On "The Writer," the artist
Some beast in me feels to be waking up, or has perhaps awoken and is still groggy. In February I began looking for jobs, then jobs and work consumed me. Now I am a Translator in a permanent position. What is most astonishing about this is that, after many years and many different attempts, I am at last a full-time professional writer. Each work day I write between 1,500 and 2,250 words that did not originate from me, but that I am nevertheless tasked with composing.
Translation, a wholly textual vocation, involves a great deal of research. The discerning translator looks at dictionaries, thesauri, concordancers, and other tools to make decisions not only about what the source text actually says, but about how best to render that meaning in the target language. Translation is, in other words, entirely a business of meaning: discerning it, and then rendering it both accurately and pleasantly. Ah! I’ve paused for emotion. To be paid a living wage to deal in meaning all day—I can’t imagine a better deal. It is a mentally stretching and deadline-heavy job, but each day I still can’t quite believe that I have it. Every day I solve linguistic puzzles. I am paid to solve them. Hard to fathom.
One interesting effect of spending 35 hours a week reading, writing, and researching language is that, four months in, my vocabulary is rapidly improving in both languages (in my case, French and English). I mean this in terms of base words known, but it’s also a matter of rapidity and the automatic nature of composition. One thing I’ve struggled with since no longer writing 2k per day is that words haven’t been as easy to snatch from the aether. I have often been deeply unsatisfied with my drafts to the point of demoralization in this more fallow period because I perceive no skill in them, nothing at all worth salvaging, when I read them back to edit.
Now, once again writing 2k per day, words feel so much more accessible that I sometimes draw a sentence together—spoken or written, English or French—and then have to look up a word or two afterward to make sure I used them correctly. Newly, I usually have. I am osmosing language in virtue of mere exposure. Of course, we all do this every day and have done since we were babies; the skill I am exhibiting is one babies have. This is how we learn language. What surprises me about it is how much sharper I feel in my command of language in just a few months.
I see this reflected in my writing—of all sorts, but right now I mean artistic. I don’t currently have much time for it, or much patience. Sitting down to write after a long day of sitting down to write doesn’t have what I would call a robust curb appeal. This will pass; it is already passing. Yesterday I sat in my office chair consumed with envy for the version of me who would write an essay about the role of writers in the age of AI—with compliments to Ted Chiang but not quite in the same vein; some historical research must be undertaken first—and then, after work, instead played four straight hours of video games.
There are other signs of this rousing beast called the artist. This evening I picked up a collection drawn from LeGuin’s blog called No Time to Spare: Thinking About What Matters. She started this blog when she was 81, and her first entry reflects that she might soon find it isn’t for her, that she might soon stop. She did not. She wrote in it for 7 years, up until four months before her death. Oh, oh—some of the things we find difficult that only require dedication!
My vocation newly dedicates me to writing and benefits every form my writing takes. When I do sit down to write artistically, in 40 minutes I write 500 very good words. They are from my own mind; they do not require translation. They do need editing, but I can perceive skill in them, and it took me no time at all to get them down. I don’t ruminate, lost in the fog. Unlike at my day job, I do not need to compare these words with any source or ensure that the words I have chosen also correctly transpose a predetermined but possibly opaque meaning. This makes them the easiest words I have written all day.
Then I must lie down with ennui because, indeed, I have done this all day. I have also probably worked or thought about working my second, temporary job editing internet content that I accepted while waiting for a job offer. More words, you see. More meaning to render. By no means do I truly mean to start complaining about work I feel beyond fortunate to have; in fact I think this level of fluency, this facility, this understanding of structure and path, is only possible because of the sheer hours of practice I put into it each day.
In my case, I think it is constant linguistic practice that catapults me from a writer (which I am certainly now, in my translation job if nowhere else) into a Writer, the artist. I believe in the maxim that skills are just jobs done often enough to become second-nature, but I’ve also had the experience where doing the same writing daily—the same sort of writing, the same project, the same voice, the same genre—flattened my skill considerably. For me, I don’t think it’s enough to simply write daily*; I think there must be a range of writing done. I think I must be regularly facing wildly different compositional challenges before I feel like my artistic writing reflects any “inherent” (developed) skill whatsoever.
*(Nor, of course, is it ever necessary to write daily. Different people build their skills in all sorts of ways! I reflect only upon myself.)
I am no longer capable of entering what some writer-artists call “flow states”—what I used to call “lost time”—no matter what I’m working on. But I am sometimes capable of pulling words from the aether so effortlessly it feels like some automatic process outside of myself has occurred. And I credit that to the sheer difficulty, sometimes, in looking at a term like “mise en valeur,” translating it as “developing,” realizing “developing” doesn’t quite make sense in context, rendering it instead as “highlighting,” realizing that’s not right either, and finally settling on “foregrounding” in the final draft, before finding the same term a few lines later and realizing at once that the best translation for it there is actually “improving.”
That is difficult. Composing in English is comparatively a snap. Understanding this, I want to find the very precise word to render a very specific meaning as much as possible, in as many different ways as I can, to see what sort of Writer-artist it can turn me into.
Right now I have a full-time job and a contract job and I’m putting out an issue of a sci fi & fantasy magazine and I have a social life that’s about to pick up now that everyone’s back in town. Some of these commitments will reduce over time, but prioritizing different writing challenges will mean dabbling in this and that when I can. LeGuin also noted in that first blog entry of hers that an essay is simply a trial/attempt/effort; the bilingual dictionary entry for “essai” agrees that this is a very precise translation. So I will do more little newsletters to try some stuff. I’m going to try to write that essay on the role of artists in the AI industry, which it is now; it may take me some time, and I may fail, but I am sure the rigor will turn me, if only temporarily, into something very cool.
I do feel, when all else is stripped away, that being a Writer, the artist, is what I am here to do. And if a robust amount of writing practice is what makes that process easier—why, trials/attempts/efforts is the future.
Reading: Ursula K. LeGuin, No Time to Spare; rereading Jeff Vandermeer’s Southern Reach trilogy, again; about 13 other unfinished novels languish by my bedside. There’s been a problem with reading this summer. I’ll get to that.
Listening: Owen Pallett, “Has a Good Home”
Watching: House of the Dragon. I am not immune to a family drama.
Playing: Baldur’s Gate 3. We shan’t discuss it.