Chapter 1
THE MAGIC OF STORYTELLING
"The true alchemists do not change lead into gold, they change the world into words" — WILLIAM H. GASS
Writing has defined me. It is the framework through which I experience everything. It’s the lens through which I examine my presence in the world. With this in mind, I recently put aside other pending projects and started to think about the nature of storytelling. My books are my only contribution; each one is an offering that I prepare with great care hoping that it will be well received. Because of this, as I approach the end of my life, it seems important to write about … writing.
Reflecting on this subject is not difficult. Extracting universals from my work is, however. But I have been urged in this book to not just chronicle my own journey as a writer, but try to pass along what I learned that might help others. So, this is an invitation to explore this craft to which I have dedicated my life. Some of you may be interested in literature in general, others may look for advice. I hope the former with be entertained by my adventures as a writer, and the latter will lose the fear of the blank screen and allow joy to nurture their inspiration.
Literature is magical: conjuring up a story is a mysterious process. It is organic, instinctive. To write I have to enter a dimension of dreams, intuition, premonition; I have to surrender, let the characters do what they must and allow the tale to tell itself. I spend most of my life in silence and alone, like a monk in his cell. Writing is like meditating. In solitude I remember, I hear voices and see things. The quieter I am, the more I can hear and see. In the silence of writing sometimes I am visited by spirits - or, are they the muses? - I feel them like a slight touch on the nape of the neck. Writing I transform into a medium.
From the beginning of my writing life I was fortunate to have a mother who read my work. She was a tough critic. She belonged to a generation that practiced the art of writing in beautiful calligraphy, with correct grammar and spelling, and elevated language. She and I also wrote letters to each other every day for most of our lives. Many of her letters are six or more handwritten pages with not a single correction, every sentence is perfect. Our fanatic correspondence was not the common parlance of today’s communication. Now the world is visual; people use brief, terse messages, getting straight to the point. I try to remember my mother when I write; she cared about the choice of words, she wanted elegance, originality, irony. How I miss her red pencil!
After almost half a century writing fiction I have learned a few things about myself because each book is a journey into memory and the soul, an exercise in introspection. Now I know my limitations and I forgive more easily my mistakes because I have a certain fondness for my old defects. Age has not made me wiser or calmer, it has not made me more amenable or less prone to fall in love, but it has given me a quiet happiness when I least expected it. I am not afraid of pain because I am stronger than I look, or death because I have seen it up close. It is not a skeleton with a scythe but a kind lady who smells of gardenias. I only fear the moment when I will not be able to write anymore.
I have very little control over whatever happens to me, - I have finally accepted this - so I have relaxed and live day by day. That gives me a freedom I didn’t have when I was younger. I like the life I have had, and I only regret the pain that I may have caused to others. If I could start again, I would travel more or less the same road and I would certainly fight the same battles, especially those against the patriarchy. They have been a lot of fun! But I would try to start writing earlier.
It helps to have a twisted mind
Writing is not an option for me, it’s an addiction. I could phrase it more eloquently and say that it’s an attempt to make sense of the confusion of life and to preserve memory, but the truth is that if I don’t write, my soul would shrivel. That’s why I have written so many books; I can’t stop. Along the roads I have traveled, memories are left behind and in time they disappear; what I don’t write is blown away by the wind.
The remote past is my sacred place of inspiration: the house of my grandparents where I grew up, the Spanish language with the Chilean accent of my childhood, the extraordinary women who raised me, my clairvoyant grandmother, my mother with her fierce love and her bright mind, the old nannies with whom I listened to radio soap operas in the kitchen. My childhood was not a happy one, it was a time of insecurity and fear, as it is for most children in the world, but I had the fabulous refuge of books.
My mother’s bachelor brothers also lived under my grandparents’ roof. Tío Pablo was a book worm, he collected books, and I remember him always reading, even at the table. He taught me to read very early on and gave me my first book: Scandinavian fairy tales, snow and ice. My other uncle, Tío Marcos, had a lot of fun torturing my brothers and me with “rough games”, as he called them. For example, he would hang me upside down over the toilet and threaten to flush me.
I go back to those years over and over. I am hiding under the stairs of that large, somber and drafty house, reading. My mother is suffering one of her terrible migraines and I am by her side praying that God will alleviate her pain. It’s a dark night and the Devil is in the wardrobe’s mirror watching me. What fabulous material! I wonder how those authors who had a happy childhood can write at all.
In the 1960s, as a journalist, I discovered the power of the written word with my colleagues and I learned that writing is not an end in itself, it’s a means of communication. I have never forgotten it. I don’t write for myself, I write for my readers. My books don’t happen in my mind, they grow in the belly; I don’t choose the themes, they choose me. I believe that the stories and the characters exist in another dimension, where they wait for someone to come along and bring them into the world.
I have had a destiny worthy of a novel, and I have lived it without fear of taking risks, which has given me enough experiences to inspire me forever. In general, life has some bright moments and others very dark, but the time in between is grey, and it leaves no mark. Fortunately, I have had a lot of good and bad: unexpected success and much love, also death, losses, separations and tears, and very little of that grey in between. I can’t complain, all this is the salt of my existence and the raw material for my books. In a novel every action has consequences, everything is interconnected, nothing is casual, circles close, there’s a beginning and ending. In real life there’s mostly disarray and confusion, but I have lived long enough to accept those with good humor. When I think of my past I do it with a smile and in hyperbolic terms.
When my three grandchildren were young, they always saw me working away at the computer or with my nose in a book, and they thought that I was being punished. They couldn’t understand why I didn’t live like normal people and concluded that I have a twisted mind. Needless to say, I never was a conventional grandmother, I didn’t bake cookies or knit socks but I did tell them stories. I would ask them for a story ingredient and each one would propose something as incongruous as possible to challenge me, like a mermaid, a camera and a mushroom. Then my task was to deliver - in ten seconds or less - a tale that would contain those three elements.
I would go the archive of possible plots that I had in my brain, shuffle them in an instant and produce a poisonous mushroom that grows on the shores of the Sea of Pirates and reduces the size of everything it touches. A tourist is asleep on the sand when his camera brushes against the mushroom and it immediately shrinks to the size of a flea. A mermaid - and we know that mermaids are so tiny that they are almost invisible - finds the camera and hangs it around her neck. In that very moment the tourist gives a fearful and big yawn and swallows the mermaid. The rest of the tale is predictable: the little mermaid starts a dangerous journey inside the man’s digestive system photographing polyps, ulcers, chewed food, gastric acid, gallbladder, intestine, colon and finally comes out into the light through the other end, dreadfully smeared. She hurries to reach the sea to wash herself.
My grandchildren have grown up, their studies have taken them to faraway places, and they have built their own lives. But they have not forgotten the little mermaid in the poop and other disgusting or bloodcurdling tales.
When telling stories for adults, I like nothing better than putting together a plot picking up two or three people, themes or events that are floating somewhere, connecting them and giving them meaning. Writing is my passion. I write because I love it and it’s the only thing I know how to do. I want to know what happened, to whom, why and where. I want to preserve each human story, tell it and retell it.
The incalculable power of storytelling
Frederick Nietzsche said that with a sheet of paper and something to write with, he could turn the world upside down. Perhaps he was a bit grandiose, but he was aware of the power of the narrative. Stories play a fundamental role in our lives and in society. They shape our reality, they define us as individuals, who we are, what we do, how we relate to each other, the idea we have of ourselves and that others have of us.
History is a tale that we have agreed to consider truthful. Each country, each human group has its own narrative that defines and drives it, explains its origins, provides unity, character and a sense of identity. These powerful narratives can determine the course of a nation, lead to war, influence the economy and the law. Religions are stories of chosen people, divine messages, exclusion: us and others. All empires create their heroic history: the messianic duty of imposing their ideas and way of life on others, of civilizing inferior people, but they tend to leave out the economic reasons, the exploitation and the violence. The narrative of a superior white race justified slavery; nazi ideology caused the holocaust. The theory (or the fable in this case) that immigrants and refugees are replacing the whites of European descent feeds hatred, violence and racism in many western nations. Populist leaders rely on their capacity to manipulate negative emotions like fear, resentment and revenge, to mobilize the masses with a story of justice. True or false doesn’t matter. The narrative prevails.
According to the late Willie Gordon, my second husband, a trial lawyer must be a good storyteller. Every case is a story, and every client is a character in that story. When Willie went to court, he knew that to convince the jurors, facts and proof were not enough, he had to seduce them with an irresistible tale. His eloquence had to be controlled and measured so as not to appear arrogant and annoy the judge, whose favor he also had to gain. The lawyer/narrator has great power. The judge’s sentence could be mild or severe, and sometimes the lawyer’s ability was even the difference between life or death.
We may conclude that those who define the narrative or tell the story have the power. This is obvious in politics, in the media and many other aspects of society, like art. Movies, for example, decisively influence the idea Americans have of themselves and the world has of Americans. With a few exceptions, literature doesn’t have that kind of power because it has a more limited reach. Millions of people watch a movie, but relatively few read books. Today social media contributes immensely to the common narrative telling fleeting stories that vary day by day.
To change the actions of a group, the narrative needs to change. This is also the case at a personal level. We have created a story about ourselves, we believe it to be true, we repeat it and polish it, it guides our behavior and determines how we perceive the world and our place in it.
I have had to start from scratch a few times in my long journey and each time I have adjusted the narrative. I introduce myself, I explain who I am, and a new self comes into existence. That narrative gives coherence to the person I am. However, the fact that I choose how to tell it, which facts to highlight and which to omit is a form of fiction. How much is true and how much have I invented? I have been in therapy several times and the way I tell my story to the therapist has changed over time. For one thing, I no longer focus only on the darkness. I want light. By simply selecting the right adjectives to tell my past, I have created a positive narrative, in spite many losses and sorrows.
I often get emails from readers who share their unhappy and complicated lives with me. They want advice. In some cases, I want to tell them to start by giving a positive spin to their story, but that requires awareness, determination and help. It’s hard to do it alone. Other readers tell me that my books have given them courage. I think that those people find in my pages what they already have in them but have not articulated yet. That has happened to me a few times, as it did in my youth when I read The Female Eunuch by Germain Greer. I thought the author had changed my life, but in truth she just gave me a language and good arguments to express what I had felt since my childhood. Greer’s book helped me to change the narrative. I could channel my rage against male authority into a lifetime of proud feminism.
I never intend to embed a message into a novel because that would ruin it, I reserve that for nonfiction and for public speaking. I don’t need to pound feminist ideology into my readers, my strong female characters are enough, neither do I need to explain my political or philosophical views because anyone can guess them as they read between the lines. In a novel I simply want to tell a story that interests or moves me. Maybe in this sharing lies the power of fiction: it brings us together.
A good novel can make us think about something that we had never contemplated before, pique our curiosity, change our opinions, defeat deeply rooted prejudices, allow us to live many other lives. Uncle Tom’s Cabin, by Harriet Beecher Stowe, published in 1852, had more impact on the antislavery struggle than the abolitionist movements. The tragic fate of Tom, a fictional character, shook the conscience of the country. For millions of readers slavery was no longer an abstract issue, it became a shameful and horrible reality, the mortal sin of the nation. Did the author ever imagine how large the impact of her book would be? Probably not. A novel has a life of its own and the author cannot control how it is going to be received. I think of it as a note in a bottle thrown in the ocean. Which shores will it reach? Who might find the bottle and read the note?
The essential themes of love and pain, which are always present in literature, are common to all of us. Literature helps us understand that the similarities that bring us together are many more than the differences than pull us apart. Maybe if we read more there would be less mistrust in the world and we could get along better.
They say that fiction is in danger of extinction. I don’t believe that. Today more people read fiction than ever before. It is possible that the form will change; nowadays stories are published in digital and audio, they are adapted for movies, television and theater. Maybe in the near future we will have a chip implanted behind our ears and we will be able to absorb a book in a few hours while we sleep. The form is not relevant; the content will always exist. We need stories, that’s why I love so much this craft of the raconteur.
The impetus for this book on writing originated in the summer of 2024 when the BBC asked me to film a Maestro Course - with the intriguing title of Magical Storytelling - that people could view online. I spent five days in front of several cameras trying to give some order to my process. I am sure that there are as many methods are there are writers, but I have learned with practice and with a camel’s tenacity only. Word by word, one error after another, year in year out and a lot of coffee.
My mind has no structure, it’s like a bowl of spaghetti, but the BBC team asked me to distill my chaotic approach into twenty lessons. That forced me to think about the subject of each one. It was an excellent exercise for me and hopefully it will help some aspiring writers. In those five intense days I discovered that there is an instinctive logic in my madness and that it can be explained. I mean my writing, not necessarily my madness.
SOME SUGGESTIONS
This first chapter is an introduction to the joy of storytelling. I once heard Elizabeth Gilbert say that we should not expect our writing to give us money or fame. We write because we love the process. I would add that we should not expect to publish either. Just do it.
The narrative defines reality for better or worse. There’s power in the written word, but it’s better not to think about that because it will scare you.
That said, very few works of fiction can bring about real change. You cannot control the impact your book will have, if any.
I get hundreds of requests from readers who want to write a novel “to help others”. Don’t focus on that. Just tell the story. Save the message for non-fiction.
If you don’t know where to start, I suggest that you write about what you know. Family, your own life, your town. Begin with well-known territory.
Relax. Enjoy the process. Imagine that writing is like dancing, go with the flow, loosen up. It’s not like lifting weights at the gym. The trick is less effort and more pleasure into it.