By rejecting realistic writing for the experience and intuitions she drew from her diary, Nin was able to forge a novelistic style emphasizing free association, spontaneity, and improvisation, a technique that finds its parallel in the jazz music performed at the caf� where Nin's characters meet.
Nin's literary style evolved to suit her material. In House of Incest can be seen a collage technique in the structuring of important segments. In a collage only the most vivid and outstanding pieces are selected, shaped, and placed in juxtaposition with others to build up a whole picture. The final image may be more or less abstract; the only thing it does not employ is a continuous line just as Nin's work does not have a conventional plot line. This form Nin used in her later novels and it most successfully represents the interior happenings of the mind. Nin believed that writing should sing, shout, cry, laugh, make love, etc. Music, color, texture, sculpture have been sources of inspiration.
