Tag: writing

In literature, it is after having invested hours and hours of effort over many years that one reaches the ideal level of commitment. Before that, one is driven more by a motivation that, however great or small, if it ceases, will interrupt the development of the vocation. After this stage, the writer is always faced with a monstrous work that has already been completed. There is no turning back, what is done is done, and what is needed is simply to carry on.

The relationship between some writers and their illness is difficult to explain. A normal person, without the slightest discomfort, can find all the excuses he needs not to write. If he suffers from an illness, there is nothing to say. So we see not one, not two, but many writers who have not only persevered with their illness for months, years or a lifetime, but who have made the illness itself a source of motivation. This is no small feat, and it is not easy to imagine. There are illnesses that one never gets used to, but it seems that these are the ones that trap you and leave you with no other option.

Some writer once made the wise recommendation: one work at a time. And there is no doubt that concentrating the mind on a single piece of work can only speed it up, intensify it and be of great benefit to creation. But is it possible to stick to this rule? Perhaps with prose. With poetry, however, the situation changes, and when the planned verses exceed a few hundred, the mind seems to beg for an escape valve into which it can pour lines and lines and experience the relief of fluidity. Without this valve, soon the unproductivity, added to the ideas that accumulate in a closed deposit, begin to torture. For the poet, practicing prose seems psychologically essential.

It is characteristic of many authors that they express themselves with restraint, more by suggesting than by actually expressing what they want. In some cases, the suggestion certainly works, and perhaps says more than direct expression could. But this technique, if always employed, results in a vice that harms the author even more than the work. It is a vice that, whenever the verb is born inflamed in the mind, rejects its inflamed expression on paper. And so it is as if the author were forbidden certain ways of speaking. It is not just an obvious limitation, but the deprivation of extremely important artistic experiences: once the writer breaks all ties and forces his spirit to express what he wants with maximum intensity, he will realize that there, in the act of creation, something different has happened; but, above all, he will realize that, by concentrating entirely and sincerely on this, something different always happens.