The Art of Writing

As the saying goes, no one is born knowing everything, but we do know at least one thing when we are born. Our gift.  Whichever it will be the point in our lives that we will be able to discover and develop it.

     I believe writing is a gift, a vocation, that we have since we are little, such as painting or singing. What happens with gifts is that we are able to develop them, improve them with time. But if one does not have a specific gift when he/she is born _ and everybody has one or more of them _ it can’t be created, fabricated. When we try to do that, the result sounds false, artificial, or, at most, sufferable.

       There is a difference between having a gift and the capacity to learn countless things. The human being has a huge capacity of learning, even things he doesn’t think he’s capable of. And, in certain areas, when one “learns” a specific thing and succeeds it is because he/she already had the gift for that without realizing it yet.

     Writing is a gift that usually manifests itself still in childhood, through the easiness in writing essays for school, diaries and texts in general. Writing is a gift that walks hand in hand with imagination. Imagination is the main raw material of the writer. We can ask a writer to write about practically everything, even the most trivial things, and the words will flow naturally for him/her when composing his/her text.

     So we can’t learn to be a writer? In this case, who are the “writers’ apprentices”?

    One can’t learn to be a writer because writing is an ability connected to the gift. We can’t teach a person to have imagination and inspiration he doesn’t have to express his thoughts and feelings through words. What we can learn is writing techniques, rules of the language, but, for them to bear fruit, they must be supported by an already existing gift. Which means that a person who has the writing gift can improve it with those techniques. This way, the writer apprentice is the one who is already born with the writing gift and aims to improve it. He/she learns with masters, not to imitate them, but to improve his/her own techniques and feel encouraged by them.

    With the due humbleness, I think I have this writing gift. I’ve always had the ability to create texts. Since childhood, I’ve always loved books, and I wanted to be a journalist. Life took me through other paths, but I ended up studying Letters and becoming a translator, always dealing with literature, languages, books. These have always been recurrent themes in my life. Some say a translator, though always faithful to the original text, is a coauthor of a book. And, in fact, it is what happens; the translator has to transcribe the original text to his own language, faithfully, but in a way that is clear and natural to the reader. However, the inspiration and imagination to create and write belonged exclusively to the author.

    Besides the techniques and rules of his language that a writer learns to improve his gift, he also does a lot of research for his books, and also trips. The more experience in life a writer has, the more emotional baggage he possesses, more material he will have to add to his gift.

    Though I think I have a gift to write, I’ve never written a book, which is an old dream. I think I haven’t tried yet to write a book because I can’t see myself creating plots capable of captivating the reader and conduct him to a surprising ending. I believe that, when writing, we have more ability for certain things rather than others. I think I’m more suitable to write nonfiction, and, the day I write a book, it will probably be a self-help book.

Meanwhile, I’ll continue to be a writer’s apprentice in my blog, writing my texts, reading one book after another and learning with the master writers. tj*¬

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