There were many men working at Hazard’s who remained anti-Negro, and violently so. Freed blacks would threaten such men by competing for their jobs. George wished that kind of hatred didn’t exist at the ironworks, but he also knew no government could legislate it out of existence because it was rooted in fear; illogical.
North and South; Book two, Friends and enemies. John Jakes.
Like Mark Mason says, it is all about us and them. Are you able to have the reader side with your character? Can you make readers to feel like «one of us»? Have a great time making the reader afraid of them.
ARE THERE WRITERS (LITERATURE WRITERS) WHO WRITE IN A DIFFERENT LANGUAGE TO THEIR OWN?
How many? Do they write correctly? Is the switch convenient? What languages do they speak and in which language are they writing?
I’ll stop asking. I can always inquire things I won’t be able to answer later.
LET’S VOOGLE IT
Exo: from outside
Phonos: voice
And it is a subject offered by the Warwick University!
EXOPHONY.
All about authors who don’t write in their mother tongues.
Imagine my face when I discovered that’s what I’m doing when writing poetry in a language I’m not supposed to be any good at or use better than any college kid. Oh, misspelling I always do that in Spanish too. Corrector and the bad use of thumbs are partially responsible. Plus, my laziness to get up and fetch a dictionary… Right, I take it up from the bookshelf ONLY when it is a must. Or there’s enough signal to browse it.
HOW MANY? WHO?
The list is quite looooong in Wiki. I don’t really know from any respectable article[1] but just for a taste:
THOSE WHO TOOK ENGLISH:
Vladimir Nabokov, Russian (he spoke French too).
Jack Kerouac, joual (Quebec’s French variant); he finally migrated back to French
Joseph Conrad, Polish, ( French too). He might have said something like: “l’Anglais m’est toujours une langue étrangère“/ “English is forever a foreign language to me”. You judge.
Poetry is… something ineffable (besides the little stealing I just did to open the entry)
It can be so so tiny as two words like the famous Mohammed Ali’s “me-we” in a very emotional speech about unity and friendship.
It can be longer and contain 5,7 and 5 syllables as haikus do. Or be kilometric as the Iliad and something mythical called The Fairy queen[2].
WITHOUT IAMBIC STANZAS
Can it be done without metrics? Is music poetry? Rap? The cuisine? Can AI rhyme up poetry[3]?
A poem sounds nice. It is some kind of hybrid Pokemon where words play their games and gift us with nice sounds. Either by rhythm, translation of sound /rhyme) or sequence patterns (metrics). It can even be horrible but true.
IS THEN MUSIC POETRY?
If you ask the guys giving a Nobel to a singer… yes. And there won’t be a lack of complainers saying the next Nobel to this one could go to a comic drawer (back then it wasn’t time for the next Nobel yet). That won’t make a lot of change in the way storytelling works but it might change this or the other country’s PIB.
SENSORY AND ABSTRACTION
And again, I’m updating this entry. You’ve seen what Scott McCloud says in The invisible art of reading comics about abstraction. The more abstract, the more intimate. The more intimate, the more we identify with.
Such is the power of poetry, It evocates. It summons from nowhere the scalding cold of rain drops. It is the drained tuna or the novel without the blah blah… Niet. Not that last one sentence.
It has flow. It is relentless. It requires a more sophisticated literacy than anything. And it has survived conquests, darkness, religious debates and many other happenings. It can be heretic and still adore a being. It has evolved from chants accompanied by choruses and music to simple drawings ordered with an intention (poemojis). It has taken the shinkansen of rap and staid exactly the same as crocodiles. No changes.
Such is poetry, ineffable but something we know upon sight or hearing. A bundle of words [I know…stanzas]. Something idiotic. Something sublime.
How much poetry have you done this year? No matter of written or drawn. Pasto kalo.
[1] Gustavo Adolfo Becquer. All his poems are called Rima (rhyme)… and numbered. I don’t remember the number. Not sorry. My memory is not Asimov’s memory. It is mine.
[2] Mythical since I’m not reading it ever. And I won’t pretend I did.
[3] In the video I watched trying to define a poem, it was a no. But I wonder if the money people [I know, invertors] behind the movie Free Guy had a Chinese AI as CEO [AI’s can be nepotist already]. And, a lot of years after I wrote this entry in Spanish; Sunbaenim, my friend’s ChatGPT, can write short stories.
It is more difficult to stare at the blank paper and try to fill it with something, anything; than criticizing. I wonder how many people would just shut up if they tried to write or just draw over. And drawing is not as difficult as we are made to believe. It just takes longer than anything if you don’t do it daily.
THE HARSH TRUTH
You can never know if your work will be picked up. Alexandria’s library catalogue was made by someone. How many books were lost forever because they didn’t make up the chap doing the catalogue’s taste? Worst, you can never know if it might disappear in a fire.
You do your best. For years. Until there it comes, the one momento when you take the chance. I’ve been a fool and rejected chances. Are you?
Take your time learning how to do and then take your time thinking how to make it better.
WHAT “GOOD” MEANS THEN?
Good is in your terms. Is it good to be famous and sell a lot of books… of the same series whilst being unable to write anything else? Is it good being famous and a big bigot? Is it good to be famous without a family life?
Who is it for and what is it for? You’re the judge. If it fulfills its mission, then it is good. If not, there’s a good chance you need to change. In between “good” and “as good as possible” you can waste your time doing what you shoulnd’t.
PROTECTION
Don’t protect it so much. It never ends. THIS WON’T BE YOUR ONLY IDEA, OR YOUR ONLY CHANCE. The only way to live the steps is to step on the steps. No one is helping you from paying to have a blog. No one is helping you from post a video. DO!
What number of bad idea is this? Have fun with your bad ideas. Pasto kalo.
Once upon a time I used to have a LinkedIn[1] account with my penname until policies said my avatar was not mine and wasn’t me. It obviously wasn’t me. For good reasons I won’t tell here. Amd since that comment was a complete distraction from business, let’s jump out into the important stuff.
The original entry is a translation. Given the fact that in Wednesdays I post translating myself into English, I think the honest thing is leaving you with the reference and the link.
…Aha, the following I found in LinkedIn’s TED posts and it is an extract from the book The Practice: Shipping Creative Workby Seth Godin published by in 2020.
WHY TO READ IT?
There are some dark sides (minus Darth Vader) to some of the ideas in it. Not everything one reads comes to be true to a T. However, used as I’ve been to have only Big Choma and La cocina de Meg[2] as my main and only hooligans; I know that in occasion, the ones cheering from behind the fence run out of gas. That’s when we need to go and get some helium for our ego. Here you can get some in case you have run out.
[1] Quite useless to find a job but (when there’s avalaible internet) quite nice to waste time reading. Even if it is only little me.
[2] Sometimes it is not the lack of people cheering or themrunning out of gas, it is the person themselves who needs to believe….
For demonstration purposes, and let me say this wasn’t the best tale I’ve written; I’m going to do the storytelling as if I were answering questions (or the bullets proposed to solve story creation from the last entry) and a second version; describing what’s happening.
IN CASE YOU DON’T REMEMBER OR DIDN’T READ THE AFOREMENTIONED ENTRY SINCE YOU LANDED FOR THE FIRST TIME IN THIS NONSENSE BLOG
To create a story we need
A character
The character’s wanting or wish
The thing helping the character from getting their wish
The reaction or what the character does to beat such obstacle
The result: they get their wish or they don’t: this can be twisted
WANTED ZE. Sketch idea
ZE is a female mosquito. She flies over a grassy field and her radar detects a very attractive (from her point of view) human. They smell like CO2. She buzzes, excited. She goes closer. Close up to the neck. Ze pushes her siringe but something isn’t working. She flies over, buzzing. General pan of the human body, as if taking things in perspective.
She goes closer to the legs. She can’t eat. She goes away. She comes back and lands on the man’s back. The six syringes in her nose go into the jacket. There’s a close up to miscroscopic level. Her proboscide isn’t long enough. Under the sweater there’s even more fabric. She tries to pull back her proboscide but one of the two saws gets stuck. She feels a breeze behind and then nothing. She is smashed.
I AM BORED NOW
Yes, it is kinda[1] boring but this is very simple model for a comic script in which you enumerate the things as they happen or will happen and won’t work as a tale[2].
SECOND VERSION (and this is going to be quite different to the one in Spanish since I write a little better than I did back then)
Zzzz buzzes, wings a blur, a zoom here, another there to avoid that higher grass. The blades drip dew and she must fly around, a drop falls too close. Ze is out of danger.
It is warmer there, it smells like CO2. She buzzes close to an ear, surrounds the body, yummy! Babies are in order after the meal… There’s no regret in not meeting them, she won’t know what happens after she lays them inside the pool.
This prey is a two legged one and in very deep in a corner of her mind, she knows they’re all very strange but tasty. No fur, tender skin and colour don’t matter, a warm meal. Time to dig in! The long superior limb, that’s the place to land…. Her palps taste something awful. She buzzes a storm around the head. She looks down over the hair at the top. The downer limbs should be. She lands on fibers. No! The food is there… very close.
She flies over again. Again, she buzzes a different storm. The other side of the side with the holes… Her legs feel soft skin. Yey! Her drinking Straw goes in… what’s this? It is a thin but thick fiver tissue and she can’t reach.
Pull back! Pull back! She is unable to. One of the saws is keeping her there. She moves to right, left, up. A breeze is coming from behind. Her composed eyes peer behind. Her organs are not where they should be. Light fades to black.
—Ugg! —A second individual that was overlooked by Ze in her reckon makes a disgusted face.
Which is better? Why?
Have fun doing this with your own fiction. Pasto kalo.
Thus, the order in which we present the elements does matter. It conditions the imagination to the following movement and the “what” we’re to tell.
Unfortunately, there are no magic formulas to know if 9, 8, 7 or 3, 6, 0 is better when telling a story. It is the writer, or the comic drawer who decides that. It is even your job to decide the cliffhanger. Something readers”hate” but need in order to remain interested.
Photo by Louis on Pexels.comPhoto by cottonbro studio on Pexels.comThe sequence conditions and also tells us what to omit
ABOUT TRANSLATIONS
First, let me clear I demonstrated this in Spanish. English ain’t my mother tongue AND I’m a tad tone deaf. Of the possible 8 tones of the “ma” syllable in Chinese, I listen… None. However, I’m able to distinguish vowels in English. So, trying to figure this out in the atone, toned use of syllables for poetry in English won’t do1. I’ll translate, which probably won’t come through the way it is intended.
BORGES AND MUSICALITY
Borges does explain how the order of words mess up the musicality of verses in the way you will never be able to translate a poem written in a language to that same language, into what you would call a revised version.
<<Otra forma de traducción creo que es imposible, sobre todo si se piensa que dentro de un mismo idioma la traducción es imposible. Shakespeare es intraducible a otro inglés que no sea el suyo. Imaginemos una traducción literal de un verso de Darío: «La princesa está pálida en su silla de oro» es literalmente igual a «En su silla de oro está pálida la princesa». En el primer caso el verso es muy lindo, ¿no?, por lo menos para los fines musicales que él busca. Su traducción literal, en cambio, no es nada, no existe.»
Borges
<<Translation becomes impossible within the same language. Shakeaspeare can’t be rewritten in a different English, to his. This is another way in which translation becomes unthinkable. Let’s review a literal translation of a verse by Ruben Darío:
“In her gilded seat the pale princess be” is quite similar to “The pale princess is on her gilded chair”. The first case is lovelier than the second; given its musicality. The literal translation vanishes, it is nothing. 2>>
Photo by Adonyi Gábor on Pexels.comPhoto by Ranjit on Pexels.comThe firey thirst was extinguished by the stream of her affection Photo by Ranjit on Pexels.comThe scarce stream quenched the firey thirst for affection
TO BE CONTINUED
Yes, I’m able to use it to my advantage writing poetry BUT… I’m afraid I’m terrible at phonetics ↩︎
Jorge Luis Borges, El oficio de traducir. Encuesta sobre la traducción por Fernando Sánchez Sorondo para La opinión cultural en el número sobre «Problemas de la traducción». Jorge Luis Borges, the craft of translating. Inquiry about translation by Fernando Sánchez Sorondo for La Opinión cultural about “Troubles in translation” in Borges todo el año (All round year Borges) blog; Lau키메라 showed me in regards to Borges. And this is quite a list of mentions.
El trabajo de bibliotecario mágico, quien tiene que pasarse los días en esta clase de ambiente sobrecargado, es un empleo de alto riesgo.
La luz fantástica. Terry Prattchet.
Suele pensarse que los empleos de mayor riesgo en las historias de fantasía son: bárbaro, rey, princesa, héroe o… Cazador. Pero, ¿ser bibliotecario o tesorero? El bibliotecario puede quedarse atrapado entre una reyerta de libros mágicos y cambiar de forma. El tesorero, tener que perseguir a alguien a quien no le importa firmar nada en absoluto [ si bien la papelería burocrática es inútil] y, encima, te grita todo el tiempo.
¿Qué empleos de alto riesgo tendrás tú en tu próximo trabajo de ficción?Pasto kalo.
Maybe you think words are not something to be wary of. Watch out! The traitors. Sometimes the complaint is hidden among them. They can be a quick peek into the horrible inner world of the character. And they’re easily misunderstood. Pick them with care. Or let them ooze without regard.
As unworthy as they seem, they can change a character’s world. In consequence, be wary of words and in awe too. Pasto kalo.
