As my first post here for the month of October (wow, we’re already on the 13th??), and now that I have a good three weeks of classes behind me, let me tell you that I’ve realized an important fact about English language, that I hadn’t really paid attention to before, when I was ‘only’ reading foreign books for my pleasure:

The English lexis is fricking huge.

It may strike me more now because I’m using both languages—French and English—on a daily basis, and have been for some time. It’s true that when writing in a casual manner, only looking up a couple of words here and there in the dictionary, one doesn’t need to be aware of this difference, but when one then needs to explain texts, pay attention to semantic fields, perform an analysis of a poem, or learn to recognize each and every trope, all of a sudden this ‘novelty’ becomes overwhelming.

For instance, to throw/cast/dispatch/toss… may all be translated in French by the single verb of ‘lancer’, and the latter doesn’t manage to convey all the subtilities of each of their meanings. These are only an example among many, and probably my English-speaking readers here will simply shrug and laugh, wondering what took me so long. The fact remains that it’s all new for me, in that I’m becoming aware of it now only. French language also has its strong points, of course. Nevertheless, I can very well see that when translating a text, often I find myself wondering how I need to modify the French counterpart to convey every detail of the original words, without losing any meaning, yet at the same time without ending up with awkward, leaden sentences.

At the moment, I’m definitely fascinated with this new, conscious knowledge. It seems that large doors kept closed until now are slowly opening, letting me catch a glimpse of everything I’m yet to learn, and that I will learn, being back to a study environment that actually allows me to do so without constraints.

You can bet that as soon as I get to properly master this, my writing in English will jump a good notch.

Y Tags: english | language | lexis | writing

I’ve been a bad girl, I admit. I haven’t written much in the past few weeks, due to practicing English through exercises, diving back into some needed artwork, and trying to prepare for college as best as I could. Now is the week I’m finally settling down in my broom cupboard in S, and there are still so many things to worry about that, even though I had sworn to myself that I’d go on working on WoS in the next days, I’m not sure how much I’ll be able to churn down. But I’m getting there. Oh, yes, I’m getting there.

College is a mess, as expected. Of course, getting listed for my classes was to clash with my work schedule. Of course, half the people I talk to send me to other people, who in turn send me to offices that are open only on mornings (or on afternoons; or on some days of the week only). Of course, I need my student card for too many things right now, when I only receive it on Thursday. It’s all good, though. As said, it was expected, and the brain manages to retain its zen attitude for the moment.

On the good side of things, people at work were oddly understanding. As long as I do my job, they don’t care if I work my hours in the mornings, in the evenings, or on Saturdays at 4 am. That’s all good with me. I just wish I had my own laptop back, since the one I’m on now is too old to run all my software properly. Ah, and I also have an internet connection. Which means no sneaky updates from cyber-cafés here and there.

I definitely want to post here more again, if only to share the latest news (I’m doing NaNoWriMo again this year; I want to test how much not having a life and being busy 24/7 will make me more productive). Maybe I’ll even have nice bits learned during classes to share, who knows.

For the moment, I’m about to head to the office for the afternoon, so I need to put an end to this post. More to come soon. I hope!

Y Tags: college | life | work | writing

Time for another update, but not a happy one, I’m afraid.

One day, I’ll learn. Oh, yes, I swear it: one day, I’ll learn to make backups more regularly when it comes to my “unachieved” data, instead of stupidly dwelling in that odd pefectionism of mine that causes me to burn a CD/DVD only when I can fill it “for good”. Too bad if I end up with trash CDs, or CDs made unreadable by too much rewriting: from now on, I really need to change a couple things regarding all of this.

One of my hard disks has died two weeks ago. The big one, of course, where I stored all my unachieved designs, drawings and writings, and where I used to park the footage for my videos, during those periods I was into video editing. It had warned me, poor thing, through very disturbing noises, but what I didn’t know was that it’d die in my arms on the very moment I’d start performing the needed backup, after the mandatory realization of “uh-oh, this time it seems really sick”. Aye, Murphy rules this world. Nevertheless, for once, I’d have liked a little less chaos in what is called my existence.

To tell about my disgust is the least I can do. I don’t care much for the video footage, since I can extract it again, but the unachieved and now lost artworks are daggers repeatedly thrusted in my ego. Yes, yes, I had backups. Alright. Dating back to several weeks or even several months ago. What pains me in particular is the loss of the edited version of my NaNovel (given how I loved editing it, I won’t do THIS again soon * sighs *), the latest version of the Wall of Silence (the few changes in it, I can rewrite and am doing so, though), and the previous attempts for the latter story. No matter how many times I try to persuade myself that it’s a fresh start, without these leashes hindering my Inner Editor, this is still a blow dealt directly to my heart.

Not everything is lost: we’re trying to resurrect the HDD, for long enough, at least, to perform a hard copy… However, I prefer not nurture too many illusions here—the fall would only be harder.

Ah, yes. One day, I’ll learn…

Y Tags: reflections | writing

I’m bouncing off a comment I posted earlier on, itself triggered by several posts I had read on the NaNoWriMo forums. At times, some people would ask “what did your family/friends said when you announced you were going to write a novel in one month?”. And at times, some people would answer that they got told “what’s the point of writing a novel if you’re not going to publish it?”.

Perhaps this is why there can be such a rift between authors and non-authors, artists and non-artists. As odd as it can seem to me, who love what I do both as a hobby and in the hopes of taking it onto a professional path, there are people who don’t see the point of writing just for the sake of writing.

Today’s entry is going to be a somewhat bitter reflexion, since I’m getting more and more tired of arguing about these things.

Why is it that people keep on telling me that I’m too young to decide to remain childfree, but not too young to decide to take on the commitment of bringing up a child for 18 years? Why is it that they’re so sure that if I don’t have a child now, I’ll regret it for the rest of my life? What gives them the right to speak in my name—and, come to think of it, is this attitude so natural to human beings, or am I just unlucky? Do we all have this tendency, about any matter and opinion that is?

People seem to forget that I’m 26, not 16, with a professional life and a couple life as well since the past 5 years—not a kid barely out of her teens who doesn’t even know what to expect from life. Come to think of it, I’ve never had any desire to bring a child to this world. I’ve never even played like little girls did. When my parents offered me a carriage and doll for Christmas, I tossed the doll aside and played with the carriage’s wheels for hours on end. When “Santa Claus” came to our school, I cried because I couldn’t have a small car like the boys, and was stuck with ridiculous pink plastic pearls. The mock vacuum-cleaner? I turned it into a spaceship. The Barbie dolls? They became Lara Croft before Lara Croft ever existed. Anyone claiming that “every little girl already dreams of being a mother” should keep me out of this statement.