I listened to it, The night a liquid pour filling the barrel. Dawn, a gray light I didn't want to wake up to. The smartphone, a surface for humidity and the alarm the doom. Cold outside the duvet, Black cat whiskers against my cheek. However, Monday. Groceries was the order. Job? I work Sundays, holidays and you tell me when I'm not. Even resting I do so. For a writer even when not writing, All the time is thought.
[Nadine, en interacción con el sistema frontal número 4, mantendrá el temporal de lluvias torrenciales en la península de Yucatán y el sureste de México.
Comisión Nacional del Agua | 19 de octubre de 2024 | Comunicado]
Y muchos queridos lectores se convertirán, a su vez, en escritores. Así empezamos todos los que escribimos: leyendo. Oíamos la voz de un libro que nos hablaba.
El cuento de la criada, introducción. Margaret Atwood.
Qué conste que a mí ningún libro en particular me habló. Supongo que me gustaba la idea de cultivar el arte de no hacer «nada»..
Words are the prelude, the story is nothing else than the marvelous use of words as tools performed in scene after many practice hours. Thats what a quote of myself would say. However, Im not quotable.
Thus, its time to share a Reith lecture. One from 1996. That old!
Yes, that old. In the original entry, the one I translated 1, I mention the RAE discussion on the j and the x and you might get confused what does the RAE has to do with a web of words. You might even ignore what the RAE is!
THE RAE
RAE stands for Royal Academy of (E for the Spanish) Language. Theres no such institution in English. English thrives by adding words from the colonial territories (either conquered by the British empire or by the Coca cola one). All you have is the Oxford dictionary as the dictator of GOOD ENGLISH USAGE.
Well, we, in the Spanish speaking world, we have the RAE. And people (the common people) can get really angry about the RAE discussing if the ancient usage of the x and the j is proper.
To be true, the RAE is quite reasonable (except when admitting women into their ranks) and it has admitted popular usages of the words instead of fostering the idea of the language being unchangeable2.
You will see why I say this by listening to the lecture. All I’m doing today is posting the link. The questions posed there are equally valid in Spanish as they’re made in English. Its worth thinking about it when writing fiction.
Anyways, this is a blog where nonsense is allowed.
This is a podcast broadcasted by the BBC Reith lectures in 1996 as a series of lectures by Jean Aitchinson.
With a lot of trouble and in floppy time due to the fact Im a terrible listener; I need the transcriptions. Otherwise I keep listening Tim Ferrough where Dean Farrar should be. ↩︎
Its my opnion that the flexibility of the Academy makes it possible to understand Cervantes 500 years later. Unlike Shakespeare, whom I cant read in English at all. ↩︎
First, think of some real individuals you’ve come into contact with today (waitress, coat-check girl,car-wash attendant, etc.) and place them each in a scene with one of your characters. How will theseindividuals interact? What might they discuss? You never know when one of these “minor contacts”will have a big impact on a more prominent character. (And if you find one of these minor characters interesting, you may wish to draw up a separate character bio.)
Sarah Domet. 90 days to your novel. Day 7th
.
It happened one day that I wanted to have a boring teacher to explain part of the plot. The jealous minor character jumped out and accused my very important female support, of not knowing a lesson. In a world where not knowing was the same as being heretic… Thus death awaited.
I was unable to erase her interaction. It was my first time with a character doing what she wanted. No matter my designs. She was being real, vivid and honest. Bollocks!
Annoying.To erase her was to destroy a more or less good story. I’m no Borges, yet it was at least good enough for an opera prima… One I re wrote 5 times. Hereby, I was there. In need of a knight in shining armour to rescue my character…
This gave shape to the how I made it to the ending I wanted and had me erase a lot of bad scenes I loved [but equally lacked and were as cheap as making a girl rescue a dog from villager kids stoning it… In the middle of a harsh winter in the opening just so you know she has a very good heart].
Do treat your minor characters with respect. They’re not upsetting flies. They’re butterfly wings changing what’s going up in the dessert. They deserve you listening to them, your imagination allowing them romping around, doing mischief and dropping one or two H bombs behind. Your work will get better by trying to solve the aftermath.
La teoría del chismorreo puede parecer una broma, pero hay numerosos estudios que la respaldan. Incluso hoy en día la inmensa mayoría de la comunicación humana (ya sea en forma de mensajes de correo electrónico, de llamadas telefónicas o de columnas de periódicos) es chismorreo. Es algo que nos resulta tan natural que parece como si nuestro lenguaje hubiera evolucionado para este único propósito.
Nuval Yoah Harari. Sapiens.
Y que alguien me diga que la narración no es contar chismes… Sobre gente que no existe pero igual la vemos en la recámara con alguien con quién no debería, comiendo cosas que no resultan saludables, siendo despedidos o humillados, jurando recuperar reinos aunque sea hasta su último aliento (y eso es un chisme porque rara vez esos personajes se mueren), traicionando la confianza de otros personajes. ¡Ah! ¡El chisme!
