Inside the Writerly Life of Joan Didion

A Look at How She Did What She Did

Joan Didion’s life as a writer began at five years old when her mother gave her a black Big 5 school tablet. She gave it, as she explains in Slouching Towards Bethlehem, “with the sensible suggestion that I stop whining and learn to amuse myself by writing down my thoughts.” Her first entry? A story about a woman freezing amid an Arctic night who wakes …