The concert hall is dimly lit. I can barely make out my companion beside me; their silhouette warps in the darkness. Latecomers trip over my legs, hunting for their seats. Suddenly, a group of men in suits burst into the room, slamming the door, and take over the stage. They tune their instruments calmly, as if the audience were a bonus—as if they hadn't come for us, but for the music.
And then, they begin.
At first it's a soft murmur, barely perceptible. But in an instant, it erupts into a musical frenzy. Intense, fast, wild. They're playing Beethoven's 5th, and now, no one can stop them.
Da-da-da-DUM
The famous opening of the piece works as an epiphany. The auditory rendering of something that has lived in my mind for a long time, a feeling that every aspiring writer—or writer still aspiring (because they're not the same thing)—carries inside them. It's a fire in the gut, a pain that stiffens the joints and quickens the heart. Sometimes it vanishes, like the little silences in the piece; for me those are moments of doubt, when I wonder whether I really have anything to say. In others, it bursts out like the da-da-da-DUM that has become the face of classical music even for the least initiated, a burst of energy that forces me to put words on the page.
In an instant it goes from total silence to Dionysian ecstasy. And once it starts, it can't be stopped until every note is played, until the musicians finish the movement. We writers, too, have to finish our works, because if we don't, the punishment is having that feeling trapped inside us forever. Like a symphony left half-finished, not finishing the text is leaving a 5th symphony unresolved. So many possibilities. A mere dream never realized, notes that will never be played, words that will never be read.
I've always known I'm a writer. It started very young, at nine years old. There wasn't much to do; the internet was only just beginning. I no longer went to school, so the best options for passing the days were writing or playing video games—both more rewarding than washing the breakfast dishes, a chore that disgusted me for its obligatory mix of soap and grease.
I wrote a couple of short stories. I entered a writing contest. Then they said I couldn't win because my story was so good it seemed written by an adult. At the time I didn't understand it. But now, in the light of experience, I see that it let me down. It became a reason not to recognize my own potential, as if they meant to say "your writing is too good to be yours". And those words turned into an idea I haven't managed to shake from my mind
I began to live inside a paradox that wouldn't let me write: I feel that I'm skilled at it, and yet I feel that I shouldn't go on. As if someone were grading it and saying my writing is so good it deserves no recognition or validation. Why write if I'm already good, if it's going to be good anyway and won't matter at all? And if I'm not good, why bother trying if I'll never be good at it?
I know how irrational this sounds, but my childish brain absorbed it as truth all the same. It's hard to know you need a growth mindset when you're a kid who doesn't know what he's doing.
Yearning
This feeling hasn't stopped chasing me to this day. And yet, I think that now the desire to write chases me more than my egocentric defense mechanism against doing it. Trying to name the emotion, I thought of the word yearning: an intense desire for something, a searing need that can't be silenced and won't leave you in peace until you write something.
Sometimes I imagine my favorite writers had it too, and that they wrestled with themselves to quiet it. I picture Kafka bored in his office, while every one of his bones longs to turn the man into a cockroach. Flaubert had that same feeling. Its intensity was so great that it grew unbearable, an endless crescendo. The fire started in his stomach, but it spread to his head, and then to his hands: his soul moved the pen, and broke it. His desires wrote themselves, and he perfected them.
This desire to write is the secret behind Flaubert's perfection. Even when he felt the words wouldn't come, he'd simply lie down on the couch, wallowing in his despair, and half an hour later he'd recover his energy and the words would come to him like a Christian speaking in dead tongues.
I've lived with that emotion for several years now. When I do anything other than write, I feel my blood boil, my hands tense, and my mind drift toward my own world—the one of the ideas in my head. I want to write. To abandon any mundane activity that steals my time and devote myself to pounding the computer keyboard and producing works capable of stirring emotion in people. Of making myself feel something.
Is my desire to write insatiable? Must I live with it for the rest of my life, never having it end, or will it fade with time? How does one live with this desire? I don't think it's a bad thing to have. It gives me confidence to know it exists. It's as if it pushed me to do something. As if God knew that if I don't write, the world will forget me and the future will make no sense.
To live with it, all I can think of is abandoning those stupid school essays on topics that don't interest me and fleeing instead to a cave, to a cabin—I don't care where—to write in peace and listen to my own voice. I think this yearning is good. It feels like a valuable form of self-discovery. It helps me understand myself, confront my fears, and uncover aspects of my identity that hadn't surfaced until now.
When I write, a feeling of love and purity comes over me. As if my brain and my soul were happy. I feel relaxed, enjoying the experience, in settings where I can think calmly and push the quality to its limit.
But I'm also aware that writing is hard, and that I have to find a way to do more of it and learn from the process. The truth is you only get here through constant stimulation. In this world with billboards in the palm of your hand, paying attention is an Olympic sport, and closing TikTok is harder than the hundred-meter sprint. Being a writer in this era demands that you focus, that you draw your curtains against the world to put ideas on the page. And even so, that you make the effort to stay attentive to the world in order to find something worth knowing.
I have to accept that I myself have been the cause of this fire. Or perhaps it's the malicious handiwork of some Olympian god. I've spent years deceiving myself. I tell myself that I'm going to write and that I'm a writer, but I don't do it. I'm frightened of not being good enough, but also of failing to grow into the full extent of my potential.
To be a writer, you need texts and readers. Now I see that I'm scared of not being good enough. But that I should do it anyway. I'm only fooling myself and losing the chance to prove what I'm capable of. To achieve it, and to have texts and readers, I must set my fears aside, allow myself to be creative, listen to that part of my brain, become the version of myself I truly want to be. Step onto the stage and play my symphony, whether or not anyone is listening.
I have to ignore other people's judgment, focus, and write. Nor can I ignore the economic problems of doing so. Writing in a country where few people read is an achievement, and making a living from it, a real privilege. But I trust in my ability, in my determination and my dream, to manage to live off what I write.
It's not an easy path, but we're not fools either. Even Gabriel García Márquez once wrote that he thought every possible novel had already been written. Until One Hundred Years of Solitude appeared. I don't know what's going to happen. But I feel the duty to write in order to write it. To live in it. To become one with the pen and the letters.
Maybe being a writer isn't having a perfect symphony. It's showing up every day at the concert hall, with our instrument, ready to play whatever notes come—good or bad. Maybe we shouldn't leave works unfinished, but strive to bring them into reality, no matter how imperfect they may turn out. We must accept that doubt is part of the process and keep working to create works that only we can produce. Maybe we just have to keep writing, facing that yearning, wrestling with it. Maybe it's the voice of our conscience guiding us toward what we're meant to be.
That's what I intend to do. Pick up the pencil, and write. Let the words flow. I'll worry later about who reads them. But at least I know I'm working in the right direction. That I'm creating something new, a completely different symphony, my own work.
By the Way, Flaubert's example was inspired by this magnificent article on Common Reader.