February 4th, 2010
When I announced to my parents I was going to art school my father tried to advise me against it. ‘There is no nobility in poverty,’ he said, ‘it just makes you bitter.’ I accused him of not ‘understanding’. He just sighed and returned to his book. I ran off and slammed a door or something and then I wondered, ‘why is he talking about poverty when I was talking about art school?’ I discovered the answer a few years down the track. Now my own children come to the dinner table, sit quietly, turn to me and say, ‘Mother, what advice do you have for us as we make our way through this life?’
Just kidding.
At this point I am reminded of an experience I had in America when, attempting to take an isolated road through a national park in a car with no snow chains, I was advised not to by the park ranger. ‘But can I?’ was my response. He repeated, ‘Maam, I am advising you not to drive any further.’ I nearly said, ‘Listen mate, just a yes or no answer,’ then I realised he was covering himself. If I did attempt the crossing, and was frozen in, I could not sue him or the park. It was an American thing.
I take this approach with my children, I caution and advise, and in return I am informed they know everything and would I please stop annoying them. My response? I say ‘When you are in the cancer ward/alcoholics unit/emergency/divorce court/police lock up/maximum security prison/dead end job/dole queue just remember I advised you and thus you cannot blame me.’
Advice is rarely heeded, but as I emerge into the ‘emerging author’ category, people ask me what advice do I have for aspiring writers. Tough question if you take it seriously and pretend people will take any notice. My experiences during my fledgling writing career are particular to me, with a few universals one can pick up anywhere with a bit of research. However there is one nugget I would like to share, one I heard from the lips of a commissioning editor at a forum and one that has stuck with me.
As a writer, think carefully about whether you want to be published by a mainstream commercial publishing house or not. If it’s the latter these days there are plenty of avenues for self-publishing in either book form, on the Internet or through other independent ventures.
It’s really good advice. Get it clear in your mind before you even start and you’ll save yourself a lot of grief. I know some brilliant writers who are very realistic about the size of their readership and prefer to pursue the independent route, and I know others who spend every moment banging on the publishers door and you know that door is never going to open for them because what they have written will not sell in today’s market. And this is before you get to issues of talent or quality. The history of milk bottles told in verse is not ever going to cut it.
Do your research. This is imperative. Find out what is on the shelves, find out what people are reading and why. Then take this knowledge and think about it. Is it the direction you want to take? Would your book easily stand with those already in the bookshops, is it better, does it take the genre and shift it slightly? Taking a professional, commercial approach does not mean leaving your soul or your imagination out. It means thinking about your readers, it means having a thorough understanding of the conventions of the genre you choose to write in – not being a slave to them, maybe even subtly undermining them - but knowing how the classics in your area have been crafted is vital.
If you just want to write what you want to write and expect readers will clamour to read it, you could be in for disappointment. You can’t blame the agents or publishers for this. Publishing is a business, not a charity, not a subsidised outlet for experimental writing and not a storehouse for oral history.
This is my advice. Go forth and ignore it.
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January 20th, 2010
Ennui and schadenfreude are what linguists would call loan words. We English speakers pinched them from the French and the Germans respectively because they are just too good not to use.
Tolstoy described ennui as a ‘desire for desires’. As a word it carries much more glamour than the approximate word in English – bored. The woman was too bored to do anything, versus the woman on the couch was filled with ennui. The latter sentence has a story somewhere, a touch of decadence, a hint of wistfulness and a jaded, over sophisticated glamour to it. The former sentence speaks of one who lacks motivation, imagination and perhaps has uncouth personal habits.
And schadenfreude – pleasure in others misfortune. Another word stuffed with shades and nuance. The Wikipedia article on schadenfreude mentions the Latin equivalent – delectatio morosa or in English, ‘morose delectation’. As a phrase it doesn’t quite have the same flavour, although it’s quite delightful in itself. Apparently it was a sin in the medieval church to ‘dwell with delectation on evil thoughts,’ but I imagine that didn’t stop people.
As they say, so much is lost in translation. Nothing is more irritating than watching a French or German film using subtitles with a companion who is a fluent speaker of either language – they sit next to you, snorting and tittering, then lean over and tell you the subtitles are only rudimentary and the subtleties cannot be conveyed without knowing the language.
I’ve been dwelling on thoughts of translation at the moment. I’m reading a book by a French writer and although I don’t know for sure, I think much has been skewed by the translation. It doesn’t read well in areas and I can only assume that the translation is at fault. But the translator, as noted on the book, is an academic and prize winning translator. So what is going wrong? Either I’m being too picky, or too generous to the writer. Some of the scenes involve the characters using dialect, colloquialisms and slang. The translator appears to have used American and sometimes British colloquial speech to stand for French and it just doesn’t work – for me anyway.
The book is not literature and I doubt learned scholars will debate the author’s meaning for years at a time. In today’s publishing climate I’d imagine the publishing house that bought the rights would offer the translation job to various experts and the result accepted as good enough. Or would another editor go over the translation - one who spoke both English and French and suggest alternatives? It could become lengthy and expensive if that were the case.
I recently listened to a radio program about two translators, an older couple - husband and wife - one French, one Russian, who live in Paris and are currently working on a new translation of War and Peace. The woman noted it was not uncommon for them to debate the meaning of a word all afternoon. How glorious. I could hear the slow tick of a wooden clock, see old couches and a sun dappled floor, the busy streets of Paris outside, the cacophony of mobile phones echoing everywhere, and these two, with perhaps coffee and a small glass of cognac beside them, deep in thought and conversation about a word. Now this is the sort of treatment War and Peace deserves. French thrillers probably get translators with serious work habits, less poetic natures and a liking for instant coffee.
Random House in Germany has bought the Book of Love’s translation rights. What they come up with will no doubt be a good translation. But I wouldn’t be able to tell, because I don’t speak German. I’m not too worried about it, I’ll simply assume that the translator gets it right and the book, with my name on it, makes sense to the readers.
This year, for various reasons and simply for the challenge, I am attempting to learn French, with the aim, eventually, of being able to read French novels. The idea of such an effort of mind being put toward a seemingly trivial pursuit appeals to me enormously.
War and Peace, by Leo Tolstoy, translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky
“The great novel of the Napoleon excursion into Russia is brought to all its glory by the veteran translators who have been methodically slashing their way through the Russian classics. Their deft work with both Russian and French (Russian nobility spoke primarily French) is a remarkable feat. When I asked my editor, the worldly wonderful Beena Kamlani at Penguin, whether I should read this, she replied, “It will make you glad to have been alive in order to be able to read this.”
Robb Spillman, TinHouse Publishing Blog
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September 5th, 2009
LA Confidential
At a recent conference I attended a session given by a senior police superintendent. The idea was he would talk about police procedure for writers. He had my attention from the moment he opened his mouth, and not for the reason we were there, but because he had the most deliciously black gallows humour. He spoke of terrible scenarios in a way you could only find in nurses or futures traders - those who face sudden death every day.
This police supremo replied to a question about writers accessing information on procedure with the answer, ‘You don’t. Unless you get to know a policemen.’ At this point I felt a certain smugness, as I knew a policeman – and a homicide detective, no less. His boy and mine played soccer, and there is nothing like a windswept soccer field in the early morning to foster friendships.
He’s a hard looking dude - makes you want to confess straight up or offer your DNA on spec. But he has been very kind in answering my pesky and endless question about police procedure. In fact I’m surprised he hasn’t put a block on my emails. I am very aware of the irritation factor I could present, so I don’t harass too much. But I need to know. I watch very little TV now, but years ago used to watch The Bill, and I’m pretty sure Australian cops don’t go around saying, ‘you’re nicked, sunshine.’
Other soccer friendships include a chemistry forensics professor, an international law specialist and an academic nuclear physicist. I have picked their bulging brains until raw and will certainly be acknowledging them when the book is published, as well as offering a more fermented grape kind of acknowledgement.
Invariably, these experts shred my imagined scenes or plots with precision and leave them lying in a heap, and I have to keep re working and re thinking. For example - I want my character to be in a long coma but revive unharmed, and I want to put him in that coma with opium. No can do, comes the advice. You can have your coma, but not without brain damage and the opium won’t be detected as opium, and so it goes on as I run scenario’s by them, until one day, it all fits.
But the big test will come when I want to research a character or scene and I don’t know anyone in the field. I like to think that with the right approach people are happy to share the facts about their occupations. I have favourite café near the law courts where the barristers come to drink the excellent coffee. Some of them sweep in, briefs under the arm, hair swept back, as if the café is their courtroom and we are their jurors. They order and talk loudly and are generally very pleased with themselves. I sit like a small, alert parasite in the corner jotting down every move, every nuance. But would I approach one?
Yes, I think I would if I needed to. Because I know these guys would love it.
Rumpole of the Bailey
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On The Giving Of Advice
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