Reading Journal

9/13/2020
Summary “Why I Write”
In the reading Why I Write, author Joan Didion discusses how she believes most writers
use writing to insert their idea to readers’ minds. She likes to think about things that are real,
touchable, and seeable, which explains why she is easily distracted by other objectives when
she’s thinking. She believes there are not good writers or bad writers, it’s just all writers. When
she’s writing, she doesn’t have a “plot” and “character”, instead, her guideline is to set up some
images in her mind. Then, she gives an example from her own writing of what she meant. She
concludes with a rhetorical question: if you know the answer to the questions in her writing, then
what’s the point of her writing a novel?

Analysis
The genre of Why I Write by Joan Didion is an article essay. The audience is literature
readers. The purpose of this article is for the author to share her way of writing. I can relate with
Joan Didion’s statement that’s she’s not a thinker. I’m not a thinker either—I’m easily distracted
when I’m doing work. My mind will fly to other subjects such as what happened during my day,
what went wrong, and why I let it go wrong. Similar to Joan Didion, I like to form pictures in my
mind and often form stories. Additionally, Didion exposed some news authors and articles as
heavily biased. Didion explains, “In many ways, writing is the act of saying I, of imposing
oneself upon other people, of saying listen to me, see it my way, change your mind.” This
reminds me of a major problem with news nowadays: most of the time, news articles like picking
sides. Instead, they are supposed to states facts and explain the situation.

           Like Why I Write, the genre of Who Owns Writing  by Douglas d. Hesse is also an article
essay. The audience is literature readers. The purpose of this article is for Hesse to share his
thoughts on writing. These two articles are similar to me because they all mentioned how writing
should be free. Hesse claimed, “writing does not inherently need to be owned, just as a
swimming pool does not need to divide into lanes.” Just like what Joan Didion does, Hesse also
doesn’t have a guideline for writing, they both freestyle their writings.