Tag: writing

Despite the general recommendation, the writer whose life is involuntarily invaded and disturbed by politics has not the right, but the duty to insert politics into his literary work. This is, in short, an obligation to future generations, to whom he must pass on the flavor of his personal experience. Not to do so is to deny oneself. A political prisoner, then, even if he is against it, has lost the right to remain silent about the oppression he has suffered, and it is precisely he who has the mission of giving the lines a political flavor, because it is precisely he who has the the support of a circumstance that all the others don’t have.

Most of the obstacles to creation are overcome the moment inertia is broken; from then on, the work is more about correcting, perfecting than actually creating—or so it seems, which is the same for the working mind. The movement, once started, gives a fluidity that induces, if not automates the sequence, making it absolutely easier to continue, compared to that dreadful beginning. It is therefore about forcing the start, so that it will be never allowed to be swallowed up by inertia.

After setting up an efficient creative process, what the creative professional must do immediately is find a way to give vent to their spontaneous mental manifestations, or rather, he must find a way to transform them mechanically into something artistically acceptable, so that he avoids not only losing them, but getting lost in the confusion of a myriad of imprecise and disconnected ideas, the sight of which will more easily lead him to paralysis than to action.

Tolstoy and Dostoevsky’s superiority over other novelists is not technique and has nothing to do with technique, which shows that, in literature, it does not take precedence over artistic motivation, which is the essence of a work. What we notice in the novels of both writers is that, when we read them, we feel entirely absorbed by the narrative and an infinity of ideas move through our mind, but never those related to the artifices of narration, which go unnoticed unless we set out to analyze them exclusively. They are both superior because their motivations are superior.