in the casino. This image is the idea of her novel . She also mentions her two books 'The portrait of a Lady' , and 'A Book of Common Prayer' .
To sum up, Didion say that a vision comes in her mind faintly at the beginning and then it takes the shape of an image in her mental world . When the image because concrete, she renders it in her writing.
