Here's a photo you haven't seen

qué hace un escritor más que construirse una realidad alternativa para huir de
la presente? (Y en la categoría de escritor incluyo también a las novelistas
inéditas y as periodistas con ínfulas.)

Lucía Etxebarria in "Un milagro en
equilibrio"

This is my favourite writer's take on writing. She says: "What does a writer do apart from constructing an alternative reality to escape the present one? (And in the category of writer I include also the unpublished writers and the pretentious journalists)". (The quote is in Spanish, not Portuguese. We don't use Ys in our language, just so you know ;))

This is the thing about writing that makes me ponder the most. It's also probably the thing that puts the brakes on my creativity. I don't want to feel like I'm running away when I'm writing, but the truth is...it's this escape, this complete freedom and power to write anything you want that makes it so fulfilling and exciting, isn't it?

There was a time in my life when I didn't write fiction. I was really focused on my daily life and writing was about organizing my ideas and feelings, put it all to paper, in hopes that it would give me some solutions. It was about releasing the tension, sharing everything I felt with the notebook and it worked. I always felt better after I wrote. I needed it like exercising. It was also the time when my writing muscle was better - I wrote better than I do now, maybe it was the intense practice.

Fiction is different. Generally it is more pleasant, while journals are necessarily a bit painful. Fiction takes more of my time, as there are constant dialogues in my head until I go to sleep. Most of the ideas appear when I'm busy doing something practical and never when I'm in front of the computer screen. Then I run to write them down.

I'm divided between loving it and cursing it. Between looking at it as a hobby and taking it seriously. Between thinking it's a healthy pleasure and a thing of the devil. ;)