Her parents were a formative influence: "As a child I thought writing was dreary, drab, but they loved it," recalled Valenzuela in
Americas. "They could be quite obnoxious but funny. That impressed me that writing was more lively than one would think." While she originally hoped to become a painter or a mathematician, writing eventually won out over those early career aspirations.
Valenzuela's first journalistic work appeared in magazines including Esto Es, Atlantida, Quince Abriles, and El Hogar while she was still in her teens. Her first short story, "Ese Canto," was published in 1956. Valenzuela also worked for a time at the Biblioteca Nacional, where Borges was the library's director. She went on to earn a bachelor of arts degree from the University of Buenos Aires.
In 1958 Valenzuela married Theodore Marjak, a French merchant marine and moved with her husband to Normandy, where her daughter, Anna-Lisa, was born. It was while living in France that Valenzuela wrote her first novel, published in 1966 as Hay que sonreir (published in English as Clara), which she wrote while her daughter was napping.
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