Isabel Allende Interview: Author Offers Advice To Young Writers (VIDEO)

Having published 18 books and sold over 56 million copies in 30 languages, Isabel Allende is one of the best-known female writers in Latin America. She discusses her writing process and gives tips to new writers in an insightful interview with Big Think. The videos below are segments from the 20-minute interview.

In this segment, Allende discusses her approach to writing and what it takes to make progress. She notes that she does a tremendous amount of research for her books. Solitude is something she feels is an invaluable thing to have in the initial stages of the writing process.

Here Allende discusses what new writers should do the most, which is to just write often. She makes an interesting comparison between athletes training their bodies and writers training their writing capabilities. She cautions that a writer may have 20 pages thrown in the trash for every satisfactory page kept.

Check out the full interview here.

Comments

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09:58 PM on 06/22/2010

Allende is an incredible writer. I read one of her books, Paula, about the death of her beautiful daughter. It's really an autobiography but she transports the reader to Chile, her world and her life. Sad and inspiring. I couldn't put it down.