The Unbearable Lightness of Being narration-style is getting to be annoying. The overbearing-author thing isn't subtle enough for me, and this guy is so contemporary that you'd assume that he might have figured out what he was doing...I'm more forgiving if that sort of stuff happens with, say, Thomas Hardy, because he hasn't had as many authors he's been able to read...You must always expect more from newer writers, even though, quite unfortunately, they're the ones who usually end up being worse. But, anyway. Now I've decided, again, to change SOAP into a screen play.

Europe...Among Other Things

My plan: while on vacation in Europe with the family, I will write one short story every day, or a poem--although poems usually take much longer than a day for me, but we'll see what I can do. I'll edit everything on the planeride back, then I'll be back a day, and then off to France for study-abroad. (I don't understand the logic of traveling thusly, but my parents affirm it's the best thing to do.)

I've been meaning to write a poem lately, so let's see if that happens...perhaps I will just do the Benedetti translations instead, as I had been planning to do this weekend anyway...Translations always help my writing in general, though, so perhaps I'll work on a poem and some of the botany story after working on the translation. So, this weekend, I should start revising SOAP, and do somewhere from 1-10 Benedetti rough draft translations (this is of poems--not prose).

I'm basically halfway through The Unbearable Lightness of Being, so I can probably get that out of the way soon. Metro rides make a great thing for reading. It's a touching subject, but I think that's more on a personal level than with the actual level of the writing. Too bad it's a translation, I can sense so terribly how much is lost there. Perhaps I'll learn Czech after French? We'll see how quickly I learn French. I'm advanced in the language lab and in the homework thus far, so I'm doing some outside reading from books my brother has lent me (he took French in high school and has a bunch of books). I should have known that French would consume me this way. The same thing happened with the English language, and that's why I read so much; it took such great effort for me to learn it, and language has seemed so powerful since then.

I would like to add, this blog has made a huge difference in my writing: not just how much I write (which has expanded), but just, how I feel about writing, how much I read, and how confident I feel about the whole thing. I recommend it to anyone who takes writing seriously.

I'm putting in an excerpt from The Unbearable Lightness of Being, because I've been meaning to since I started reading it:

Cemeteries in Bohemia are like gardens. The graves are covered with grass and colorful flowers. Modest tombstones are lost in the greenery. When the sun goes down, the cemetery sparkles with tiny candles. It looks as though the dead are dancing at a children's ball. Yes, a children's ball, because the dead are as innocent as children. No matter how brutal life becomes, peace always reigns in the cemetery. Even in wartime, in Hitler's time, in Stalin's time, through all occupations. When she felt low, she would get into the car, leave Prague far behind, and walk through one or another of the country cemeteries she loved so well. Against a backdrop of blue hills, they were as beautiful as a lullaby.

For Franz a cemetery was an ugly dump of stones and bones.

Socrates on a Plane (again!)

The Unbearable Lightness of Being has taught me that it's okay to have a narrator who's overbearing, as long as you give the rest of the characters enough credit. So, I'm going to give SOAP another chance at being written in prose. That said, I have to basically rewrite the entire thing. That is, have the text next to me, but have a completely new word document opened on my computer. I'd really like to work on the old typewriter if possible, though...I'll see how much it costs to get that thing fixed.

Benedetti Translations

I think I'll start some poetry translations of Benedetti this weekend. That'll help me get into his voice...I should really read La Tregua, I've decided, but that'll have to be not this week, since I have to finish the Appiah, and begin and finish the Unbearable Lightness of Being.

Submission!

Well, I offically submitted to another contest, and I just did that...good thing I did, considering the contest is over at midnight XD. It's through New Millenium Writings (www.writingawards.com), in case you're curious about that. I submitted my new short story--this time titled 'The Mortgage.' I would have loved to submit 'Red,' but they said short-shorts had to be a certain amount, and it's a little bit longer than that. Oh, well. Perhaps I should see what happens if I cut my short-shorts, although they already seem short enough. Anyway, I've got to finish the Appiah book, because I'm having a book discussion on The Unbearable Lightness of Being on Sunday. So. That's that.

Love to all!

Books I've Decided To Read, in the next couple months or so

Experiments in Ethics by Appiah--I'll be finishing that one up this week.

Orlando by Virginia Woolf.

The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera.

And, before I go to France, at least, The Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller.

There are of course the other books I spoke of, but those are the kind you can flip through randomly; what I mean to say is, the books just mentioned are ones that'll go stale if you don't read them with enough time on your hands.