First published in the magazine El Hogar (July 1927).
I
Believe in a master – Poe, Maupassant, Kipling, Chejov – as in God himself.
II
Believe that your art is an inaccessible peak. Do not dream of conquering it. When you can do it, you will achieve it without even knowing it.
III
Resist imitation as much as you can, but imitate if the influence is too strong. More than anything, the development of one’s own voice requires patience.
IV
Have blind faith not in your ability to succeed, but in the ardor with which you desire it. Love your art as you would a partner, giving yourself to it wholeheartedly.
V
Do not start writing without knowing, from the first word, where you are going. In a successful story, the first three sentences are almost as important as the last three.
VI
If you want to accurately express this situation: “The cold wind blew over the river”, there are no other words in the human language than those aimed at expressing it. Once you own your words, do not worry about whether they are consonants or assonants.
VII
Do not use adjectives if they are not needed. Strings of colour attached to a weak noun are, in fact, useless. If you find one that is accurate, it alone will have incomparable colour. But you must find it.
VIII
Take your characters by the hand and lead them firmly to the end of the story, without deviating from the path that you traced. Do not get distracted by what the characters can not see or what is not important for them to see. Do not abuse the reader. A story is a novel with the unnecessary waste removed. Take this as an absolute truth, even if it is not true.
IX
Do not write under the influence of emotion. Let it die out, and then evoke it later. If you are able to revive it as it was, you are already halfway there.
X
Do not think of your friends when writing, or the impression your story will make. Tell it as if your story had no interest other than the small world in which your characters live, a world in which you could have been a character yourself. There is no other way to bring your story to life.
FIN
Spanish Texts Translated 