Between being busy with my real job, finding the prompts too prescriptive, and being preoccupied with finishing Impressions, I drifted away from consistently doing the Elegant Literature prompts through the middle of last year. As much as I would have liked to be able to write a full short story every month, in addition to all my other projects, they could only happen if I had a robust idea fairly early in the month. While a necessary tradeoff, I’m glad to be getting back into them, because I find them to be excellent practice, even though there are significant differences between writing a novel and writing a short story. Indeed, you may notice me struggling to get back into short story writing mindset in Memories Like Roses.
The prompt for this one, as I recall, was “Lost in translation, and a thorn.” Given that I was finishing A Story as Sharp as a Knife at the time, and my general preoccupation with translation, mythology, oral versus written storytelling forms, et cetera, it is no surprise that I wanted to come up with a story for this particular prompt. I had an idea for translating the mythology of an alien civilization in a way that would, in a sense, be the opposite of the approach advocated by Bringhurst, which I combined with an idea for “translating” between different jargons (originally, the idea was translating between technical jargon and nontechnical jargon, but I switched it to translating between political ideologies in the story because it suited the characters better). None of this is particularly surprising, given the kinds of books I read and what many of my posts are about – what is surprising is that the first draft was barely a thousand words.
When one of my writing group members posted a flash fiction pieces of a scant two hundred fifty words, I directly stated that I find flash fiction as a format perhaps as intimidating, or more, than poetry. I never cease to be impressed by how much story a good flash fiction author can cram into so few words, for it is not a talent I’ve developed. It’s usually a struggle for me to fit a story into two thousand words. Coming off Impressions, which stretched to 180,000 words, I expected I would struggle significantly with returning to the short story format and trying to tell a tale in just two thousand words. Perhaps I overcompensated.
Not that the final product stayed that short. After receiving feedback from my writing group, it became clear the story required some expansion, leaving a little less of the ending to the reader’s imagination. I therefore added about seven hundred words to provide a more explicit ending and a little more insight into just who the aliens being translated were. That…maybe made the story stronger? I’m not entirely convinced, but this is somewhat a matter of a story that struggles to stand on its own.
My very first submission to Elegant Literature was Executioner, which you can read here on the site. I maintain it’s a strong story, but it can be a tough story to read, not because of anything about the story itself, but because of the way I chose to tell it, which was deeply informed by reading ancient works, especially Epic of Gilgamesh. In other words, it can be a story that requires external context. Memories Like Roses is a little like that, except, in some ways, I think that my efforts to reduce the amount of external reliance, in consultation with my writing group, may have rendered it less impactful. By making parts of the ending explicit instead of leaving them up to the reader, I fear the story becomes almost too argumentative and assertive, rather than the reflective piece I was attempting.
We’ve written extensively here on the site about translation, language, and storytelling across cultures and times. Memories Like Roses is an initial attempt to capture some of those thoughts in story form, to explore the inherent conflict that seems present in translation through the medium of storytelling. Somehow, I doubt it will be my last word on the subject. For now, I hope you enjoy Memories Like Roses.
WANTED: TRANSLATOR FOR THE LOST proclaimed the headline Bate swiped onto Ling’s screen. An image of a faded rose accompanied the words. “Think one of us could do it?”
Ling shoved it aside. “Not while I’m in the middle, please?”
Bate rolled his eyes. “It’s a debate translation, Ling. Doesn’t matter. Nobody watches them.”
“I still want to do it right.”
Bate flicked the article back into Ling’s screen. “Funny thing is, if any poltrans could land it, it’d be you.”
Ling finally finished the debate translation and sent it to the distributer. Neither the Gogos nor the Athwarts would appreciate his translations, but that wasn’t the point, no matter what some poltrans did.
“At least look at it,” Bate urged.
“They don’t need a translator; they need a xenolinguist.”
“They’re inviting any translator to apply. Maybe I should put my name in!” Bate snorted.
Ling went to close the solicitation. “I’m sure that’s a formality. What would a poltrans do with an extinct alien language?”
Doggedly, Bate stopped Ling from closing it. “Translate it. Duh.” He swiped to the details. “All expenses paid, up to 20,000 tokes on completion. You should totes apply.”
“I can hardly even translate you sometimes.” Ling sank back into his chair. “If I apply, will you stop bothering me about it?”
Bate pumped his fist. “Fi, Ling. Fi.”
The application was simple. Ling uploaded his bio, linked his poltrans portfolio and the two real translations he’d done before he quit his graduate track, and tapped submit. “There. Sats?”
“Sats. Lezgo.”
For six weeks, Ling forgot about the whole affair, except for once or twice when another headline about the Lost popped into his feed. After two months, Ling boarded a streaker bound for the planet of the Lost.
Click here to read the rest of Memories Like Roses
IGC Publishing 