THE WRITING PROCESS (original) (raw)

Translated by Heather Dashner Some of the most common questions my students and readers ask me are: Does inspiration exist? How is a writer trained? How does the creative process in writing happen? What do you recommend us to start writing? And although these might seem to be very simple questions, the four are interlinked and have differing degrees of difficulty, since each can be answered in different ways. About Inspiration In classical antiquity, it was believed that writers-and artists in general-were inspired by the Muses, the nine Greek goddesses who breathed life into art. They were referred to under the generic name of "Mneidae," which means "remembrance." The daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne, each was related to one or several art forms and fields of knowledge: the greatest of all was 2 Calliope, the muse of epic poetry and eloquence; she was followed by Clio, the muse of history and also epic poetry; then came Erato, the muse of love poetry; the fourth was Euterpe, muse of music and, in particular, the art of flute playing; the fifth, Melpomene, was the muse of theater; the sixth, Polyhymnia, who invented the lyre and harmony, was the muse of music and dance, as well as geometry and rhetoric; the seventh, Talia, was the muse of comedy and bucolic or pastoral poetry; the eighth, Terpsichore, was the muse of light poetry and dance; and the ninth, Urania, was the muse of astronomy and astrology. According to the Greeks and Romans, the nine helped poets and artists by providing divine inspiration and ordering their thoughts in different creative ways. This is why it was even common that at the beginning of a composition, the aoidos, or bard, would invoke the Muses or Mneiae, asking them to narrate or sing. Theogony, by the Boeotian aoidos Hesiod (7 th century BC), consists of a long genealogy of the Greek gods from the beginning of time. In 1022 verses, he describes the muses as unequalled singers of soft, lily-like voices and petalsoft feet, who, "on Mount Helicon, high and holy,/. .. begin their choral dance on Helicon's summit./ So lovely it pangs, and with power in their steps/ Ascend veiled and misted/… Treading the night, and in a voice beyond beauty/ They chant:/ Zeus Aegisholder and his lady Hera of Argos,/ … And the Aegisholder's girl, owl-eyed Athena,/ And Phoibos Apollo and arrowy Artemis,/ Poseidon Any self-respecting noble in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance was not only skilled in arms, horseback riding, and hunting, but also in the art of composing ballads, that is, in writing verses and composing for and playing a musical instrument. Alfonso X, for example, in addition to fulfilling his functions as monarch, was a composer and promotor of the arts; that is why he was called "Alfonso the Wise." And numerous lay poets belonged to or served the nobility mastered the minor arts, or even the fine arts, such as the troubadour