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The ways in which a standardized language test induces storytelling, for example, is the opposite of creative writing you have to learn a logical way to start a story, whereas in creative writing you may begin at the end or begin at the middle of the story.

Alejandro Zambra

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Alejandro Zambra
Age: 49
Born: 1975
Born: July 24
Literary Critic
Poet
Writer
Santiago
Chile
Ends
Example
Induces
Stories
Ways
Whereas
May
Middle
Logical
Writing
Creative
Test
Way
Start
Opposite
Story
Opposites
Learn
Tests
Language
Begin
Standardized

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When you read a novel, you know what to expect because you've been reading novels for a long time.
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Publishing my book is like giving it away. At first you start talking about it, but you are basically letting go. I won't say it's like giving birth because I haven't given birth. It's more like when your children leave home.
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The stories on standardized tests don't have one author, therefore they can never authentically be in the first person. Imagine that! Everywhere, there are these tests that have been written by multiple people.
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Everything has been said and everything has been done, but you still feel like you are looking for something.
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I think about Chilean literature as a family, because I grew up reading the literature of my country. I feel like I have fathers and stepfathers and a lot of brothers and sisters and distant cousins and all that.
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You're looking for something, I don't know what I'm looking for, but I'm looking. Writing is a lot about that. When you write a poem. When you write a novel.
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Literature is about getting in touch. It sounds so hippie, but it really is about sharing stuff. We are a community that doesn't seem to be important for the rest of society, but we are people who want to get in touch - really in touch. We want to be thinking together.
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I knew little, but at least I knew that: no one could speak for someone else. That although we might want to tell other people's stories, we always end up telling our own.
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I was going to be a memory when I grew up.
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I remember thinking, without pride of self-pity, that I was not rich or poor, that I wasn't good or bad. But that was difficult: to be neither good nor bad. It seemed to me, in the end, the same as being bad.
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To read is to cover one's face. And to write is to show it.
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If you write, and you are really alone (writing is a lonely thing), you learn to be alone without suffering. When you read, you also learn to do this. When you write, you deal with things.
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For me, writing is a way of finding out about things I didn't know before I began writing.
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I was a nerdy kid and I was writing and showing other fellows who are still my friends what I was writing. We were sharing that and kept sharing it. The experiences they had were so different than mine.
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I've been writing most of my life it's just something I do.
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As a child, all you see is that adults are not playing. Adults are not talking too much. Adults don't want to relate to each other.
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Every story, every poem, every written piece is about belonging. There is a me, there is a we, there is an us, and we want to belong to it or we don't want to belong. You can read every story with this as its main focus.
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I don't have any doubts that I need writing. I need it personally because this is the way I think.
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We rely too much on the people we share our lives with. We hold them responsible for things they are not even aware of. We start blaming them.
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You are told that you have to eliminate un-useful sentences, but as a writer you know how important details are.
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