Interviews with Writers for People Who Want to Start Writing — Episode IV: Chronicle with Victoria De Masi

In my brief experience with literature, one never "wants" to write. One writes or doesn't write. That's it. It feels like an annoying weight, an unbearable ghost hanging on your ears that forces you to sit down, open a Word document, and start typing. But generalizing what I feel would be irresponsible, a silly conclusive leap that I’d like to avoid. I suspect, then, that there are indeed people who might benefit from a little push.

That's why I decided to start working on this series of interviews with writers for people who want to start writing. I called people I respect and whose writing, in one way or another, inspires me. Perhaps you'll find in their answers, their advice, their working methods, what you need to finally start putting one word after another. The saga continues with Victoria De Masi to talk about writing chronicles.

From the outside, the chronicle, the journalistic column, the profile, seems a bit like running. It's hard to imagine a deadline, a due date: a fire door approaching, after which a text must be finished and ready to be published. How has the "race against time" dynamic affected or affects your writing, for better or worse?

From the inside, getting a chronicle, an opinion column, or a profile is the exact opposite of running. I’d say it’s like tiptoeing, like walking on eggshells or searching for the switch that turns on the light in an unfamiliar bathroom. The three forms of writing you mention require time: time to think, time to produce, time to write, and time to self-edit. I keep saying that my battle is not against time, but for time. I’m slow. Finding an interviewee and getting them to agree to an interview can take days. Finding that one word that says a lot, the economy of language, also takes time. It often happens that the word, the central idea, or my point of view comes to me outside of writing: when I’m washing the dishes, for example. Then there's the information machine, the system I’m part of. Sunday in 2015 at Clarín. Lita de Lázzari had passed away. On Sundays, I’d arrive at four in the afternoon, and the edition (paper still ruled) would close, unless there was a disaster to attend to, at eight. That Sunday, they asked me for Lita de Lázzari's obituary. Lita was a close figure for me. I remembered seeing her on TV in my house in Río Grande. And her phrase: "Walk, lady, walk." But that wasn’t enough to write the obituary. So I went down to the newspaper's archive, requested the folder where all the clippings of interviews Lita had given throughout her life were kept, organized them by year, and sat down to read. That work took me about two hours. I took notes on what I thought captured the character. Then I went back up and wrote the text. By eight, I had already submitted the article.

It’s what I could achieve in the time I had. By 2021, I had already been at elDiarioAR for a year, a new digital medium, meaning: everything for now. In the same week, Carlos Reutemann and Rafaella Carrá passed away. I was working from home due to the pandemic. I think they had ordered a new lockdown. I was no longer working at Clarín, I couldn’t go to the archive, and I wasn’t sending paper: "digital first". But I’m still slow. So while a colleague was putting together a cold, hard news piece about his death to "have it on the homepage," I thought the best approach was to tell about Reutemann by watching YouTube interviews he had given to local channels. And so I started, I think around noon, to inform the editor on duty that the text was already uploaded, with title, photo, lead, highlights, and all the little things that "dress" digital writing and distinguish it from advertising banners. Given the publication timing, it probably took me about five hours.

I knew absolutely nothing about Rafaella Carrá, except that my mom loved her. So I called her and asked: what did Carrá mean to you? A long response came back, and in that response, I found three axes with which I could build an obituary. I Googled those items and wrote. I don’t know how long it took me. But never an hour, or two, or three. I wrote with "explotame explotame expló" in the background, on repeat.

For the 21st-century news market, now that everything is starting to be mediated by AI and chat GPT, I’m a real expense. A costly and heavy human resource, like an old ferry crossing a choppy river. But these are my ways, this is what I can do and what comes naturally to me. And I don’t want to do it any other way. Because I like craftsmanship. And because twenty years in the newsroom have given me technique and training, and I’ve never let an editor down. Chronicles, opinion columns, and profiles have a final point that is hardly final. I believe that type of text is delivered on time and in form but never truly finished.

Writing in the heat of the moment, every week, can sometimes be, I suppose, exhausting. Are there things you’ve published that you regret? How do you process the discomfort regarding a text you wrote yourself, if at all? What happens if I regret something I wrote? How can I process my own discomfort?

I respected the order of your questions, but I left this one for last. It took me a day, six kilometers of walking through Montevideo, and a boat ride back to Buenos Aires to find an answer that somewhat satisfied me. I regret having written an angry cover story for Viva. I had interviewed a very popular actress, much loved by the public, with a long and notable career. I had just come from working two years in Zonales —local newspapers, and I published in Clarín— and nine years in the General Information section of Clarín, working hard every day. I requested a transfer to the magazine because I could no longer keep up, and I realized that I liked to write long and slow. It took me a year to get the transfer, but I did it. To go back: one of my first pieces on "celebrities" was about the actress in question. Due to a complete lack of experience with magazines, I didn’t know that interviews with celebrities require a production time for fashion —clothes, hair, makeup— and photos —"pose for me, don’t pose, look over there, haha, gorgeous, do this, lie down, look at me, don’t look at me"— that is part of the piece but takes time away from the piece itself. We did the photos and the interview on the same day. Given the time constraints, the production took seven hours, and my piece, thirty minutes. And I closed the text angrily. And I regret it. One shouldn’t do that. I didn’t know at that moment to refrain from myself. I think it was a mistake on my part. My way of managing that discomfort with myself was to promise that I would never again let a personal emotion ride me at work.

The deadline always allows for "ordering" the practice of writing. Sometimes the deadline helps. Outside the world of journalistic newsrooms, and whenever you embark on a personal project, do you also try to work with deadlines or do you allow the texts to mature in another way?

After proposing a piece, I indicate what day and at what time I will deliver the text. If they ask me for a piece, I ask what day and at what time I need to submit it. If it’s for the day, I ask them to tell me the closing time and which editor will be in charge. I don’t submit early, I don’t submit late: I submit on time. For me, the limit is fundamental; it’s what allows me to organize my time. One must manage oneself taking into account time for meals, rest hours, and personal matters. Of all the processes involved in the task of writing, I especially contemplate three: the start of the piece, the conclusion, and the time the text needs to rest. The last part is almost never possible in digital journalism. So one ends up cramming words, ideas, quotes, observations, and data into a mental template that repeats and, in some way, works. One must be careful with that template because perhaps the reader doesn’t see it, but one falls into the same format as always. But well, at some point, one has to close the piece.

How do you feel today about being someone who contributes to shaping the agenda of public debate, at least on this side of the aisle? How do you handle malicious criticism?

From my side of the aisle, I don’t see my work having a direct impact on the public agenda or debate. Regarding criticism, if I hear about it, I take note and think about how much truth there is in that criticism. But above all, I pay attention to who the criticism comes from. If it’s a comment on Twitter posted from a @ like a CBU, I really don’t care. If it’s from a colleague who messages me on WhatsApp, well, I read it and sometimes respond. With criticism, I feel the same way as with praise: nothing.

Writing chronicles is about putting on paper the product of an investigation. There’s undoubtedly something police-like, detective-like about it. How do your chronicles "mature"? How long is their gestation period? Does the process of gathering information, archiving, interviewing tend to be longer than the actual writing process, or are the times similar?

It all depends on the format. The profile of Leonardo Cositorto took me three full days —with long mornings and afternoons— and I ended up writing it in the early hours. The book Karina: the sister, The Boss, the Sovereign (2024), a profile about the president’s sister, took me eight months between production and writing. But... when did I start writing that book? Was it at the exact moment I opened the .doc and wrote "Karina"? Or was it in 2021, when I first saw her on a campaign walk where Milei was running for deputy? Or was it on November 19, 2023, the day of the runoff, when it was the sister who introduced the elected president at the Hotel Libertador? It takes me longer to gather what I need to write a text than to write the text itself. But, I insist, texts never truly finish being written.

There’s something police-like in the arrangement of the chronicle and, in that sense, something about the "forbidden" as well. Especially in your profiles. Have you ever been afraid of what you were investigating? Have you ever been pressured? How do you process fear when someone explicitly tells you they don’t want you to continue developing an investigation?

I’m not afraid when I choose a topic or character to work on. Not when I seek information, nor when I interview people, nor when I find that piece of information that strengthens the text and makes the topic or character tremble. I realize the pressures late. When I was doing interviews for Carlitos Way, the profile of Carlos Nair Menem, published in 2016 by Tusquets, I realized there was a threat when the book was in bookstores. A source very involved in the Menem world invited me to lunch at a restaurant in San Telmo, with no windows. It was the third time we met. When we finished the lunch-interview, he offered to drive me to Clarín in his car. I got in, he drove a few blocks, and at one point asked me to open the glove compartment. I opened it, saw a gun, and said, "Oh, look, there’s a weapon, what do you need me to look for?". The guy said, "Nothing, you can close it now". Many months later, I realized that sequence meant something else. I don’t know if I’m not afraid when I work or if I’m just a bit foolish.

How much of your chronicles responds to the original spirit and how much mutates given the work process itself? How tightly do you stick to the original project and how much do you allow the process to become something porous and mutating?

When I tackle a text, short or long, for a book or whatever, I create a summary. The summary is the work proposal, the idea concentrated in a few lines. I always do it, even if it’s just for myself. Before writing the summary, I do a little research: I confirm the central idea, outline the contradictions, check certain data, and talk to a few people. I always return to that summary: it reduces the margin of error; it’s the path I need to clear to achieve the text I proposed or that was requested of me. Sometimes, on that path, a beautiful and strange flower appears that escapes the axe. I separate it, I care for it. It improves my initial idea. It also happens that the harvest gets tough, you know. One needs to find a good stone to sharpen. I allow myself to be flexible, I pivot and return. I pivot and put up beacons and return to the path. I listen to the text I’m producing. The text "asks": I give it what I hear it needs.

What has helped you understand, if such a thing is possible, how to write? Do you have any go-to books on creative writing or writing chronicles?

I’ve been reading since I was a kid. Stories of Love, Madness, and Death, by Quiroga. Mafalda (that comic strip format is essential for writing journalism because each little box contains an action or statement; skipping a box means there’s something missing in the text). The teen magazines of that time (I had a life-size poster of Emanuel Ortega), the rock ones (was it 90/10?). I lived in Río Grande, a city in Tierra del Fuego where things arrived late or didn’t arrive at all. So my mom would take my sister and me to the public library. I read the Bible with fascination when I was in catechism, I loved going to the seven o'clock mass on Sundays for the songbook. And for the sermon, because I looked forward to the moment of the moral: how the priest would wrap it up, juggling that improbable fictional quote with which he kicked off "his moment." Listening is a way of reading. Once I got to Haedo and into my teenage years, I dedicated myself with a fervor that I now think bordered on obsession to reading poetry. I discovered Alejandra Pizarnik. You encounter Pizarnik at fifteen and it wrecks you. By eighteen, you have to hide her books and forget about her because she contaminates you. But poetry as a genre remains central to my writing. I read and made fanzines. And I organized fanzine fairs. I must have been sixteen or seventeen. Then came the "boom of Latin American journalism" and "new journalism"—there’s nothing older than new journalism—and I read everything I could. I think there are books that advise or suggest narrative strategies for writing that serve as a starting point. Or workshops—ones I attended and offer—that are also useful as meeting and exchange spaces. But writing is an experience. You write by writing. 99% practice, 1% theory. For now, I think that writing, besides informing, is about finding one’s own voice, one’s tone, the forms that no other journalist could have.

Who do you show your drafts to? How open are you to reformulations and revisions from a third party? Do you find feedback helpful or do you prefer to work alone?

I don’t let anyone read my texts except the editor in charge. I’ve never hired a third editor. I’m a lone wolf.

Have you taken workshops on journalism or creative writing? What was your experience?

I’ve taken several journalism workshops. The experience has always been positive. I’ve used and recommend them. But as I mentioned before, they are meeting and exchange spaces. I don’t know a more solitary profession than writing (in fact, I don’t know other professions). In that instance, two things happen simultaneously: a withdrawal from the environment and a self-abstinence. So workshops become necessary spaces to break out of the inner bubble, the inner hole.

Do you write by hand or on a computer? Why?

I write on the computer and take notes in the notebook I’m using at the moment. I moved from a large cassette recorder to a small cassette recorder, and later to a digital recorder. Now I use my phone to record interviews. I write on the computer because it’s at my desk, and next to my desk are my books, plants, the blinking Internet thing, a window, and the cat coming and going. But I can also write in a casino (covering floods in Corrientes), sitting on the curb (I’ve done that many times), in a courtroom in real time during a trial, with the laptop on my lap, my legs burning from the heat of the machine (Báez Sosa, Maradona), at a gas station, in the lobby of a hotel where I’m not staying, at a neighbor’s house (this only happens in the provinces) who lends me Internet and brews me mate. Now that I’m 43, I put my phone on speaker when I make calls because my neck can’t take it anymore. Sometimes I can’t read my own handwriting when I take notes. I look at those hieroglyphs and guess or call the source back saying, "I can’t read my handwriting and I don’t want to make a mistake, could you repeat that for me, please?"

How many hours do you write each day?

I can go days without writing but never a day without reading. I write when I have to write because writing is a job.

How obsessive are you about correcting your texts? Do you spend more time on the actual writing or on correcting what you’ve already written? Do you consider them the same thing?

Very. Sometimes I regret not having the time I need to self-edit. Sometimes I regret having too much time to self-edit because I run the risk of killing the text. Unlike print, digital journalism offers a possibility that must be used responsibly. Once the article is published online, it can be modified. The following is a self-imposed rule: I go back into the article to correct a spelling or typing error, or to rearrange a sentence that could be clearer without altering its meaning. But nothing more. I don’t allow myself to "redo" an article. This happens a lot now, when in addition to the editor-in-chief, there’s the audience chief. Because the audience that subscribes to a medium (a minority of readers, to be honest, because "people" have gotten used to information being free) discusses focuses and points of view, corrects, says "this is nonsense" or "you can’t give a voice to that person." And that really annoys me. I write against the public (that was how I covered the campaign for La Libertad Avanza in 2023, which for elDiarioAR was "reader bait"), I don’t write to please the interviewee and even less do I write for the approval of my colleagues.

All of us who try to write steal. Where do you steal from?

I laughed. I don’t "steal," I "draw inspiration from." An elegant way to say "plagiarize." Look, I steal from everywhere. From cinema, from fiction literature, from poetry, from theater. Theater is great for stealing structures for a text, I mean, where it starts, where the conflict is, where a piece ends. That typical Aristotelian structure can be altered. Sometimes, it’s better to start with the conflict, from the middle. Right now, the house upstairs is under construction. Every day at eight, the workers come in. It’s been three weeks of listening to how they chat among themselves. I’ll point out that patriarchy remains strong and it’s likely to last four more generations. You can also steal from their conversations. I try not to steal from myself, because self-plagiarism is a terrible, terrible thing.

What should I do if I want to start writing? What advice would you give me if I’m just starting out? Why should I encourage myself?

What you need to do if you want to start writing is sit down and write.