A Gift from García Márquez

One of my favorite writer interviews is a YouTube video my Fiction II professor showed our class. The video, linked below, gives a small look into the most famously asked but vaguely answered question that many writers, and artists in general, come across. As Neil Gaiman quite humorously puts it “we [writers] don’t really know.” Readers or admirers of any artist often wonder how someone could come up with an idea that produces something so beautiful but, more so than writers, we, as onlookers, barely know. Yes, we can often see, at the very least, a loose connection between an author’s life and their writing. But that, after all, is only rooted in assumptions. Even if our assumptions are correct, we cannot, as outsiders, pinpoint the exact moment in time when an idea sparks with life—not without the help of the artist.