Perhaps the greatest incentive to literary fruitfulness is to live silently, avoiding as much as possible throwing words to the wind that would be much better used on paper. In the wind, only the trivial and of little importance. There are countless advantages to this attitude, which contributes to both life and work, making very clear what belongs to one and the other, separating and defining them, reinforcing how they should be viewed. Above all, it avoids the mistake of taking them for what they are not, distorting them. To live in silence, in short, is to know the right time and the right way to say what has to be said.
Tag: writing
The Artist Should Never Rely…
The artist should never rely on the apparent quality of what he creates, because this is a parameter that is definitely not for him or for his peers to judge. At worst, he must put up with it. To make art is to direct effort toward the realization of a mental image in an artistic form; to do so, in short, is to bring an idea to life. Insofar as it seems right to him, and convinces and moves him, the job is to represent it with sincerity and power, to represent it in a way that lives up to the vividness of the mental representation. As for the result, all that matters to the artist is the degree to which he was able to express what he intended to express, in other words, whether or not he was faithful to the idea—which ultimately represents whether or not he was faithful to himself.
There Is, in Fact, a Satisfaction Experienced
There is, in fact, a satisfaction experienced at the end of the painstaking writing of a book that is not limited to the feeling that “it’s finally over”. When one has been on this path for some time, and the vow has been sufficiently justified and affirmed, and one’s spirit has therefore moved away from the excitement of novelty and testing, each piece of work that comes to fruition is a step forward towards the primary objective that motivated the decision to write. When the decision was deliberate, it was only a glimpse of the possible results which, gradually, with each piece of writing, finally materialize and make the initial plan a reality. In this way, one experiences the “finally”, but one also experiences the feeling that one has fantasized less.
The Beginning
It seems that the outcome of any artistic project is fundamentally dependent on the enthusiasm and vigor with which it is started. The spirit with which this start is imbued is decisive. For a bad or weak start, there is not much to be done, while a vigorous start can be extended by manual labor and simple discipline. That is why it is so important to do the ideation separately, at a time that precedes the execution. In this way, one can take advantage of the unsurpassable stimulus of those moments when the idea is ready and seems to explode.