The Former Anne Spollen's Author Blog Is Being Retitled to "Notes from Living Upghetto": Flaky Preparations and Discharge Systems

Monday, November 23, 2009

Flaky Preparations and Discharge Systems

One of the weird things about publishing a novel is it thrusts you into a public position even if you resist it. This never happened when I published poetry or parenting essays. Then I was just an anonymous mom who wrote for a little extra diaper money. Every once in a while, I would get a letter (the stamped kind in the mailbox) from someone who liked what I had written: always a mom, always with kids the same ages.

Now I get regular emails about writing or comments on the book, and teenage girls write to me pretty often. I get requests to read and "fix" manuscripts or I am asked to pass them along to my editor or agent. Kids ask me questions to get extra points on their book reports.

I was asked to speak at a luncheon the other day. The median age at that luncheon is around 78 -- I'm going to stand there and talk about an angsty girl who sets fires in the woods and speaks to fish that reside in her head?

The other day I got some books in the mail. At first, I couldn't figure out why anyone would send me books in French. I teach Spanish now and then, but French? Then I looked closer. This was MY book, in translation. (Seeing my own name gave it away...duh)

I forgot they might translate it. I was feeling very international when Emma walked up and looked at the cover.

"You wrote a book about a pink mermaid?" She was very excited.

"No. This is The Shape of Water. Only in French."

"The same book?" (disgusted, disappointed) "I thought you finally wrote something I would like."

So much for feeling international and writerly. This morning, someone found it and sent me the page review in French. I put it into the Google translator and this is what I got:

See availability in branch Flaky preparation nonavailable Summarized more The mother of Magda had always said that the world was filled with strange secrecies and marvellous qu' they only could see. But now qu' it n' was there, the world of Magda found itself bathed d' distresses and of loneliness, even of madness. When an imaginary family of fish quarreling started to torment it, the only discharge system of Magda was to cause splendid but destroying fires in the surroundings of the marshes, close to the house. The form of l' water draws a picture sinisterly lyric and surprising daily newspaper and of l' unreal, in which Magda starts to disentangle the secrecies of its family and to seek a stable place in the world.

I like it; I think it's sinisterly lyrical in its own Gallic way.

11 comments:

Elizabeth Bradley said...: Kids, they keep a person humble.

Sinisterly lyrical, indeed!; Monday, 23 November, 2009
Hardygirl said...: Such a cool cover--and how fun to see your work in another language.

And, yeah. Kids. They keep it real.

Happy Thanksgiving!

sf; Monday, 23 November, 2009
Adrienne said...: I like that Google translation. It reads like someone talking under water.

How exciting it must be to see your work in another language. I trust the translation of the book is a little better...; Monday, 23 November, 2009
Christy Raedeke said...: Anne! That is so cool! And seriously, "..the only discharge system of Magda was to cause splendid but destroying fires in the surroundings of the marshes..." is quite a stunning bit of summary, no?

Félicitations!; Monday, 23 November, 2009
Glynis Peters said...: Oh wow how exciting Un novel au francais! Your life is following a new path. I would insist on a book launch in Paris if I was you ;0
Congratulations!; Tuesday, 24 November, 2009
Anne Spollen said...: Yup, Elizabeth. I have no ego around my kids. They keep me extraordinarily humble.

It is fun to see the book in another language, sf. Probably more fun if my French extended beyond Pepe LePew cartoons...

"It reads like someone talking under water-" well, that's just perfect, Adrienne. What a cool way to look at that translation.

Yes, Christy, those "splendid but destroying fires" is my favorite phrase. It sort of works, in a murky way.

Paris -- love that, Glynis!; Tuesday, 24 November, 2009
Anonymous said...: This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.; Wednesday, 25 November, 2009
Anne Spollen said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; Wednesday, 25 November, 2009
MaryWitzl said...: That cover is deeply cool! So is getting any letters at all about your writing -- good for you! And having your work translated must be fantastic.

Those google translators cheer me up no end. It takes AGES to translate something properly, especially if it's literary: I once spent over two months on a short story. It's a huge relief to know that a machine can't just come along and do it effortlessly.; Sunday, 29 November, 2009
K.C. Shaw said...: How cool! Er, tres cool, I mean. I love the translation.

You could always write your next book about a pink mermaid. Of course, by the time it was published, your daughter would be over the whole pink mermaid thing.; Sunday, 29 November, 2009
Anne Spollen said...: I'm not really sure I'm entirely over pink mermaids...but yeah, she's already starting to like Lady Gaga more than fairies.

I teach Spanish sometimes, Mary. I can't imagine translating anything much more than, "My grandmother wears a yellow hat." I would imagine there's a cultural element that's more nuance than directly translatable. I'm impressed that you translated!

**translatable? is that a word?; Monday, 30 November, 2009

Books

Light Beneath Ferns

"I have this strange sense that my silence is preparing me for something I can't name . ."

Elizah Rayne is nothing like other fourteen-year-old girls. More interested in bird bones than people, she wraps herself in silence. Trying to escape the shadow of her gambler father, Elizah and her mother move into an old house that borders a cemetery. All her mother wants is for them to have "normal" lives. But that becomes impossible for Elizah when she finds a human jawbone by the river and meets Nathaniel, a strangely hypnotic boy who draws Elizah into his dreamlike and mysterious world.

Only by forgetting everything she knows can Elizah understand the truth about Nathaniel—and discover an unimaginable secret.

Teen made trailer for Light Beneath Ferns.

Order Light Beneath Ferns here.

Foreword Magazine's Review of Light Beneath Ferns

Excerpt from THE SHAPE OF WATER

CHAPTER ONE
I discovered windows one afternoon and after that, nothing was ever the same. They had always been there, of course, glass panes shimmering in the color of rain, but that spring for the first time, I was able to open the windows in my room. For years, the locks had been painted stuck, and during the winter, heat from the radiator beneath my windows finally steamed off enough paint off the metal wings of the locks could be twirled open. Knowing that I could open the windows attracted me to them, and I began sitting under the windows, staring through the glass at the sky. From that position, on a chair in my room, the sky did not seem real; it seemed a place I was making up, so I watched it.
The white wood of the window panes acted as frames so the sky came to me slowly, and the huge openness of its space did not touch me. All the window glass in our old house had wavers and bubbles inside it, so at times the clouds moved like water, melting and blurring until they passed outside of the warp. After a few afternoons of sitting, the heavens seemed too quiet to keep watching so I began watching a small patch of woods next to our yard that housed little more than trees and a scatter of bony, mean-looking rabbits.
I started gazing at the sky and the woods in March when the branches were still wet and it was then, with nothing outside my window but trees and rain, that I noticed a shine inside darkness, I noticed colors glimmering within the darkness of the wood. I watched birds come and go, I watched rain nipple down from buds to the grass. The water dripping from branch edges and leaves created optical tricks; I could see that as I watched leaves melt.
Then one day I ventured into the space outside. I did not think about doing this much beforehand. I simply opened the window and dropped to the ground below, uncertain as to why this should be such a more satisfying exit than simply using the door; my father worked until seven o’clock and I could do whatever I wanted until then. But I liked the solid sound my legs made when I landed. Leaving via a five foot drop seemed so much more a decision than just using a door. The sense of escape made my heart pound, though all I escaped was the soundless spread of moss-colored light inside my house and the silence.
I had come to know silence well during those months after my mother died. When you sit in silence long enough, you learn that silence has a motion. It glides over you without shape or form, but with weight, exactly like water. Its color is silver. And silence has a sound you hear only after hours of wading inside it. The sound is soft, flute notes rising up like the words of glass speaking. There comes a point when you must shatter the silence, when you must shatter the blindness of its words, the blindness of its light. I did this by going into the yard. Once I stood there, in the grass next to the trees I had been watching, I found silence outside as well. But I was happier outside than I had been in the house, so I stayed for a bit. I stood beneath my bedroom window for a few minutes, looking up at the branches and the crooked pieces of sky colliding between the branches. I believed I could identify the scent of the sky as I stood there, a blue menthol fragrance similar to the scent of seawater that sprayed into my face when I first dove into the ocean. That initial scent smelled much more subtle than the ocean’s heavy, fishy aroma, a whiff of salt and mint that warned a more powerful scent would enter my nose just as I approached the water on a dive. It was the scent I dreamed in. And it was the scent of that spring sky as I stood in my yard.

***