During a recent conversation, I had someone help me realize that writing is not innate like learning to speak. Writing is a skill like learning to paint, learning to dance, or learning to play piano. Grammar is a systematic set of rules that have been imagined then set into place over the past thousand years that any form of English has existed. I love that Didion pointed this out so that the reader understands that this process is a hard fought one. This sentence also seems to emulate Orwells humor. Perhaps Didion was paying homage to Orwell through a few witty quips.