Football or Blog

Today is a good day to show toughness. Right now, at this time, while the sun is bright and the weather is unbearably hot, soccer quarter finals are beginning. A difficult choice: football (as we call it here) or blog. It is not an easy one… Or, maybe, if I am fast enough to read Tom Monteleone’s Guide, and report my reading on the blog, maybe I could watch part of the first game. Perhaps.

Let’s go to Chapter 2.

Creativity & Talent

Before I read.
Do I have creativity? I think everybody does, although not everybody is conscious of it. For example, I am a translator. I usually get a document in English, authored by someone else who used a lot of creativity and talent. I just have to rewrite the same document in a different language. Do I need creativity for that? My personal answer is ‘Yes’. There are millions of translators, but each one of them would be able to produce a million different translations. Language is not mathematics, words in English don't have an exact correspondence –and only one correspondence—with just one word of the foreign language.

You always have many different ways of saying the same thing. Of course, there are dictionaries, translation software, glossaries, but choices are always there. And that’s where you need creativity.

No hay problema con la creatividad.

Do I have talent?
Did Proust have talent?
I haven’t read Proust for a long time, although I liked the two novels I read. Very much, oh, yes! But not everybody likes Proust: they find his writing snobbish, and difficult, and they can’t understand why there is so little action, and so many words to say easy things. Some people who were forced by teachers to read Proust really hate his novels.

The same applies to a variety of writers because talent is one of the most subjective things around.

Now, let’s read Monteleone’s Guide.

Fear is the Killer

Once, Tom met a Hungarian librarian who had written 26 novels, but never showed them to any publisher. “He admitted he’d always been afraid that the publishers wouldn’t like what he had done… His fear had paralyzed him.”

Creativity is all About Your Ideas

Some ways to develop your creativity:

1. Dreams
Why not? I sometimes have difficulty remembering my dreams but I can do it when I write them down, especially after waking up. They are usually crazy, it is like being in another world, or a movie, and they are comprehensive stories, with environment, feelings, and all the things you experience when seeing a movie or reading a novel.

Tom also mentions Freud, the subconscious, and The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Interpreting Your Dreams.

Tom’s tips: keep a notebook, a pen, or even better, a digital mini-recorder on a nightstand near your bed.

2. Travel
I sometimes keep a travel diary. I find traveling one of the most inspiring activities. It is perfect because you are usually happy to go out, to be in a different environment, with different people, different customs, and different approaches to life.

Tom calls it ‘stimulating’.

3. Other novels
Definitely! I love reading, and my brain gets always activated. Once I read that Simenon, the Belgian thriller author, didn’t read other novels. It is also acceptable. After all, reading takes a lot of time. But I would never quit that enriching part of life, even if I decide I don’t want to write my own books.

4. Your own life
Very common, and always the same, but yes, I am no expert in anything but my life.

Tom says, ironically: “So many people think everyone else would be fascinated by reading their life stories.”

I personally think that it would be more interesting to write fiction, and enrich it with especial moments of your life.

5. Mythology and history
Definitely! I studied astrology for one year, and we saw a lot of mythology. I am a Gemini, which is the sign of Hermes/Mercury, and find that their features are somehow present in me. Mythology is not a dead thing told in death languages, it is very current, and an infinite source of stories: heroes, dreams of glory, deception, and murder. Not only Greco-Roman mythology but also the mythologies of other cultures are great sources of inspiration.

Tom says: “Many myths are instructive tales of morality or caution…”

History? Of course. One of the best novels I have read is Erik Larson’s The Devil in the White City, a historical novel about the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair, and a serial killer, who lived 16 blocks away from the fair.

What about Napoleon’s assassination? Who was the killer? Was it an assassination or Napoleon died of an ulcer?

What about all the unsolved mysteries of history? Many of them cannot be proven but that is good because we can fantasize, and make up our own theory.

Tom says: “In many cases, you’ll discover that truth is far stranger than fiction…”

(By the way, there is a typo in Tom’s Guide. The 1967 historical Pulitzer Prize winning novel by William Styron is not called Confessions of Matt Turner, but rather Confessions of Nat Turner. I must confess I haven’t read it, I just browsed the web to get the info.)

6. Brainstorms
Yes, other people can have interesting ideas they are not willing to develop. Why not develop them?

Tom used to be “part of a writers’ group that would meet on a fairly regular basis and brainstorm ideas for stories and books… it didn’t matter if 95% of the stuff everybody came up with was bilge… as long as the other 5% was pure gold.”

7. Try new things
Tom’s advice: “Read a book you never imagined reading. Try a new recipe. Talk to someone you would normally ignore.”

Incredibly enough, one of the most inspiring experiences I have had in recent years was taking an English-language class. There was a different topic of conversation every day, from politics, to the economy, to science-fiction, to TV series. We also had to give expositions, and for that you had to read. I discovered the books of Oliver Sacks –now one of my favorite writers—an extraordinary book by Mark Nelson and Sarah Hudson Bayliss, Exquisite Corpse: Surrealism and the Black Dahlia Murder (Bulfinch, 2006), and read classics like Brave New World and 1984 I always had wished I could read. Not to mention the grammar and vocabulary exercises, compositions, corrections, and tests.

I also have to mention yogic meditation. Even if the goal of meditation is getting away from thoughts, the mind will never stop thinking –and if it does, you will get a hell of an experience. This is my opportunity to say that my next novel will start with a meditation experience I had in a quiet ashram, many years ago. But instead of just talking about my life –who cares?—my novel character will get the experience, and then die.

Now I fear I will become crazy if I unleash all the ideas fluttering around my mind!


Talent: Putting Your Ideas to Work

Tom says: “Trust your instincts and see where they take you.”
“The good news is this: Your talent can be sharpened and improved… with practice, practice, practice.”

Erica Jong: “Everyone has talent. What is rare is the courage to follow the talent to the dark place where it leads.”

I say: It could also lead to enlightenment, uh?

Ways to Stay Ahead of the Curve

1. Keep a journal
It’s almost the only thing I have written –except for my translation work and school assignments. It is really enjoyable. I remember once, when I left my first wife and my children, and was living dreadful times, alone, in another city where I didn’t know anyone, feeling really depressed, my diary was my only therapy. It was magic: I used to write only a few words to describe my feelings, and suddenly the sadness, loneliness, depression, and stress where gone. Not to mention, this diary was the main source for my first, only, and never published novel.

2. Carry a notepad
I used to do that when I was a teenager, and decided to become a writer. But I just collected them, I never used them to create anything. As I said before, I have always been afraid of my own potential. I have been a paralyzed writer.

Nevertheless, it was a good practice, because the world changes when you start writing about it, and you get used to writing and describing your environment. My mother must have them somewhere in the bunch of papers she never throws away. I should ask her, and see if those notepads contain interesting ideas.

3. Idea boosters
Books, games, software, the web, movies, theater, poetry, songs. You name it.

4. Music
I used to sit alone in my parent’s house, and listen for long periods to Beethoven, Mozart, Chopin, Brahms, Mahler, and I imagined stories. Music can be inspiring.

5. New stuff
Tom says: “Don’t let your life get into a rut. Make room for new experiences.”

6. Read more carefully
Tom says: “You need to learn how to read with writer’s eyes.”