In some sense the text and the translator are locked in struggle – ‘I attacked that sentence, it resisted me, I attacked another, it eluded me’ – a struggle in which, curiously, when the translator wins, the text wins too...
I would recommend, definitely, developing a ‘day job’ that you like – don’t expect to make money writing!
I think the close work I do as a translator pays off in my writing – I’m always searching for multiple ways to say things.
I’m used to rereading e-mails, even, before sending them – a bit compulsive. So this is high speed roller coaster for me!
I never dream in French, but certain French words seem better or more fun than English words – like ‘pois chiches’ for chick peas!
But it is curious how you can see that an idea is absolutely true and correct and yet not believe it deeply enough to act on it.
I don’t feel I have to struggle against allegory. I let the readers do the interpreting.
I looked like a woman in glasses, but I had dreams of leading a very different kind of life, the life of a woman who would not wear glasses, the kind of woman I saw from a distance now and then in a bar.
I am simply not interested, at this point, in creating narrative scenes between characters.
I often pose questions to myself and want the answers. The questions may be psychological or emotional. Or they may involve botany or physiology. I am very curious about strangers I observe – as in a bus line. I am very attached to finding out answers.
Art is not in some far-off place.
I can talk for a long time only when it’s about something boring.
So the question really is, Why doesn’t that pain make you say, I won’t do it again? When the pain is so bad that you have to say that, but you don’t.
As the writer, I may choose to ignore the emotional heart of the matter, and focus on details, and trust that the heart of the matter will be conveyed nevertheless.
There is something very pleasing about the principles of science and the rules of math, because they are so inevitable and so harmonious – in the abstract, anyway.
No one is calling me. I can’t check the answering machine because I have been here all this time. If I go out, someone may call while I’m out. Then I can check the answering machine when I come back in.
I don’t believe a good poet is very often deliberately obscure. A poet writes in a way necessary to him or her; the reader may then find the poem difficult.
Work hard and meticulously. When in trouble, look closely at a text that is a good example of what you’re trying to do. And be patient.
I think a lot of what goes into writing can be taught – not mixing metaphors, etc.
I’m a fierce editor! I don’t edit out things that I began by saying, usually. The editing is on the micro level – a comma here, a word there.
To be simple, I would say a story has to have a bit of narrative, if only “she says,” and then enough of a creation of a different time and place to transport the reader.