Category: Fiction Writing

Articles, Fiction Writing, Literary Translation, Recommendations, Translation, Writing

New Words #5: A Pep Talk for Everyone Except the Late Muriel Spark

lnlanguage

I invite you to get the new year off to a hilarious start by watching Muriel Spark describing her creative process in this 35-second interview clip, which makes me howl with laughter and/or frustration every time I watch it.

I can’t be the only one who finds that video maddening. Are we really supposed to believe Muriel Spark would just sit down, write a book, and then be done writing the book?

a GIF of Frollo from Disney’s animated The Hunchback of Notre Dame shouting, “Witchcraft!”

The implication is that Spark told her stories to herself multiple times, essentially drafting entire novels in her head over a period of weeks or months, before she ever set pen to paper. (As she once put it, “I do all the correcting before I begin, getting it in my mind. And then when I pounce, I pounce.”) If that sounds like a plausible approach for you, go for it! To me, it sounds like torture.

Both my writing and my translation skills improved once I’ve accepted that, for me, the purpose of a first draft is to be a mess. I don’t just mean it’s okay for a first draft to be “bad”; I mean the more cluttered the pages are with notes I’ve written to myself, the better the second draft is likely to be.

I’m just starting now to look at the 50,000 words I wrote during NaNoWriMo in November. Did they get me 50,000 words closer to the end of my story? Absolutely not—and I’m glad! For me, the real benefit of that challenge lies in the prioritization of quantity over quality. If I’m trying to accumulate words for NaNoWriMo, I’m not tempted to delete an awkward bit of dialogue or an unwieldy phrase; instead, I add a bunch of alternatives and plan to figure out what works when I come back to the draft with fresh eyes.

I do the same thing with the first draft of a literary translation; my notes might include links to resources I’ve already checked, but they consist primarily of alternative options for word choice or phrasing. (That said, I recently found a couple of comments I’d left for myself that simply said “nope” and “THIS IS NOT IT,” which might not be great for bolstering confidence but did give me a laugh.)

Sometimes I decide my first instinct was the right one, but the third or fourth idea I had is often my best option. My second thought virtually never turns out to be the best one, but it’s still worth putting on the page; without it, the third and fourth versions wouldn’t exist.

Anne Lamott’s famous “shitty first draft” advice notwithstanding, I think a lot of us privately fear we’re the only ones struggling through messy drafts while everybody else simply sits down with a fresh notebook and writes the title and then their name and then “Chapter 1” and then the first sentence of Chapter 1 and then the second sentence of Chapter 1, à la Muriel Spark. The thing is, even Muriel Spark didn’t actually write that way. The process she describes in that interview clip is transcription; she had done the real work of writing before she sat down. She didn’t have a preternatural capacity for summoning a novel out of thin air, but she did have the self-knowledge to develop a method that worked for her. That—not the bit with the christening of a new notebook—is worth emulating.

Self-Promotion Corner

For the last few years, I’ve looked forward to Iron Horse Literary Review’s annual PhotoFinish issue—a compilation of very brief prose and poetry based on the same photo prompt, released at midnight on New Year’s Eve and free to read online. The 2022 edition is here, and I’m thrilled to say it includes a flash fiction piece of mine. The photo prompt is on page 4, and each contributor provides a statement at the end of the issue saying how they drew inspiration from the photo. Please do take a look!

Songs for the Gusle, my translation of Prosper Mérimée’s 1827 hoax, La Guzla, will be published in March by Frayed Edge Press, and I’m excited to make this unique collection of fake folklore and bogus travelogues available in English for the first time. Come for the vampires and ghosts, stay for the trenchant critique of cultural imperialism! I’ll have information to share about pre-orders soon.

A Humble Suggestion

In each newsletter, I’ll offer at least one recommendation for your reading, watching, or listening pleasure. This time around, I’m highlighting two recent articles that focus on increased interest in (and demand for) translated literature in traditionally insular Anglophone publishing markets.

Fiona O’Connor wrote last week in The Irish Times about a dramatic surge in sales of translated fiction in the UK and Ireland. O’Connor points to small presses as a particular driver of a “disruptive swipe on big publishing houses” but also notes that Brexit has threatened UK-based small presses’ business models.

In her introduction to The Best Short Stories 2022: The O. Henry Prize Winners, Valeria Luiselli presents the common threads in the twenty stories she selected for inclusion, fully half of which were first published in languages other than English. Works in translation only recently became eligible for the O. Henry Prize, and Luiselli notes that this change was a deciding factor in her acceptance of the invitation to serve as guest editor.

Here, Look at My Cats

The world is a mess, and you might welcome a pleasant distraction. For what it’s worth, here are my cats.

Two cats napping on a sage green blanket. On the left is a tuxedo cat; on the right, a dilute tortie. They are facing each other and holding paws.
Sometimes they get a little territorial, but then again, sometimes they hold paws in their sleep.

All the best for a joyous start to the new year!

Laura

Books, Dialogue, Fiction Writing, French, Language Acquisition, Recommendations, Translation, Writing

New Words #3: Bonjour monsieur !

lnlanguage

Even if you’ve never taken a French class in your life, you know what “bonjour” and “monsieur” mean, so go ahead and translate “Bonjour monsieur.” I’ll just wait here.

Four new iPhones are displayed with the “hello” text in different languages: Korean, Portuguese, French, and Spanish.
Photo by Daniel Romero on Unsplash

Great. If you gave it a try, thank you for indulging me, but unfortunately there is one (and only one!) correct answer: “I’m not translating this until I get more context. GIVE ME MORE CONTEXT.”

You might want information as simple as the time of day. “Bonjour” means “hello,” but it also means “good morning” and “good afternoon” in many parts of the French-speaking world; you’ll want to keep those options in mind.

However, the speaker’s location and variety of French also matter. For example, “bon matin” is commonly used for “good morning” among French speakers in Canada and Louisiana; if the speaker has “bon matin” in their everyday vocabulary, you’ll probably rule out “good morning” as your best likely translation of “bonjour.”

Aside from all that, who is this “monsieur,” and in what context is he being addressed? A bilingual dictionary might suggest that the most common translation of “monsieur” is “Mr.,” but “Hello, mister,” is not a common way for English speakers to greet one another. “Sir” will work in many formal contexts, but it won’t account for all the circumstances in which a person might say “Bonjour monsieur,” and the variety of English into which you are translating may affect your choices as well. If the speaker is a teenage student saying hello to a teacher in the morning, what greeting will your target readership recognize as standard: “Good morning, sir,” “Good morning, Mr. So-and-So,” or something else?

But wait! Why are we saying “monsieur” at all? Is it because the gender of the person being addressed is important? Not necessarily. Many French speakers have a general aversion to one-word utterances, which can come across as abrupt or even rude. For example, if someone tells me that they are going on vacation next month, I might ask “Where?” in English, but in French I’d ask “Où ça?” rather than just “Où?” The “ça” doesn’t add anything significant in terms of meaning—“Où ça?” is akin to “Where’s that?” or “Whereabouts?”—but the inclusion of a second word has the effect of softening the question. The same principle applies to greetings; where an English speaker might just say one word, a French speaker is more likely to use a greeting and a name or designation of some kind (the equivalent of “Good morning, everyone,” or “Hello, friends,” for example). Maybe, then, all “Bonjour monsieur” really means is “Hello.” (Or “Good morning.” Or “Good afternoon.” You get the idea.)

Of course, all this is assuming that you intend to make the dialogue sound natural to the target reader—or that you’re a language teacher or learner aiming to communicate appropriately in a target language culture. It’s also possible that you’d prefer to preserve a hint of the source language in your translation so as to emphasize the specificity of the source text and/or its setting. This concept in translation theory—domestication vs. foreignization—is a topic for another time, but now that I’ve mentioned foreignization . . .

Noticing this type of conversational habit is useful not only for translators but also for writers of dialogue. Let’s say you’re writing a character whose first and strongest language is French and who acquired proficiency in English as an adult. You don’t want to lean on stereotypes and replace all their th sounds with the letter z (please don’t!), but the recent acquisition of a new language is an important aspect of this character’s experience, and you want it to be reflected in their conversation patterns. Looking at everyday phrases in the character’s two languages can give you insight into the kinds of conversational habits that a learner might transfer from one language to another—habits that a reader might not consciously recognize as French but that distinguish this character’s speech patterns from those of your other characters.

A Humble Suggestion

In each newsletter, I’ll offer at least one recommendation for your reading, watching, or listening pleasure.

Hilary Leichter’s 2020 debut novel, Temporary, is a brilliant satire in which regular employment (“the steadiness”) eludes the protagonist, who accepts a series of increasingly bizarre temporary work placements. How bizarre? When she’s posted to a pirate ship, she thinks the lingo will be easy enough to learn, but it turns out “Davy Jones’s locker” is where the pirates store their office supplies. The narrative of this fanciful and unexpectedly moving novel is as fragmented, disorienting, and ultimately rewarding as its protagonist’s career progression.

Words Against Strangers is a new daily game that challenges you to list as many words as possible in a given category (think “nouns that start with v” or “eight-letter words that include the letter n”). You’ll be racing against the clock (four rounds per day, each lasting one minute) but also against one random person who volunteered to play the quiz a few days in advance. I got to be the “stranger” for game #38, and it’s not too late to challenge me; you can go back and play the games you’ve missed.

Here, Look at My Cats

The world is a mess, and you might welcome a pleasant distraction. For what it’s worth, here are my cats.

Two cats are lying on a purple and gray blanket beside a green decorative pillow. The tuxedo cat is licking his dilute tortie sister’s face. She looks like she’s smiling.
Adopting a bonded pair might be the smartest decision I’ve ever made.

See you back here soon!

Laura

Books, Fiction Writing, Links, Literary Translation, Podcasts, Recommendations, Translation, Writing

New Words #1: Rejection, Shmejection

lnlanguage

Welcome to New Words, a newsletter about writing, translation, and language acquisition.

I am a freelance writer and translator, an adult language learner, and a former high school world language teacher, which means that these topics are inescapably intertwined in my career and creative pursuits. This newsletter is intended to offer a peek behind the scenes as I work, and I hope it will appeal to folks who are interested in blurring the lines between these fields: writers and language teachers curious about translation, for instance, or translators wondering whether to pursue an interest in teaching or writing.

To get us started, I’ll share a bit today about how my experience as a translator prompted me to reengage with fiction writing. There is a practical aspect to this; my schedule as a freelancer can be unpredictable, but it also enables me to reserve time for creative work at moments of the day when I am focused and energetic for creative work. It wasn’t until I started translating literature and submitting it for publication, however, that I began to get past the mental block I’d had for years. I stopped limiting myself to the verbal equivalent of doodling; I started finishing drafts of short stories, revising them, and submitting them to literary magazines.

Judging by my Twitter feed, which is littered with writers offering each other advice about how to handle rejection, I’m hardly alone in finding that last step to be the toughest. This is not a matter of hypersensitivity but a reflection of the sheer difficulty involved in placing a poem, essay, or short story in a literary magazine. Few publications are open about the number of submissions they receive, but the handful of acceptance rates that are common knowledge are well below those of Ivy League schools. Case in point: Taco Bell Quarterly, a magazine devoted to—you guessed it—prose and poetry about Taco Bell, accepted about one percent of submissions for its forthcoming issue. Submitting to lit mags is such a universally demoralizing experience that Chill Subs, a new database and online community designed to make the process less intimidating, offers a rejection bingo game for users of its submission tracker, turning “we often have to reject great work” from a platitude to a collectible.

Because rejection is the norm, every acceptance I have received has taken me by surprise. I treat emails from publications like horror movies; even if the subject line is “CONGRATULATIONS,” I still peek through my fingers at the message in case there’s a jump scare ahead.

As it happens, I’d put rejection letters into the same category as jump scares: I dislike them, but they don’t have the power to hurt my feelings.

It isn’t just that I’ve had the experience of receiving a rejection from a lesser-known journal and an acceptance from a prestigious one for the same piece on the same day, although that certainly helped me get some perspective on quirks of the process. It’s also a principle that became clear to me as soon as I started submitting as a literary translator. When I’m translating a work that was previously published and well-received in another language, I know I’m not alone in thinking the story is worthy of interest. Since I’m also confident in my skills as a translator, I have no doubt that the story’s quality is up to the level of the publication’s or editor’s expectations, yet more often than not, the outcome is a rejection.

That’s because the question is not Is this work good enough to appear in this publication? but Is this story the right fit for this publication’s current needs, and if so, is it landing on the right editor’s desk at the right moment?

That framing has given me a healthier attitude toward submitting my own fiction. A magazine’s decision to publish or decline a piece isn’t an up-or-down assessment of the writer’s talent or effort; instead, an acceptance marks the convergence of talent, effort, and (crucially!) a considerable degree of luck. It became a lot easier for me to let a piece go in search of a home once I recognized which parts of this process I can control and which I can’t.

My first short fiction publication is scheduled for the end of this year.

A Humble Suggestion

In each newsletter, I’ll offer at least one recommendation for your reading, watching, or listening pleasure.

  • Novelist Rebecca Makkai has launched a personal/public reading project on Twitter, using the hashtag #AroundTheWorldIn84Books. (You can read about the origin of the project in this thread.) The first book she selected was The Door by Magda Szabó, translated from Hungarian by Len Rix—a stunning novel that I can’t recommend highly enough. I’m currently reading The Piano Teacher by Elfriede Jelinek, translated from German by Joachim Neugroschel, in anticipation of Makkai’s discussion on Twitter in early November. This project has provided a great incentive for me to move a couple of classics to the top of my to-read list, and I’m excited to see what’s next.
  • The podcast Everything Is Alive is back for a new season, and it continues to be delightful. Each episode features an in-depth interview with an inanimate object. Does a rental car care which airport it’s returned to? Does a baguette remember the hopes and dreams it harbored back when it was dough? At long last, we have answers to the questions we probably never knew we had.

Here, Look at My Cats

The world is a mess, and you might welcome a pleasant distraction. For what it’s worth, here are my cats.

Two cats are shown reclining on a sofa. In the foreground, a dilute tortoiseshell cat is leaning against a green pillow, looking directly into the camera. In the background, slightly out of focus, a tuxedo cat with a black-and-pink nose is also looking toward the photographer.

If David and Alexis ever decide to record an album as an indie folk duo, their album cover is ready to go. Their rider demands, however, will be a nightmare.

That’s all for now. See you back here soon!

Laura

To receive new posts in your inbox, subscribe (for free!) at lauranagle.substack.com.