Haleth
Sweet dreams
Fiz uma tradução livre do texto original.
Querido escritor:
Apesar de ter sido há milhares de anos que eu sentei para uma aula de redação em Standford, eu me lembro muito claramente dessa experiência. Eu estava com os olhos brolhando e a cabeça fervilhando, pronto para absorver a fórmula secreta de como escrever bons contos, até mesmo contos excelentes. Essa ilusão foi desfeita rapidamente. A única forma de escrever um bom conto, disseram-nos, é escrever um bom conto. Só depois de escrito ele pode ser desmontado para sabermos como foi feito. É a maneira mais difícil, como nos disseram, e a prova está em se ver quão poucos são os bons contos escritos no mundo.
A regra básica que nos deram era simples e desoladora. Para uma história ser eficiente, deveria levar algo do autor para o autor, e a força dessa entrega era a medida da sua excelência. Fora isso, não havia regras. Uma história poderia ser sobre qualquer coisa e poderia usar quaisquer meios e absolutamente qualquer técnica - desde que fosse eficiente. Como subtítulo a essa regra estava a necessidade do autor saber o que ele gostaria de dizer, resumindo, sobre o que ele estava falando. Como exercício nós deveríamos tentar reduzir o conteúdo de nossa história a uma frase, pois só assim a saberíamos suficientemente para aumentá-la para três - ou seis - ou dez mil palavras.
Então lá estava a fórmula mágica, o ingrediente secreto. Com nada além disso, fomos lançados ao desolado e solitário caminho do escritor. E nós
So there went the magic formula, the secret ingredient. With no more than that, we were set on the desolate, lonely path of the writer. And we must have turned in some abysmally bad stories. If I had expected to be discovered in a full bloom of excellence, the grades given my efforts quickly disillusioned me. And if I felt unjustly criticized, the judgments of editors for many years afterward upheld my teacher's side, not mine. The low grades on my college stories were echoed in the rejection slips, in the hundreds of rejection slips.
It seemed unfair. I could read a fine story and could even know how it was done. Why could I not then do it myself? Well, I couldn't, and maybe it's because no two stories dare be alike. Over the years I have written a great many stories and I still don't know how to go about it except to write it and take my chances.
If there is a magic in story writing, and I am convinced there is, no one has ever been able to reduce it to a recipe that can be passed from one person to another. The formula seems to lie solely in the aching urge of the writer to convey something he feels important to the reader. If the writer has that urge, he may sometimes, but by no means always, find the way to do it. You must perceive the excellence that makes a good story good or the errors that makes a bad story. For a bad story is only an ineffective story.
It is not so very hard to judge a story after it is written, but, after many years, to start a story still scares me to death. I will go so far as to say that the writer who not scared is happily unaware of the remote and tantalizing majesty of the medium.
I remember one last piece of advice given me. It was during the exuberance of the rich and frantic '20s, and I was going out into that world to try and to be a writer.
I was told, "It's going to take a long time, and you haven't got any money. Maybe it would be better if you could go to Europe."
"Why?" I asked.
"Because in Europe poverty is a misfortune, but in America it is shameful. I wonder whether or not you can stand the shame of being poor."
It wasn't too long afterward that the depression came. Then everyone was poor and it was no shame anymore. And so I will never know whether or not I could have stood it. But surely my teacher was right about one thing. It took a long time - a very long time. And it is still going on, and it has never got easier.
She told me it wouldn't.
1963
Querido escritor:
Apesar de ter sido há milhares de anos que eu sentei para uma aula de redação em Standford, eu me lembro muito claramente dessa experiência. Eu estava com os olhos brolhando e a cabeça fervilhando, pronto para absorver a fórmula secreta de como escrever bons contos, até mesmo contos excelentes. Essa ilusão foi desfeita rapidamente. A única forma de escrever um bom conto, disseram-nos, é escrever um bom conto. Só depois de escrito ele pode ser desmontado para sabermos como foi feito. É a maneira mais difícil, como nos disseram, e a prova está em se ver quão poucos são os bons contos escritos no mundo.
A regra básica que nos deram era simples e desoladora. Para uma história ser eficiente, deveria levar algo do autor para o autor, e a força dessa entrega era a medida da sua excelência. Fora isso, não havia regras. Uma história poderia ser sobre qualquer coisa e poderia usar quaisquer meios e absolutamente qualquer técnica - desde que fosse eficiente. Como subtítulo a essa regra estava a necessidade do autor saber o que ele gostaria de dizer, resumindo, sobre o que ele estava falando. Como exercício nós deveríamos tentar reduzir o conteúdo de nossa história a uma frase, pois só assim a saberíamos suficientemente para aumentá-la para três - ou seis - ou dez mil palavras.
Então lá estava a fórmula mágica, o ingrediente secreto. Com nada além disso, fomos lançados ao desolado e solitário caminho do escritor. E nós
So there went the magic formula, the secret ingredient. With no more than that, we were set on the desolate, lonely path of the writer. And we must have turned in some abysmally bad stories. If I had expected to be discovered in a full bloom of excellence, the grades given my efforts quickly disillusioned me. And if I felt unjustly criticized, the judgments of editors for many years afterward upheld my teacher's side, not mine. The low grades on my college stories were echoed in the rejection slips, in the hundreds of rejection slips.
It seemed unfair. I could read a fine story and could even know how it was done. Why could I not then do it myself? Well, I couldn't, and maybe it's because no two stories dare be alike. Over the years I have written a great many stories and I still don't know how to go about it except to write it and take my chances.
If there is a magic in story writing, and I am convinced there is, no one has ever been able to reduce it to a recipe that can be passed from one person to another. The formula seems to lie solely in the aching urge of the writer to convey something he feels important to the reader. If the writer has that urge, he may sometimes, but by no means always, find the way to do it. You must perceive the excellence that makes a good story good or the errors that makes a bad story. For a bad story is only an ineffective story.
It is not so very hard to judge a story after it is written, but, after many years, to start a story still scares me to death. I will go so far as to say that the writer who not scared is happily unaware of the remote and tantalizing majesty of the medium.
I remember one last piece of advice given me. It was during the exuberance of the rich and frantic '20s, and I was going out into that world to try and to be a writer.
I was told, "It's going to take a long time, and you haven't got any money. Maybe it would be better if you could go to Europe."
"Why?" I asked.
"Because in Europe poverty is a misfortune, but in America it is shameful. I wonder whether or not you can stand the shame of being poor."
It wasn't too long afterward that the depression came. Then everyone was poor and it was no shame anymore. And so I will never know whether or not I could have stood it. But surely my teacher was right about one thing. It took a long time - a very long time. And it is still going on, and it has never got easier.
She told me it wouldn't.
1963
