[Coelho] how i write

paulo coelho

On Inspiration: “I procrastinate, check some emails … then I start. I write my books very quickly because I cannot stop.”

On Confidence: “You cannot sell your next book by underrating your book that was just published. Be proud of what you have.”

On Simplicity: “What counts in a good story is the person inside. Keep it simple.”

On Trust: “Trust your reader. Don’t try to describe things. Give a hint and they will fulfill this hint with their own imagination.”

On Writing: “I write the book that wants to be written. Behind the first sentence is a thread that takes you to the last.”

On Expertise: “You cannot take something out of nothing. When you write a book, you use your experience.”

On Critics: “Writers want to please their peers. They want to be recognized. Forget about this. Who cares? You should care to share your soul and not to please other writers who will write a review that nobody is going to read.”

On Overcoming Stagnation: “If I don’t feel inspired, I need to move forward. You need to have be disciplined.”

On Research: “If you overload your book with a lot of research, you are going to be very boring to yourself and to your reader. Books are not there to show how intelligent you are. Books are there to show your soul.”

On Notetaking: “I use notes to take them out of my head. I will never use them the next day – they will be useless.”

On Story Arcs: “There are only four types of stories: love story between 2 people, love story between 3 people, a struggle for power, and a journey.”

On Style: “Don’t try to innovate storytelling. Tell a good story and it is magical. I see people trying to work so much in style, finding different ways to tell the same thing. It is like fashion. Style is the dress, but the dress does not dictate what is inside the dress. What counts is the person.”

On Notetaking II : “If you want to capture ideas, you are lost. You are going to be detached from emotions and forget to live your life. You will be an observer and not a human being living his or her life. Forget notetaking. What is important remains, what is not important goes away.”

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Paulo Coelho was born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.[1] He attended a Jesuit school. As a teenager, Coelho wanted to become a writer. Upon telling his mother this, she responded with "My dear, your father is an engineer. He's a logical, reasonable man with a very clear vision of the world. Do you actually know what it means to be a writer?"[1] After researching, Coelho concluded that a writer "always wears glasses and never combs his hair" and has a "duty and an obligation never to be understood by his own generation," amongst other things.[1] At 16, Coelho's introversion and opposition to following a traditional path led to his parents committing him to a mental institution from which he escaped three times before being released at the age of 20.[2][3] Coelho later remarked that "It wasn't that they wanted to hurt me, but they didn't know what to do... They did not do that to destroy me, they did that to save me."[4]

At his parents' wishes, Coelho enrolled in law school and abandoned his dream of becoming a writer. One year later, he dropped out and lived life as a hippie, traveling through South America, North Africa, Mexico, and Europe and becoming immersed in the drug culture of the 1960s.[5][6] Upon his return to Brazil, Coelho worked as a songwriter, composing lyrics for Elis Regina, Rita Lee, and Brazilian iconRaul Seixas. Composing with Raul led to Paulo being associated with satanism and occultism, due to the content of some songs.[7] In 1974, Coelho was arrested for "subversive" activities by the ruling military government, who had taken power ten years earlier and viewed his lyrics as left-wing and dangerous.[4] Coelho also worked as an actor, journalist, and theatre director before pursuing his writing career.[7]

In 1986, Coelho walked the 500-plus mile Road of Santiago de Compostela in northwestern Spain, a turning point in his life.[5][8] On the path, Coelho had a spiritual awakening, which he described autobiographically in The Pilgrimage.[9] In an interview, Coelho stated "[In 1986], I was very happy in the things I was doing. I was doing something that gave me food and water – to use the metaphor in "The Alchemist", I was working, I had a person whom I loved, I had money, but I was not fulfilling my dream. My dream was, and still is, to be a writer."[10] Coelho would leave his lucrative career as a songwriter and pursue writing full-time.