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Nov. 24th, 2002 12:28 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
incandescensGlad the taxes are sorted out. I've no objection to writing as if I were on crack, as long as it's good crack. :)
As to the Latin, I have the advantage of a dictionary and a grammar book sitting in the bookcase across the room -- one a prize from school, the other, ah, borrowed from school and unlikely to be returned 12 years later. They help a great deal.
It's not that I intended to keep on practicing it. It's just that I get friends coming to me and asking things like, "Genevieve, what's the Latin for chrysanthemums and ashes?" or "Genevieve, can you give me a good Latin word meaning plague-bearer?" (Or, for French, "Genevieve, can you tell me if Guerroyeur is a good translation for Warstrider?") It's the same for any translator, I suppose -- or anyone who has slightly more knowledge in an abstruse field than their colleagues or friends. Not that this is necessarily a bad thing; it's just a thing.
Went book-shopping for my mother today. She'd just read the first three Earthsea books (which we have extremely battered old copies of upon the shelf) and had heard there was another, and was interested. So she asked, and I complied. Came back with Tehanu, Tales of Earthsea, and another new hardback which is also apparently an Earthsea novel. Since I fully intend to read them when she's finished, I have no problem with this at all. (She's a fast reader. Just like me.)
Christmas is coming, and I must start buying presents. Actually, more urgently, I must buy Christmas cards and get a-posting, given the number of friends I have in America, and Canada, and Singapore, and other interesting places.
Is it a sad thing to dream of your original writing being so popular that people write fanfiction about the characters? :)
---
A book may be compared to your neighbor: if it be good, it cannot last too long; if bad, you cannot get rid of it too early. -- Rupert Brooke
As to the Latin, I have the advantage of a dictionary and a grammar book sitting in the bookcase across the room -- one a prize from school, the other, ah, borrowed from school and unlikely to be returned 12 years later. They help a great deal.
It's not that I intended to keep on practicing it. It's just that I get friends coming to me and asking things like, "Genevieve, what's the Latin for chrysanthemums and ashes?" or "Genevieve, can you give me a good Latin word meaning plague-bearer?" (Or, for French, "Genevieve, can you tell me if Guerroyeur is a good translation for Warstrider?") It's the same for any translator, I suppose -- or anyone who has slightly more knowledge in an abstruse field than their colleagues or friends. Not that this is necessarily a bad thing; it's just a thing.
Went book-shopping for my mother today. She'd just read the first three Earthsea books (which we have extremely battered old copies of upon the shelf) and had heard there was another, and was interested. So she asked, and I complied. Came back with Tehanu, Tales of Earthsea, and another new hardback which is also apparently an Earthsea novel. Since I fully intend to read them when she's finished, I have no problem with this at all. (She's a fast reader. Just like me.)
Christmas is coming, and I must start buying presents. Actually, more urgently, I must buy Christmas cards and get a-posting, given the number of friends I have in America, and Canada, and Singapore, and other interesting places.
Is it a sad thing to dream of your original writing being so popular that people write fanfiction about the characters? :)
---
A book may be compared to your neighbor: if it be good, it cannot last too long; if bad, you cannot get rid of it too early. -- Rupert Brooke
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which reminds me...
Date: 2002-11-24 12:58 am (UTC)And by the way, who's your favourite Saiyuki boy?
The sincerest form of flattery
Date: 2002-11-24 01:21 pm (UTC)Not to me. Perfectly natural for someone with a fan background to want that- I mean, not just a mainstream writer slumming. 'As I have done so may ye do.' How do fans show that a character really works for them? By writing about that character. So simple. But how do-- oh hell, use the SCA word, why not- mundanes show that a character really works for them? They write nice little fan letters to the writer, I suppose. Somehow this seems not quite enough. 'Nice work- lovely work- wouldn't want to come and play in it myself, of course. You keep on producing nice little things for me to read, my good woman, and here's tuppence for your pains.'
I suppose, chicken-and-egg-ish, this is all part of the present authorial tendency to say These are mine and you can't touch them go away and keep your distance. The result I find is that I rarely want to get close to a western writer's characters in the first place. When the author is finished jerking their strings to make them dance, and the jerky little dance of the novel is over, that's it. These novels are mere entertainments- time passers- maybe with some intellectual stimulation but nothing that attracts the emotions. Yet another reason why I read less and less modern fiction these days. ...the hollow men, the stuffed men...
-mjj