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2 Words Forward
Big Hurricanes
Hi blogees! I've been remiss in updating to lately but to be fair I've been travelling (see last entry) and have been busy writing my fingers to bleeding stumps. Well, not literally but I have been writing some fiction so I guess a little hyperbole won't hurt.
My hurricanes took the form of an article about dystopia and a short short story (1000 words). I started my work on the essay over a month ago but work had stagnated as I searched for a way to organise my findings. It turned out that I wrote the entire essay in two days and edited it in one. I know there are some of you out there who will be aghast at what appears to be sloppily quick work but my research was already done and I always end up with a fairly clean first copy requiring only small amendments only. I covered a reasonable swathe of literature in the short article (I've put a list below in case you want to get your dystopia on!) and found many agreements between them allowing me to cover themes, as well as real-world examples of these themes.
The short short story, therefore, was not something I was prepared for. Having finished the essay on the day it was due I had twenty-four hours to get the story written and edited. It was tricky on two fronts: my usual word count for a short is 2000 so I was required to condense my usually succinct form even further. The other difficulty was that it was themed, the theme being 'bones'. I meditated on this for several of my sixteen hours (I slept during the twenty-four) and came up with ideas that appeared to be hackneyed and not suited to my style. I google-imaged every word I could think of regarding bones, eventually landing me with some old Dutch paintings which I favoured years ago. I felt the hours ticking by and, despite my best efforts to put myself in the right space, I was no closer. The tipping point came while making my third cup of tea for the day - I decided to take my mind away from creating a full story and just create an introduction which I liked in the hope that the rest would come and come it did. In two hours I had a complete story which had organically turned into my usual style and favourite genre (I'll give you a clue as to the genre - I just wrote an essay on it!). Two hours later and with the help of the lovely Aimee I had an edited story and a submission done. I discovered two great things during this time: I can push myself and still come out okay, and submitting work is less scary if you do it regularly. I'm ready for the future!
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Small Flurries
Here's a literary pun for the girls out there but if you're a boy I'm sure you'll get it too. If Americans call full stops periods then I must be Cormac McCarthy for most of the month and Ernest Hemmingway for a few days. Okay, it may have resulted in a lame joke but it got me thinking: editing for foreign publication is a lot harder than editing for your native audience. For one thing, if I write that the microfilm my fictional spy is carrying around (do they still use those?) is a bee's dick or that the only palm tree in Gundagai is as subtle as dog's balls on a budgie then I expect Aussies to get that (side note: why are all of my comparisons forming from genitals today?). It's not just the spelling and, in some cases, grammar which may change over borders but expressions may be misunderstood. Consider the television show Kath and Kim - we find it hilarious because we know these people but perhaps the reason why it flopped in the US is that they didn't get our expressions. If this analogy doesn't work for you think of Waltzing Matilda. Words like coolibah, billy, jumbuck, billabong and swagman do not make sense to people who have never heard them before - it's pure Aussie which makes it another language to outsiders. So, if you're considering writing for a foreign audience consider your lingo or else us editors will have the red pencil out!
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