It takes forever, can be painful, it's huge, and if you aren't careful, there can be a big mess toward the end of it.
When you're done, you send your elephants out into the world, hoping to see them again at some point. You think about your pretty elephants (the stuff you're proud of), worry about your mutant elephants (the mistakes that you never notice until AFTER sending the damn thing out), and hope neither of them spreads so much poo that no one wants to play with your elephants anymore.
The gestation period is somewhere around forever. One elephant is about two years - but you're carrying a litter!
They're impossible to ignore. I mean, you have a bunch of elephants gestating inside you - it's kinda distracting. No matter what else you're doing or working on, your thoughts keep coming back to those elephants.
I had more to say, but one of my elephants just kicked. Let me know how your elephants are treating you.
my elephants are mean to me :(( i realized i m no writer :)
ReplyDeletei mean my native tongue is not english, and i find it hard to write in it. the flow, the rythm of the words give me trouble. something that sounds very nice in my native tongue is either impossible to translate, either loses something in the translation.
sometimes even finding the appropriate words is kinda difficult. written language is tottaly different from the spoken one. :)
and i thought it would be easy to put my thoughts into words !
congratulations on having the patience for an entire novel :) let us know how it works out :)
It doesn't mean you're not a writer - I forced myself to learn enough French to get through Arthur Rimbaud. His poetry, when translated, is nothing to look at twice. In French, it's incredible.
ReplyDeleteI've heard the same thing about Dostoyevski, but I have no gift for languages, nor the patience to go through his work in Russian.
Why not write in your native tongue?
never read anything in french, although you re making me think twice about it :)
ReplyDeletewhat i had in mind, is best suited for english. I wanted to draw a comic, and on the side to write the action for it, not just a script. i want it to be a story, not just some dialogue :) Never managed to get past the first chapter though :)))
Oh, writing for comics is pretty specific - great idea for the next post!
ReplyDelete