Suzette Haden Elgin's Blog, page 12

Writing science fiction; the new novel...

The new novel -- the one about Briar Jamison and the four Brethandi languages, working title Alien Tongues -- is going pretty well. Much more slowly than I would like, but pretty well.

I've always, in the past, had a natural one-session working length of four to five thousand words -- roughly one chapter. [That doesn't mean that I can write a novel in a month of thirty one-chapter sessions, however. I for sure wish that was what it meant! That just means one chapter done in draft, that will g...

Poem; ElderWriter...

ElderWriter

The old woman with the
cruelly furrowed face
is crafting a novel.

Day by day,
word by word, scene by scene,
she is liberating it
from the block of wordstuff
cradled in her lap.

It's going well enough,
this novel.
Coming as it does from an array of
ancient crannies,
it's a granny-square novel.

Eldering; OLD, OLD, old...

My grandmother Lewis lived to be 96, and once she reached her 80s there was a line we heard from her over and over again. She would say, "Oh, I'm old, old, old!" It was set to a tune I don't know how to describe... maybe like this: "OH, I'm OLD, OLD, old!" Very high on the "OH" and the first two "OLDs," then a plunging fall on the last "old." It wasn't a boast, it was a lament.

We said silly things to her in response to that line, like, "Oh, you're not THAT old!" She was that old, and as the...

Reminder: the conlangs show on BBC...

If you missed the BBC "Word of Mouth" radio show about conlangs yesterday, you can still hear it -- for a week -- at the Radio 4 website, which is http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4 .

Personal note; weather...

We're in for a kind of weather here that we never have in Northwest Arkansas. Not just the three inches of snow predicted for tonight -- that's normal enough -- but wind chill of 10 below zero Thursday morning and 20 below zero Friday morning. Followed by a whole string of days with the high temperature at 2 degrees and 5 degrees and similar horrors. People in this part of Arkansas, for the most part, don't have houses built for this kind of cold, and they don't have clothing for it either. A...

Personal note; winding up the holidays...

Today we un-decorate the house for the holidays, and -- except for the astonishing quantities of goodies that are still stacked up everywhere, tempting us -- we are now at the official end of our holiday season. Things were a bit discombobulated this year, because the snow on the roads meant that we had to move our family celebration to December 26th. But the celebration itself was wonderful. Children; grandchildren; presents; peppers and beef over rice; baked ham; flatbread; chocolates and n...

Book review: The Horse Boy...

The Horse Boy: A Father's Quest to Heal His Son, by Rupert Isaacson; New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2009. ISBN-13:978-1-61523-575-9. Paperback edition; 357 pages; 16 pages of color photographs.

This book was in my Christmas gift basket from my oldest daughter and her family, and I recommend it with my whole heart; it's a wonderful book. It tells the story of Rupert Isaacson, his wife Kristin, his autistic son Rowan, and a whole cast of other characters, who go on an incredible journey to...

Na'vi language -- partial description...

Sorry about that -- I intended to post that to the Conlang Community page. However, since some of you may be interested in seeing a partial description of the Na'vi language from Avatar, I won't delete it.

Na'vi language -- partial description...

I don't know what's going on with the links I just posted -- they worked yesterday, but today they return only 404s. However, if you go to Google and type -- "Some highlights of Na'vi" Language Log -- in the search box you can get to the article.

Southern manners...

For a while in the 1980s, before the epidemic of Dumbing Down The Magazines began, there was a wonderful magazine called Southern. I was sorry when that one folded. The item below is on page 74 of "Charleston Through a Child's Eyes," by William Price Fox, on pp. 73-74 of the March 1987 issue.

"One of the better walking-around stories about the old town concerns an elderly pair of sisters who had fallen on lean times. Despite their circumstances, they insisted on telling everyone that they were...