On Keeping a Notebook - Joan Didion

Your first audience is always yourself. You write because it’s a good idea, because you’ve wanted to forever, because memory becomes more real when you are able to capture even the smallest piece of a story. You write because maybe there will be a reader or two. Maybe not. You write not to use your piece to get you anywhere, but because you’ve live... See more

“See enough and write it down, I tell myself. And then some morning, when the world seems drained of wonder, some day when I’m going through the motions of doing what I am supposed to do... 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... See more

My reason is existential. By writing the things that pop into my head down into my notebook, I teach my brain that those ideas - my ideas - are worthy of being written down at all.

Each note becomes another brick of the house I’m building, a monument to a simple yet elusive truth: that what I notice is worth noticing.