en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Women_(2019_film)

Greta Gerwig has repeatedly said she started writing Little Women years before 2018.

• In a December 2019 Vanity Fair interview, Gerwig said that when discussing the project, “the first time that I have anything labeled on my computer about it is 2014.”
• In Film Comment, she said: “This was before I directed Lady Bird” and “I’d written a draft of this screenplay before I made Lady Bird.” Since Lady Bird was made before 2018, that directly contradicts the claim that she “penned the script in 2018.”
• TIME likewise quotes Gerwig saying, “I had not made Lady Bird yet” when she pushed to make Little Women and was hired to write it.

So while Gerwig may have continued revising the screenplay in 2018, saying she penned the script in 2018 is inaccurate because documented drafting began years earlier.

The problem is the phrase “began penning”. Gerwig’s own interviews show that she did not begin writing Little Women only after the 2018 Academy Awards.

• In Vanity Fair, Gerwig said the earliest Little Women material on her computer was from 2014.
• In Film Comment, she said she had already written a draft before making Lady Bird.
• In TIME, she said she had not yet made Lady Bird when she pushed for the adaptation and was hired to write it.

Those statements place the start of her screenplay work several years before 2018. A Big Sur trip after the 2018 Oscars may have been part of her later drafting or revision process, but it was not when she began writing the screenplay.