A IDADE DA ESCRITA

O que pensam os escritores sobre a sua própria escrita? A propósito do Melbourne Writers Festival, sete participantes de sete fases (e idades) diferentes da vida e da escrita falam sobre a arte de contar histórias.

Alexandra Adornetto, na adolescência
" I have limited life experience and this means ideas are not influenced by cynicism. I still naively believe anything is possible, and this must come through in my writing."

Nam Le, nos vintes
"What I know, at 29, is this: writing is hard, and it is slow, and its condition is failure. Everything I've written has fallen short of its ideal conception; I know this will be as true when I'm 60 as it is now."

Chloe Hooper, nos trintas
"In my 30s, I understand the sort of stories I want to write, and why I want to write them. My obsessions are easier to decode, and if I'm moved by something, probably others will be too. "

Ana Funder, nos quarentas
"You find the closer you look, the more reality outstrips what you could possibly have dreamt."

Steven Carroll, nos cinquentas
"It takes a long time to acquire the craft, and many writers don't produce their best until their mature years. These elements, knowledge, craft and strength, converge in a writer for a limited time only."

Robert Dessaix, nos sessentas
"What I can do is try to say more lucidly, more straightforwardly, more idiosyncratically what I enjoy saying without any thought of changing the world. "

Alex Miller, nos setentas
"when I was 52 I published my first novel. I'm 71 now and still at it, closing on a draft of my ninth novel, Lovesong, and dreaming of Sophocles producing his masterpiece, Oedipus at Colonus when he was 89 - and loving it. It's in the blood."

- ler aqui o artigo completo do The Age.