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1 week ago | 
jillianhess.substack.com | Jillian Hess
This is how Didion defines a writer: “a person whose most absorbed and passionate hours are spent arranging words on pieces of paper.” Anyone who has read Didion’s writing will not be surprised by this definition—her prose could only have been written by a person who passionately arranged words, hour after hour, day after day. Before I went to see Joan Didion’s papers at the New York Public Library, I read all the reports claiming the archive gives us new insight into Didion’s writing process.
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2 weeks ago | 
jillianhess.substack.com | Jillian Hess
As an academic, summers have always been my best writing time. Suddenly, the days are longer, and my calendar opens up. I fill these longer days with writing projects. So, for our June edition of the Commonplace Book Club (CBC), I will focus on the writing process. Every morning, I’ll share a favorite quote about writing and creativity. I’m thinking of this as a way to kickstart my writing days.
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3 weeks ago | 
jillianhess.substack.com | Jillian Hess
Joan Didion (1934-2021) has been much in the news lately. In a span of days, her archives at the New York Public Library opened to the public and a posthumous collection of her notes from meetings with her psychiatrist were released as Notes to John. I, of course, have thoughts on this publication—but I’ll get to them in this week’s post script because my ideas are tied to my experience in her archive, where I spent two days last week.
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1 month ago | 
jillianhess.substack.com | Jillian Hess
This past winter, I set out to read every thing Mary Oliver ever wrote and to listen to every interview she gave. Here is what I learned: as creatives, we must enjoy our creations, and we must respect the source of our creativity.
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1 month ago | 
jillianhess.substack.com | Jillian Hess
Franz Kafka (1883-1924) left instructions: Upon his death, all “diaries, manuscripts, letters…sketches, and so on” should be burnt. Kafka also left his papers to the one person he knew would not burn them—his greatest literary advocate, Max Brod. Deciding to leave his papers to Brod reflects Kafka’s deep ambivalence, according to Ross Benjamin, who recently translated the diaries.
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1 month ago | 
jillianhess.substack.com | Jillian Hess
Henry David Thoreau would weep to see the selection of apples in our contemporary orchards—not because there are so many varieties, but because there are so few. He predicted this would happen: In 1850, he wrote, “The era of wild apples will soon be over,” sacrificed to the sweeter fruits developed through grafting.1With the end of “the era of wild apples” came a larger depletion of natural resources and a dwindling in the varieties of plant life.
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1 month ago | 
jillianhess.substack.com | Jillian Hess
Like many millennials, Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) graduated from college during an economic recession. The “Panic of 1837,” as it was called, would last for six years, leaving collapsed banks, inflation, and financial ruin for home and business owners in its wake. Thoreau began his professional life as a teacher in Concord’s struggling public school. The school was under-resourced and suffered from chronic absenteeism.
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1 month ago | 
jillianhess.substack.com | Jillian Hess
We’re nearly half-way through the April Commonplace Book Club (CBC) and we’ve gathered some extraordinary quotes. I’ve found our threads deeply nourishing, and I thought you might enjoy reading a sample. I hope they offer inspiration for your week ahead! If you’d like to join our Commonplace Book Club for the second half of April, head over to our chat. Noted is fueled by you. Your ❤️’s and comments inspire me.
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1 month ago | 
jillianhess.substack.com | Jillian Hess
In two weeks, we will mark the anniversary of the German bombing of Guernica on April 26, 1937.1 Spain was in the throes of a civil war that the town of Guernica had not joined. Thus, Guernica was defenseless when the Luftwaffe experimented on the Basque town to see if their weapons had the power to decimate an entire city. When the attack concluded, over fifteen-hundred civilians lay dead in their annihilated town.
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2 months ago | 
jillianhess.substack.com | Jillian Hess
Two things were true of Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) from a young age: he was rebellious, and he loved to draw. As a child, he was obsessed with sketching, so he would get into trouble to have time alone with his sketchbook. Later, barely fourteen years old, while at the the Barcelona School of Fine Arts, when instructed to write “One must learn to paint” in his notebook, he wrote instead, “One must not learn to paint.” From the start, Picasso flaunted the rules.