Writing about writing. Literary reflections on Book Day

At Book Day I write about writing. Are a few reflections after almost a whole life putting words together since I learned to do it to tell myself and tell stories. Reasons or excuses, or just fun. And always in loneliness o abstraction, riding a silence usually, or in darkness. These are my reasons. You may share them with colleagues, even if they are unique and non-transferable.

Learning to write

The photos in the header of this article show the evolution of my handwriting and my preferred printing fonts. Also the beginnings of some of my stories. The first, school storytelling exercises riddled with spelling mistakes.

Later that letter is stylized and variegated in teenage stories. And finally, the letters become keys and the stories and the stories become novels. Two have already been published, one through an editorial and the other through self-publication. Because I have also learned to give them physical form from books.

And why do we write that we write? Conclusion as many reasons as writers and surely we all share them. O maybe there isn't really any. Only the pleasure or the horror of creating a story, a universe and lives that you don't know how you are going to get out of or where they are going to take you. As much as you pull the strings. The point is also that we do not stop learning how to do it.

Need

There is always a story out there or deep inside. Sometimes an image gives them to you (it has happened to me more than once), sometimes a song (it has also been my case), or a detail of the reality you live. Good, bad or average. There is also a personal situation certain or others that you need to analyze, understand or interpret. The realityAnyway, it always surpasses fiction and we tend to want to explain it to ourselves. Or to vary it to our liking and way.

There is also a need for expression for those, like me, who are much less adept at words with sound. And there is also a widespread belief about alleged abilities of a writer to face or deal with new real situations. You haven't experienced them but have been able to recreate them, so you may be able to manage them more easily. But I only admit that it is possible, not that it is true.

Freedom and power

That makes it possible to do it with absolute freedom to use any tool. Or be whoever you want. And the best: play to be a god with the power to give and take lives in any real or fantastic universe. Even more. The set includes all changes in personality, age, sex, condition, nationality, language, and color of skin. There are also no restrictions. As the god that you are, you can also decide to be a demon. And nothing happens.

There is no censorship and there is no political correctness. The poets, whom I admire and venerate as masters of the combination of words, they move them creating figures, rotating them and endowing them with an exceptional beauty. Those of us who are more prosaic and we tell the same stories at a different pace, we also enjoy that privilege. And we take advantage of it, if only in fiction.

One case: those of us who are fond of Novelty We have wondered many times how this or that author can devise so many evils, atrocities and other scoundrels typical of the most ruthless psychopath. But it's just a matter of playing with basic and universal emotions and feelings of human nature, the best and the worst.

There are also many cases of writers saved from their own lives thanks to literature. Not only for the success they have achieved, but for the real salvation by avoiding having finished them in the worst way. You just have to read, for example, My dark cornersby James Ellroy.

Creation challenges

That freedom and power also allow us to get into gardens that can sometimes be very thick. So we looked for guides. It is where the famous question arises: Do we need to have the experiences we write about? Obviously not. And obviously also if we have them, we can tell them first-hand. But the point is that perhaps, if we use them, we will not do it as we really lived them in their day.

Time is a great ally. Gives nuance and perspective. Especially if it is past. For those of us who do not offer us a more particular interest than living it in the best possible way, last it is a whole universe in itself. It can reimagine and recreate, even invent from their scaffolding. The same as he future, much larger to create and imagine. To write it and maybe to get it right.

All of these challenges can help find the narrative voice. Not long ago someone who wants to start writing asked me. But I am nobody to guide or give advice. Each one is different and I only suggested the most basic: "write about what you want, what you like, and try voices." There's no more. They can also teach you, train you, but first you have to try for yourself even if you blur a thousand papers. And above all you have to keep reading. Are those favorite readings and genres those that also mark content and style for you.

Write just because

Simply. No reasons. Just for the sake of doing it. Hitting keys or sliding a pencil or pen across your fingers on a blank, electronic, or paper canvas. Sometimes it's a single phrase from an idea caught on the fly or from a thought that we may use for that story or poem. And sometimes yeah it's that inspiration that appears when least expected. Others may be the famous stream of consciousness, what do the Saxons say, that stream of consciousness or psychonarration where thoughts flow without apparent control.

But always, always, alone or in abstraction. Of time and space. Of our self. To get out of it or to transform it or divide it by a thousand. Because we like to write.