Five Mario Vargas Llosa’s Lessons for Writers

Advice from a successful Nobel Prize-winning novelist.

Drawing and photo by the author

“I learned to read when I was five years old, in Brother Justiniano’s class at Colegio de la Salle, in Cochabamba (Bolivia). It is the most important thing that has happened to me in my life.”

— Mario Vargas Llosa.

This was how Mario Vargas Llosa began his speech of gratitude on the day he received the Nobel Prize in Literature. But until that moment arrived, rivers of ink ran through his hands.

Mario is a legendary writer: Prolific, well-read, brilliant.

A person who knows what writing is all about. A profession he has carried out from his earliest childhood to the present day.

To listen to him speak is to learn. To read him is to become a better writer.
As it should be. He also learned by reading other great authors.

• Flaubert taught him that talent is a tenacious discipline and long patience.
• Faulkner taught him that it’s the form — the writing and the structure — that enlarges or impoverishes the themes.