When does a writer write his stories, his novels, his short stories, his most ambitious projects?
He does it during the summer.
This is not exhaustive, of course, a large part of writers write throughout the year, making time for elbows, stealing moments from work.
However, summer, thanks to its lack of work activities, is usually the favorable time of year.
For a few years I went to the writer Hebe Uhart's workshop, and she used to say that she eagerly awaited the arrival of summer to write more freely.
Being more relaxed in the summer (in terms of activities and not government news) frees the brain to wander and that is how good, persistent ideas appear.
Some writers carry their notebook or notebook with them wherever they go.
Roland Barthes wrote in his mythologies that the writer is never really on vacation;
because he spends his time writing wherever he wants to go.
Writing, perhaps, is a state of the soul.
This eagerness, this mental diligence that sometimes bears fruit in the form of a book and sometimes not, is what earned us writers the reputation of being antisocial.
Other writers take advantage of reading during the summer and especially reading a little lighter than winter readings.
It is probably a myth that the heat does not allow us to concentrate as much as the winter.
A good antidote for the heatwave could be, precisely, to start reading Russian writers, always overwhelmed by the snowfall, the blizzard, the blizzard, the blizzard, the sleet or whatever they call blizzards, depending on the translation you use. let's read.
Perhaps a little of that cold could rub off on us by osmosis with the printed letter on the most intensely hot days.
However, the idea of agile readings in summer prevails.
Nor is this myth new: the collection of detective novels by El Séptimo Círculo directed by Borges and Bioy Casares was born precisely one summer, in February 1945. The first title of the collection was The Beast Must Die, signed by Nicholas Blake, a pseudonym. which was hidden behind the poet Cecil Day-Lewis, father of Daniel, the famous actor.
Bioy and Borges published the first 120 titles, with around 14,000 copies each print run (these figures sound incredible today).
A colorful fact so that this back cover does not suffer from cultism: only for 24 years Cecil Day-Lewis and Arthur Miller, the American playwright, were not in-laws.
Cecil Day-Lewis died in 1972, and Daniel and Rebecca Miller married in 1996.
Returning to the topic of writing on vacation, I recommend that readers who this year want to take their first steps in literary writing, carry a notebook with them to write down everything that impacts them.
They write down, and continue reading, they write a first paragraph and a second and continue reading, and by the end of the summer they will have a text with which they can knock on the doors of publishers.
Word of honor.