Tag: writing

The commitment not to give up is the beginning and the harbinger of literary work. Without it, what is done does not become a work, but merely something fleeting and equally disposable. It is only this commitment that will sustain the effort when circumstances sabotage it, when the will to write itself fails. It is this that motivates habit, and it is only this that restores normality when habit, violated, transmutes a state of productive inertia into absolute torpor.

It is hard to say, but this frustrated longing for isolation, which has to be accepted as unfeasible and fought over in an apparently hostile daily life, seems more beneficial to the artist than actual, full and consummate isolation. In the first case, we have a spirit energized by circumstance; in the second, an incentive to inertia. In the first case, an effort that renews and justifies the longing, which makes the artist value isolation much more when it is partially achieved—because this is the truth: his longing, at worst, can always be partially achieved, and to better advantage than one might suppose.

The realistic and objective fictional narrative, if held and practiced as a dogma, ends up depriving the writer of this true delight that is style, since, by definition, to be realistic and objective is to adopt, so to speak, an “impersonal style”. But this delight, experienced by the poet, the philosopher, the historian and anyone else who understands the individual element necessary for writing, and without which the work is devoid of a link with reality apprehended in the first person, is also an unparalleled incentive to refine expression. The satisfaction of shaping words is the satisfaction of the freedom to say things as we see fit.

Before becoming an obsession or a futile refinement, focusing on form means respecting the value of what is intended to be expressed. It means not wanting to present it sloppily, but in a way that does it justice. It is therefore a natural concern for anyone who does not have fun throwing words to the wind, but works with matters of real and personal importance.