I have never pretended I can give lessons to people on how to write but here is how writing works for me: finding my own time and space, on my own, either in silence or with music that won’t distract me, with just the outside light or one minimal light once it is dark.

I usually write on paper first.

Words flow a lot better, faster and easier with pen and paper. As for a pen, sometimes even a pencil is better; and as for the paper, I never use white, blank sheets of paper. For me they always need to be already used at least on one side. I often write on the cardboard of a used box, and not just because of the usual environmental reasons, but because it just helps me better than a pristine white paper.

I guess it is because, not being presentable externally, it helps for intimacy, it is a dirty paper that only I will see, so it is ok to scrawl, scribble, make inkblots and cross things out.

So, I write the first ideas as they flow in the most used piece of paper I can find until my ideas flow so much faster than my writing that my hand can not catch up with my mind, and it is time to switch to the keyboard. While the computer boots, I do a small mind map if I haven’t done it before, and if I have, I put that mind map in the order I think the writing should flow.

Most times the mind flows, and the hand with it. Some times I get stuck. Best is to just leave that paper and start another one with a different scene, or idea. It is almost guaranteed that the next time I go back to that text my writing will flow again naturally, maybe just discarding the last words or sentences. If it doesn’t happen, it is good to leave it overnight.

And this is the first and shortest stage. It is rewarding to see that there is enough of what is called in journalistic terms as “copy” to fill an A4. I like printing on already used paper again, although with the printer it does help if at least one side of it is completely blank. I print in small typeface – less ink – and leaving plenty of space at the margins and between the lines to make corrections and additions.

On average each text is printed about eight times. It is a skill in itself to stop trying to make it perfect – it will never be and you don’t have all your life to try. That is why, I guess, the industry has created the figures of the proofreader and/or the subeditor.