Oi Paulo,
I once read that in working with Raul Seixas, you said he taught you how to write about complicated and important subjects in simple ways. What were the specific lessons and techniques that you took from that?
Basically I learnt that the first draft – is the final draft! This means that if you feel that in order to write something you need to be constantly re-read and re-edit, this means you didn’t get it right in the first place.
He also tought me to not only go to the essential but also depart from more baroque ideas so that the message can pass in a crystal clear way.
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Thank you for your advices once again.
:)
“l’automne dernier j’ai brule six toiles avec les feuilles mortes de mon jardin. C’est assez pour vous faire perdre tout espoir. Cependant je ne voudrais pas mourir sans avoir dit tout ce que j’ai a dire. Et mes jours sont comptes…. Demain qui sait….”C.Monet
“Last Autumn I burned six paintings with the dead leaves from my garden.It is enough to make you loose hope. Yet I would not want to die without having said everything I have to say. And my days are numbered..- who knows what to-morrow will bring …-” C.Monet
Sheela,
I love that the “demon of doubt”.
Paulo,
Thanks for the elegant reply to my question.
Melle
oh ny G-d u r just un real!!! (lol) u r real!!!!!!
i wish i could meet with u one day face to face!!! U R A M A Z I N G!!!
lots of love
Orly
Thank you, Paulo, for the useful advice. But techniques aside, you are gifted. I believe that the very best writing, art, music etc. is inspired by God or love (synonymous, really.)
With love,
Diane
Eyh thats cool:)
Thank you for your advices once again.
:)
To Lakonizein Esti Filosofein. (Το λακωνίζειν εστί φιλοσοφείν). Being able to express many things with just a few words is philosophy. …
This is a quote we were taught at school about the Spartans and their way of life in ancient Greece.
The crystallization of ideas and express them in just a few words. Epigrammatic.
LOVE,
Thelma.
Words, words simple and the Word becomes verb (because it acts; it becomes and lives by the action which it engenders)
That the love becomes strength, that the energy of the love brings to the world the eternity of his love
What wonderful advice, as so precisely the opposite of what has been pounded into my head by various professors whose motto was: “The REAL writing begins AFTER the first draft,” otherwise stated: “EDIT, EDIT, and EDIT again.” Some of them, I think, should have become editors, in fact, rather than creative writing professors.
For me, personally, there is no better way to kill a good piece of writing than to start ripping it to shreds, tearing it limb from limb, hacking it into pieces. I’m not lazy. I’m willing to do the work, but I’d almost rather throw the whole thing away – no matter how many pages it may be – than to go at it with a machete in hand and start whacking at it, deleting or moving around large pieces, making monumental changes.
I once read about a very famous writer who wrote these colossal works – I think it was Tolstoy, or otherwise James Joyce – whose motto was essentially the same: “if you feel that in order to write something you need to constantly re-read and re-edit, this means you didn’t get it right in the first place.” As a consequence, he took one of his largest novels – the entire first draft – and threw it in the trash can. Then he started over from the beginning and re-wrote the entire thing, without ever looking back at what he had written the first time around. He said that, in this method, only what worked the first time around would stick in his brain and be used again. What didn’t work would be forgotten and fall away. So, when he saw major problems with something he had written, rather then re-writing and editing it to death, he simply threw it out and started over again until he got it right.
For some people, extensive editing might be fun and even useful, but, as for me, I’ve only found that it beats the life out of a piece of work quicker than anything else. Similarly, it beats all the inspiration out of me, as a writer, as well.
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