Lost in Translation # 5

I love the weird dissonance that can happen during  translation – the way in which two languages collide and send words glancing off in unexpected directions. Here's something I saw in Venice last autumn...

On the contrary, I think historical pasta might be very, very sexy – anything from the past kindles my imagination, but what intrigues and delights me about this notice are the questions that it poses – what was the writer trying to say? All the possibilities of nuance and interpretation are suddenly opened up and my reader's (and writer's) brain is flung into overdrive.

It reminds me of the subtleties and accidents of language – and it makes me laugh....

Language As a Precision Tool

Good writing is the living, breathing heart of a great book, and by good writing I don't necessarily mean  soaring arias of prose, although they have their place.  I mean using the fewest number of words to convey the most meaning: every phrase should carry its full payload, without wasting so much as a syllable.  That way your writing will remain lean and taut and highly charged.

Let me give you an example.  The other day I heard a man say, "I've a daughter lives down that way."  I thought it was the most extraordinarily revealing phrase: by saying a daughter, he completely depersonalised the relationship between them in a way which spoke volumes. If he had said, "My daughter lives down that way," there would  have been a sense of connectedness, of possession, even; certainly of belonging.

This shows very clearly what a huge effect a tiny change in words, in phrasing, can have.  It is at this nuts and bolts level that you need to work when you are writing.  A forensic attention to detail is incredibly important if you want your prose to be concentrated, with an internal drama all of its own. Forget the purple prose and concentrate on the precision of each individual line, because that's where the really interesting chemistry occurs.

The Bare Essentials

It can be incredibly easy, when you are writing, to fall in love with the language you are using (guilty as charged!) For me, finessing the perfect sentence so that it conveys meaning, trips the reader's imagination, sounds as elegant and and unexpected as possible, with the stresses and emphases all in the right places, is all part of the obsessive challenge of writing well.

However, I have to keep reminding myself that  language is only a means to an end, not an end in itself and the writer's primary obligation is to tell a story. With this in mind, try writing a short story, or even a paragraph, that is stripped of all its garnish.  Allow yourself enough linguistic leeway to convey character and crank up tension, but nothing else.  See if, by stripping everything down to the bare essentials, your prose becomes more concentrated and more urgent.  It may become more dull, who knows? But at least you will start to develop a sense of the range in which descriptive writing works and by doing that you will learn to find your place within it.

Going with the Grain

 On our recent travels my eye was caught by a small carving of a face on a mediaeval building in a Burgundy backwater.

The colour is visible, in spite of all the years which have passed, and the features and character are clearly discernible.  What I like about it is the way that the grain of the wood has become part of the image -- the texture of the painting is an integral part of the face.

It's a bit like that with writing: the texture of the words you choose - some guttural, some sibilant, some long, some short - plays a vital part in how your work will be experienced.  As Margaret Atwood once said, "Every poem has a texture of sound which is at least as important as the argument," but I think the same is equally true of good prose as well.

To put this to the test, write a poem or a piece of prose in which you concentrate on the texture and sound of the words that you are using, and how they relate with one another, working to see how  they compliment and contrast with each other.

The Power of Words

It's a literary thought and it's written on a door -- two of the things I like best in all the world.  Roughly translated - very roughly - it means Words are arrows for the Indians, which is a wonderfully vivid metaphor for the power of language, filled with speed and flight and with a little edge to it.  How often is language used as a weapon?  Too often, perhaps, but in terms of fiction, words used aggressively, freighted with ungovernable emotion, are words that register and hit home.

To help you explore how this may work in your own writing, have a go at something that is combatative, rousing and intense -- something which allows you to show  feelings running high: it could be a piece of polemic, as learning to put across an argument while retaining a sense of passion will help you in structuring longer pieces of writing, or it could be a piece of fiction.  Whatever you choose, throw yourself into it -- it doesn't matter if it's messy, you can address that later.  Be untrammelled; don't hold back.

A Thin Veneer

Amos Oz talks about, "the pollution of language, making something sound clean and decent, when it should have been peace and violent."

Well, there's something to get your teeth into, first thing on a Monday morning.  As a writer, I'm fascinated by the function of language.  It's a slippery facility to have at your fingertips.  You might think of that its prime purpose is to communicate thought directly and with clarity, and some of the time that is true, but only some of the time.

Words can also be used to obfuscate, to muddy the waters, an attribute that George Orwell used with eerie prescience in his 1984 portrayal of news speak and double think, where what is stated usually means the opposite. Nowadays politicians and bankers -- anyone in corporate life -- are well-schooled in this means of non-communication.  Oz is describing this misuse of language in critical terms, but I think that it can sometimes be used positively in your writing.  Prose is always richer when there is more than one thing going on at the same time, in this case a kind of linguistic tension between the warp of what is happening and the weft of how you are describing it. Try writing about something base and violent, but see if you can give it a thin veneer of decency, of sanitisation and see what effect that has.  My hunch is that it will give an uncomfortable, sinister edge to your writing -- something that I am sure you will be able to put to good use.

Stuff and Nonsense

Following on from my hymn of praise to Roget, of Thesaurus fame, I thought it would be good to have a little Lewis Carroll moment, because I think it was that nonpareil of the nonsensical who made the following remark:

"Take care of the sounds and the sense will take care of itself."

I think this is a great way to look at the use of language as it makes you come at writing from a slightly different angle, not getting too bogged down in meaning (you can fix that later) but just thinking about the plasticity of words, how malleable they can be, how audible....(and edible?)

With your Thesaurus close at hand (and if you haven't got one, rush out and buy one, even before you buy The Hand That Once Held Mine by Maggie O'Farrell, which I'm longing to read) sit yourself down and have a go at writing some nonsense verse.  Do what Carroll says and just think about the sounds,  bemuse and bewitch yourself. You will probably have no direct use for what you come out with, but I wouldn't mind betting that next time you settle down to write, your sensitivity to what you're saying will be more acute and you will be far more dexterous.

Mind Your Language!

I've been reading quite a lot of poetry lately, boning up for World Book Night and my great giveaway of Carol Ann Duffy's book The World's Wife and reading prose as well (Carson McCullers' The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter is top of the pile beside my bed at the moment; wonderful, astringent stuff) and it seems to me that a poem, in particular, is a slight thing and sometimes the weight of language can drag it down.

I think that when you are finding your feet as a writer, developing a sense of style and exercising your vocal chords in all their nuanced variety and you start to discover that you have a facility with words, it is easy to let it go to your head.  Just because you discover that you can fire on all literary cylinders doesn't necessarily mean that you  should.  It's easy to fall in love with your own voice, but hand-in-hand with your powers of expression, you should be working on a discriminating editorial eye -- the two go together and one without the other does not a writer make.

Perhaps it's easier to think of it in terms of jewellery: the rough gemstone needs to be cut and polished in order to maximise the play of light, but if you then go and put it in an incredibly elaborate setting, you run the risk of dettracting from the jewel itself.

I think it's the same was writing.  Don't settle yourself at your computer with the idea of producing beautiful, poetic work, be it poetry or prose; write to express your thoughts and ideas with all the clarity that you can muster.  Don't be tempted to sacrifice content for style -- in other words, mind you language.