{"id":134152,"date":"2019-03-06T09:00:55","date_gmt":"2019-03-06T14:00:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=134152"},"modified":"2019-03-12T16:28:31","modified_gmt":"2019-03-12T20:28:31","slug":"how-i-began-to-write","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/03\/06\/how-i-began-to-write\/","title":{"rendered":"How I Began to Write"},"content":{"rendered":"

Gabriel Garc\u00eda M\u00e1rquez delivered the following speech at the Athenaeum of Caracas, in Venezuela, on May 3, 1970.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Gabriel Garc\u00eda M\u00e1rquez. Photo: Patrick Curry.<\/p><\/div>\n

First of all, forgive me for speaking to you seated, but the truth is that if I stand, I run the risk of collapsing with fear. Really. I always thought I was fated to spend the most terrible five minutes of my life on a plane, before twenty or thirty people, and not like this, before two hundred friends. Fortunately, what is happening to me right now allows me to begin to speak about my literature, since I was thinking that I began to be a writer in the same way I climbed up on this platform: I was coerced. I confess I did all I could not to attend this assembly: I tried to get sick, I attempted to catch pneumonia, I went to the barber, hoping he\u2019d slit my throat, and, finally, it occurred to me to come here without a\u00a0jacket and tie so they wouldn\u2019t let me into a meeting as serious as this one, but I forgot I was in Venezuela, where you can go anywhere in shirtsleeves. The result: here I am, and I don\u2019t know where to start. But I can tell you, for example, how I began to write.<\/p>\n

It had never occurred to me that I could be a writer, but in my student days Eduardo Zalamea Borda, editor of the literary supplement of El Espectador<\/em>, in Bogot\u00e1, published a note in which he said that the younger generation of writers had nothing to offer, that a new short-story writer, a new novelist, could not be seen anywhere. And he concluded by declaring that he was often reproached because his paper published only the very well-known names of old writers and nothing by the young, whereas the truth, he said, was that no young people were writing.<\/p>\n

Then a feeling of solidarity with my generational companions arose in me, and I resolved to write a story simply to shut the mouth of Eduardo Zalamea Borda, who was my great friend or, at least, became my great friend later. I sat down, wrote the story, and sent it to El Espectador<\/em>. I had my second shock the following Sunday when I opened the paper and
\nthere was my full-page story with a note in which Eduardo Zalamea Borda acknowledged that he had been wrong, because obviously with \u201cthat story the genius of Colombian literature had emerged,\u201d or something along those lines.\u00a0<\/p>\n

This time I really did get sick, and I said to myself: \u201cWhat a mess I\u2019ve got myself into! What do I do now so Eduardo Zalamea Borda won\u2019t look bad?\u201d Keep on writing was the answer. I always had to face the problem of subjects: I was obliged to find the story before I could write it.<\/p>\n

And this allows me to tell you something that I can verify now, after having published five books: the job of writer is perhaps the only one that becomes more difficult the more you do it. The ease with which I sat down one afternoon to write that story can\u2019t be compared to the work it costs me now to write a page. As for my method of working, it\u2019s fairly consistent with what I\u2019m telling you now. I never know how much I\u2019ll be able to write or what I\u2019m going to write about. I hope I\u2019ll think of something, and when I do come up with an idea that I consider good enough to write down, I begin to go over it in my mind and let it keep maturing. When it\u2019s finished (and sometimes many years go by, as in the case of\u00a0One Hundred Years of Solitude<\/em>, which I thought over for nineteen years)\u2014I repeat, when it\u2019s finished\u2014then I sit down to write it, and that\u2019s when the most difficult part begins, and the part that bores me most. Because the most delicious part of a story is thinking about it, rounding it out, turning it over and over, so that when the time comes to sit down and write it, it doesn\u2019t interest you very much, or at least it doesn\u2019t interest me very much, the idea that\u2019s been turned over and over.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m going to tell you, for example, about the idea that has been turning over and over in my mind for several years, and I suspect I have it pretty rounded out by now. I\u2019ll tell it to you because there\u2019s no doubt that when I write it, I don\u2019t know when, you\u2019ll find it completely changed and be able to observe how it evolved. Imagine a very small village where there\u2019s an old woman who has two children, a boy seventeen and a girl not yet fourteen. She\u2019s serving her children breakfast with a very worried look on her face. Her children ask what\u2019s wrong and she replies: \u201cI don\u2019t know, but I woke up thinking that something very serious is going to happen in this village.\u201d<\/p>\n

They laugh at her and say those are an old woman\u2019s misgivings, just something that will pass. The boy goes out to play billiards, and as he\u2019s about to shoot a very simple cannon, his opponent says: \u201cI\u2019ll bet you a peso you can\u2019t make the shot.\u201d Everybody laughs, he laughs, takes his shot, and doesn\u2019t make it. He gives a peso to his opponent, who asks: \u201cBut what happened? It was a really simple cannon.\u201d He says: \u201cIt was, but I\u2019m worried about something my mother said this morning about something serious that\u2019s going to happen in this village.\u201d Everybody laughs at him, and the one who won the peso goes home, where he finds his mother and a cousin or a niece, or some female relative. Happy about his peso, he says: \u201cI won this peso from D\u00e1maso in the simplest way because he\u2019s a fool.\u201d \u201cAnd why is he a fool?\u201d He says: \u201cOh man, he couldn\u2019t make a really simple cannon shot because he was worried about his mother waking up today with the idea that something very serious is going to happen in this village.\u201d<\/p>\n

Then his mother says: \u201cDon\u2019t make fun of old people\u2019s misgivings, because sometimes they come true.\u201d The relative hears this and goes out to buy meat. She says to the butcher: \u201cGive me a pound of meat,\u201d and\u00a0just as he\u2019s cutting it, she adds: \u201cBetter make it two, because people are saying that something serious is going to happen and it\u2019s best to be prepared.\u201d The butcher hands her the meat and, when another woman comes in to buy a pound of meat, he says: \u201cTake two, because people are coming in and saying that something very serious is going to happen and they\u2019re preparing for it, buying things.\u201d<\/p>\n

Then the old woman replies: \u201cI have several children; look, better give me four pounds.\u201d She takes her four pounds and, to make a long story short, I\u2019ll say that in half an hour the butcher sells all his meat, slaughters another cow, sells all of that, and the rumor spreads. The moment arrives when everybody in the village is waiting for something to happen. Activities grind to a halt and, suddenly, at two in the afternoon, it\u2019s as hot as it always is. Someone says: \u201cHave you noticed how hot it is?\u201d \u201cBut in this village it\u2019s always hot.\u201d So hot that it\u2019s a village where all the musicians had instruments repaired with tar and always played in the shade, because if they played in the sun the instruments fell apart. \u201cStill,\u201d one person says, \u201cit\u2019s never been so hot at this time of day.\u201d \u201cYes, but not as hot as it is now.\u201d And, without warning, a\u00a0little bird flies down into the deserted village, the deserted square, and the news spreads: \u201cThere\u2019s a little bird in the square.\u201d Everybody goes to the square and is frightened when they see the little bird.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut, my friends, there have always been little birds that fly down.\u201d \u201cYes, but never at this time of day.\u201d It is a moment of such tension for the inhabitants of the village that they are all desperate to leave but lack the courage to go. \u201cWell, I\u2019m a real man,\u201d one of them shouts, \u201cand I\u2019m leaving.\u201d He gets his furniture, his children, his animals, puts them in a cart, and crosses the main street, where the poor villagers are watching him. Until the moment when they say: \u201cIf he has the courage to leave, well, we\u2019re leaving too,\u201d and begin literally to dismantle the village. They take away things, animals, everything. And one of the last to abandon the village says: \u201cLet no misfortune fall on what remains of our house,\u201d and then he burns his house and others burn other houses. They flee in a real and terrible panic, like an exodus in wartime, and among them is the woman who had the misgiving, crying out: \u201cI said something very serious was going to happen, and you told me I was crazy.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2014Translated from the Spanish by Edith Grossman<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Gabriel Garc\u00eda M\u00e1rquez was born in Colombia in 1927. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1982. He is the author of many works of fiction and nonfiction, including <\/em>One Hundred Years of Solitude, <\/em>Love in the Time of Cholera, <\/em>The Autumn of the Patriarch, <\/em>The General in His Labyrinth, and <\/em>News of a Kidnapping. He died in 2014. Read his Art of Fiction interview<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Edith Grossman, the winner of a number of translating awards, most notably the 2006 PEN<\/small>\/Ralph Manheim Medal, is the distinguished translator of works by major Spanish-language authors, including Gabriel Garc\u00eda M\u00e1rquez, Mario Vargas Llosa, Mayra Montero, and Alvaro Mutis, as well as Carlos Fuentes. Her translation of Miguel de Cervantes\u2019s <\/em>Don Quixote was published to great acclaim in 2003.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>From <\/em>I\u2019m Not Here to Give a Speech<\/a>, by Gabriel Garc\u00eda M\u00e1rquez. Copyright \u00a9 2010 by Gabriel Garc\u00eda M\u00e1rquez. Translation copyright \u00a9 2014 by Edith Grossman. Reprinted by permission of Vintage Books, an imprint of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Eduardo Zalamea Borda claimed that the younger generation of writers had nothing to offer. Gabriel Garc\u00eda M\u00e1rquez set out to prove him wrong.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1706,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[419],"tags":[3071,8740,75],"class_list":["post-134152","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arts-culture","tag-gabriel-garcia-marquez","tag-one-hundred-years-of-solitude","tag-writing"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nHow I Began to Write by Gabriel Garc\u00eda M\u00e1rquez<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Eduardo Zalamea Borda claimed that the younger generation of writers had nothing to offer. 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