Mes: febrero 2024

Categorías
How to write fiction

Grammar or no grammar? p1


South Wilts Grammar School for Girls, Salisbury
South Wilts Grammar School for Girls, Salisbury by Jaggery is licensed under CC-BY-SA 2.0


ME HATES GRAMMAR

I’ll declare it bluntly. I HATE GRAMMAR. I do dislike it enough to ignore what the heck a subjuntivo is and a post pretérito (one of the many Spanish tenses) must be some bug living under a rock. Future, present or past? I might be able to explain the tense but no idea of the rules. Accents? If is ain’t aguda, it is es an esdrújula… And you must have noticed it already. I have no idea of grammar in my own mother tongue.

I used to teach English as a foreign language. English as a language books are filled with grammar, phonetics and cultural explanations. Thus I’m more or less good at grammar and I can for sure explain comparatives to a nine y.o.

Nonetheless I still hate grammar.

HOW DO I SURVIVE WITH A PASSABLE GRAMMAR IN SPANISH THEN?

I survive with a copy paste compass I acquired when young and that’s incorporated now to my, sometimes, elephantine memory. We all have one. The memory that keeps anything useless and superfluous to others but us since we like the topic. Such as the 121 chemical elements, Beatles covers’ graphic reticules, name of the album plus director of the MV of each song by Depeche Mode, animations titles, scientific names of the favourite plants ( cyclamen persicum, sinningia, calathea makoyana, pelargonium…), tour and concert or statements by Justin Bieber (you can interchange Bieber for BTS[1]).

Some people use mnemonic techniques and can access bigger databases but we all have access to one.

Mine storages plots, titles and phrases. That’s how I can write passably well in Spanish, navigating that sea by sonar (dictionary and text correction turned on in the word processor).

TO BE CONTINUED…

[1] Not saying they’re the same, just that the name of the artist is irrelevant when the point is how we storage what we like and not what others do.

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Lunes de patchwork: SNS y escribir

When the wife does the work but the man gets credit?

Categorías
Sunday word hunter: poetry and nonsense Varios

Un dibujo

Un par de ramas y luz moteada.
Con la raíz que no vi…
Un porrazo entre las manzanas.

Categorías
Cómo escribir ficción

Los cuentos no son reales

—Eso es lo que sucede cuando uno se mete en los cuentos —gruñó Yaya—. Lo empieza a ver todo confuso. Llega un momento en que no se sabe qué es real y qué no. Y, al final, los cuentos se apoderan de ti. Te vuelven la cabezadel revés. No me gustan los cuentos. No son reales. Y a mí no me gustan las cosas que no son reales.

Esmeralda Ceravieja para Brujas de Viaje. Terry Prattchet.

Categorías
Cómo escribir ficción

2nd of the 90 days to own your own world… I mean novel

woman wearing striped shirt holding ice cream
Photo by Jonathan Borba on Pexels.com




Accordingly to Sarah Domet —90 days to your novel— and I’m quoting:



«Every writer aims to immerse the reader so deeply into the story, to so hypnotize the reader with the details and the writing, that she continues turning the pages. You want your reader to feel like she’s literally present in your fictional world, running right alongside your characters as they get swept up in the action of the story. This is, after all, one of the reasons people read: to lose themselves in a world more interesting than their own.»

DO YOU WANT THE SAME?

Your reader running along your characters in your own fictional world [ or maybe write an extension of Star Wars, …………….. (fill in over the dotted line)]. Then, let’s play to wrap up readers into details that might not matter to the most common mortal (until they read a novel; a lot of people miss out seeing, listening to, tasting and smelling much of their conscious time[1]) but connects us —all of us— emotionally.

Do you have a fav Tee you won’t trash away despite the small holes and obvious wear cause it is the only one that covers your hips at the right height? Would you remember this kind of character or would you forget them? Would you prefer the girl with a box filled with every jewellery brand’s engagement rings[2]?  
Would you really hate the vanilla smelling cappuccino lover villain? It’s harder hating these kind of bad guys. Do you remember the softness of a Teddy bear? Dressing a Barbie up?

GO AND USE

Your nose: go and smell the roses, the intoxicating and indescribable scratch presentation card of the skunk, the nauseating urea smell at the tail of any perfume or aftershave[3].

Your eyes: time to learn more than the primary colours. Mmmm. You can’t use your eyes? You already know you have adjectives the rest of us can’t even dream with understanding. The same way, being asexual is a joke to most people. Nonetheless I exist.

Your tongue: besides salty… Can you taste any other flavours? Yeah, blood ain’t just sweet. It has a metallic flavour and smell of its own!

Fingers, skin: what’s the desk’s surface like? Rough, smooth as a lake or hard and heavy? My drawing table is smooth until you find the scratching of cutter or soil grains.
Your imagination: don’t look. I repeat, don’t look at the purple tentacle climbing your shoulder and don’t, for whatever’s sake, turn around.

Go and have fun with your own nonsense. Pasto kalo.

[1] I’m one of them.

[2] Right, dreaming we own all those pretty bling bling stones…

[3] … What can I say, I don’t smell parfums or fragrances as an uniform whole. I don’t recognize EVERY ingredient but the smells come separately and the fixer is always the last one, in the background.

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Lunes de patchwork: SNS y escribir

Lectores…

Tipos de lectores

Categorías
Sunday word hunter: poetry and nonsense Varios

Disqualified


A hundred words?
Not in toll.
A story?
Nibble, nibble the mice ate it away!

Then the dog devoured the rodent.

Everyone sighed relieved.
And the contest?
Remember?
Not a hundred words.

Categorías
Cómo escribir ficción

¡Mise en abyme! ¿Texto espejo?

compact powder on white surface
Photo by Dids . on Pexels.com

Cuando empiezo a pensar que la narratología es una cosa que no podría ponerse más extraña, la cosa se pone aún más extraña todavía y no hay, por lo menos, un respiro donde ofrezcan una pastillita azul porque hace 149 páginas que me tragué la roja. Entonces… desde las limpias aguas reflejantes de la página 149…

¿QUÉ ES UN MISE EN ABYME?

La introducción a la narratología (el libro que estoy leyendo), lo define como un término que sale de la heráldica, en la representación pictórica y que es comparable a la regresión infinita pero eso no resulta del todo claro.

RECURRO A LA WIKIPEDIA.

Un mise en abyme o mise en abîme significa puesta en abismo (construcción en abismo o abismación también como referencias), en francés y es como tener un juego de Matrioskas donde hay una trama secundaria igualita a la trama principal, metida dentro de la trama principal de manera que aquello termina siendo como un fractal… Aquello resulta más fácil de entender con un cuadro de Jan van Eyck (mencionado en la Wiki) y eso que aún no llego a la literatura.

En el cine, el ejemplo dado me recuerda a los BL con un escritor de literatura homoerótica como personaje principal. El tema del escritor de novela dentro de la novela.

En un manhwa, el dibujante de manhwa dibujando títulos románticos mientras que se enamora como parte de la trama.

Aunque, es más probable que los cineastas hablando de la mise en abyme, se refieran al tema del “sueño dentro del sueño” como en Inception (película americana 2010 y nombrada como ejemplo wiki aunque yo también lo pensé…  demasiado tarde).

De literatura… la wikipedia no dice ni mu. Una página distinta trae a cuento Hamlet y la Caida de la casa Usher… Acabo de escuchar la Casa Usher en iVox y no hay nada que se remita a nadie escribiendo cuentos dentro del cuento. La página menciona tres criterios más: el uso de un referente sobre el cual se teje la trama[1], un relato centrado en el dicurso[2] y; la conciencia metaficticia que se centra en el acto de escribir más que en endosar una figura autorial a un personaje.

Para Mieke Bal, es imposible que se cumpla el ideal del parecido absoluto por lo que propone un resumen de ambas historias y su comparación para identificar el grado de fidelidad a través del número de términos que ambos textos comparten (… narratología, gran suspiro). Y ya que es imposible la fidelidad absoluta, ella propone el nombre de TEXTO ESPEJO para los textos intercalados que recuerdan la trama principal.

Intentando insertar un texto intercalado en espejo… ¿cómo es que sigo escribiendo sobre chorradas? Pasto kalo.

[1] ¡Aleluya! Eso lo conozco, se llama Andrea Camilleri en El olor de la noche; usando como referente Una rosa para Emily de W. Faulkner.

[2] ¿El caso de La Casa Usher?

Categorías
How to write fiction

Inner torn


black and white torn photo of a person
Photo by Elīna Arāja on Pexels.com


This is the result exercise from an exercise proposed in the 90 days to your novel by Sarah Domet. It is a description of the insides of my handbag. Hopefully it won’t make you despair [anyways I’m unable to write the many many words other writers do]. Ah, I’ll update the original [in Spanish obv].



Inner torn

Whenever I’m out, the handbag is a must. Regardless of my reticence to carry a wallet. Female wallets are too big to duck inside the jean’s back pocket. They’re awfully cute but unnecessarily bothersome and flamboyant for me to use.

Feminism can be what it is, but it will never achieve shit so long we need to carry stuff around somewhere else than in deep pants’ pockets. Nein. We must look good without the smartphone or the wallet filling the space in our pockets and deforming the curvy silhouette. Pockets? Men only need the wallet, keys and that’s it.

There’s a satin padded fabric coin purse in red, yellow, white and blue. Each padding section is rivetted with thread. It’s been long since I replaced the torn lining with felter. One of the stuffed fabric butterflies has disappeared already yet, it was a gift and it came from a very far away place.

Besides the coin purse I have a plastic zipped bag (recycled dental hygiene kit) where to stuff the oficial ID in an non updated address  (no, driving licenses are not the norm), a pair of aspirins, the «mobility» pass card — the one I had to buy to ride the subway, metrobus and trolebus while the old one was not recoverable— a needle with three threads and some drugstore point card.

No matter pandemics, I refill a sample shampoo jar, one of those from hotels  — pleasantries from family members— with anti bacterial gel… Up to half the container. Some hand cream, a yellow cover mirror from some Korean store uptown (Mexico city, municipality town has a single Chinese restaurant). They partner up with a Kleenex tissue pack, immortal till the sneezing season (usually any time I’m not carrying any), sunglasses and some lip balm I don’t get why I carry of I never use it.

All that in the messenger bag of Chinese leather — Chinese? Leather? Yes, I think. Super soft blackness, metal music chain and some torn fabric in the lining inner bag — which I’ve just sewn last week. In there, travel the eye drops and the mini swiss knife with cuticle pusher.
So… Who am I through my handbag’s contents?

Pasto kalo.

Categorías
Lunes de patchwork: SNS y escribir

Are humans the only ones who can speak?