Goldberg & Didion
When we show in our writing, we give ourselves the opportunity to take the reader’s hand and show them a thought, a way of being, that perhaps they had never seen before. As Alan Bennett suggests, a thought they felt special and particular only to them. It’s an inclusive, generous, immersive method which invites the reader into a piece, affording them the bridging space to create their own conclusions and imagery inside of our writing. As Goldberg describes, ‘the writer takes the reader's hand and guides him through the valley of sorrow and joy without ever having to mention those words.’ It is guidance more than gripping the reader’s hand and pre-defining their path. A way of crafting purposeful world-building without the need to explain authorly intent. In contrast, telling closes interpretation, more forcefully taking the reader’s hand, limiting their interpretive ability to come to their own conclusions. It already spoils an ending and reduces the paths taken. Goldberg frames this through the use of the word ‘about’, arguing that ‘the word about in someone's writing, it is an automatic alarm’ and makes the case that it carries the risk of muddying a critical distinction between creator and editor when we attempt to castigate ourselves for its use. The risk here is when ‘about’ is used to remind the reader of the very act of reading itself. When we tell a reader what something is ‘about’, we break an agreement between reader and writer, choosing to place them outside of the piece and invite them to visualize it from a remove, instead of continuing to hold their hand and remain inside of what we are already showing them.
For Didion, her method of showing is one of details noticed and minor remarks recalled, her notebook as primary recording device. A place more to remember things now rather than a quiet bench to remember them later. A means by which to couple the act of writing to the act of seeing in her life. As she describes, ‘the impulse to write things down is a peculiarly compulsive one, inexplicable to those who do not share it, useful only accidentally, only secondarily, in the way that any compulsion tries to justify itself.’ The notebook serves as a copilot not just of recording an event, but of her emotions toward it. Revisited many years later, these recollections change, but their recorded details remain. Didion herself is different, even if what she wrote is not. She describes herself as an ‘anxious malcontent’, compelled to write, and without which she loses sense of self. She describes writing as coming from a lonely presentiment of loss, but it’s also a place where she can feel the most her she can be. A place of life. But this is different from diary. ‘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.’ It is more than that. For Didion such writing holds no interest, despite producing mysterious results. Distinctions between reality and fantasy become irrelevant, with the compulsion to writing itself paramount. It is not the factual description of what happened. Not the telling. But the showing of how it felt to her. Allowing her to move between present and past in order to write towards the future. So that ‘on that bankrupt morning I will simply open my notebook and there it will all be, a forgotten account with accumulated interest, paid passage back to the world out there’. She imagines the notebooks are about other people, but of course they never are. They are deeply private, and always about her. Notebooks give us away.
Notebooks also bridge the gap inside of thoughts such as Maya Angelou’s ‘I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.’ Notebooks allow us to remember individual details of what was said, what was done, and combine it with the emotion of how we felt. They are a place to record, but also to listen. In writing, we use notebook practice to tune into not just seeing deeper, but listening to ourselves with more internal intensity. What Didion calls ‘keeping in touch’. Notebooks hear it all in the present and bring it all back in the future. They are a promise to our future selves as writers. Trivial moments preserved in the scratched marginal amber of a creased and crumpled book. When I read Didion, I feel the loss and anxious malcontent she describes. Not propelled by the compulsion to write, but for the regret in lack of discipline of never having done it. For many years I’ve kept a visual sketchbook, and I enjoying looking back at what was important many years ago. Ultimately how trivial and meaningless much of it was. But the detail of memories have always been held elsewhere. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve felt more compelled to write them down, but I am forced to do this longhand, and exclusively from an ever-fading memory. So much of our digital world is recorded, archived and shared, that the meaningful discipline of writing down what these events mean to us is often lost. I remember how it felt to emigrate to America, but the individual details of it are all but gone. I remember the doctor telling me I had beaten cancer. But where and when it all happened I can’t recall. I remember the euphoria of my daughter being born, but no detail of who else was there, or what was said. All I remember is how these events felt. It’s really all that matters. All that’s left. And that’s why we write.
