I feel ridiculous writing in Portuguese. I've gone so deep in terms of significance, I've so thought up every word - every usable word, because extended vocabulary hardly has its place in Brazilian Portuguese modern writing, and believe me, I've looked for their place - that I cannot bring myself to put them to a natural use any more. By eleven I was starting to get fed up, by fourteen I had had enough. Bestselling is for the ones - not the dumb ones, these don't care for words at all - bestselling is for the late ones (pardon the pun: not dead people, just retarded). They are still mesmerized by the mere power of words. They've just discovered them! When you learn all the usable words in their depth, and you're pretty sure you can uncrypt whatever other may appear, it's all stale. You lose interest. You want to do something different. That's where the other languages come in. To replenish thy cup of thirstiness for writing.
In Portuguese, I find it really hard to write. I have to invent words and shapes. Yes, shapes. I have to develop new syntaxes. Write with Portuguese words as mistranslated English. Or Japanese. Portuguese no can do.
At Englishland, i feel at ease. It's easy to write here. It's a breeze, sentences popping out one after another. In Portuguese, I have to sit and wait. A lot. And the worse part is the final result, which seems so much better here, at least in some ways.
Now you're gonna ask me why I detest my poor mother-tongue. Well I love my language. But I can get enough of it. I'm a slut, that is. I'm prostituting with all other tongues. In fact, I write in all of them at the same time, same line. It feels so good.
I think my books in Portuguese are really good for their deconstruction of what may seem not only a right, but a cool way of writing. The first book (called No shopping, for that matter) was a "wannabe cool book" with a twist. I cannot get by without a twist, ever. I'm practically rococo. I love Nabokov (who dropped his Russian himself). But the second book I wrote and is about to be released - oh, man, so evil - i wrote it like around words. Then moments. It was like a vintage book. It exposes today's challenges in an old-fashioned way. It is supposed to be a pun, which I know not exactly every man will get. But I did it anyway.
Variety. That's the word for my style. I'm always playing around. I develop ways. I'm a carver. You can't go and tell me I abandoned my previous style – you just hadn't seen all of it, love.
If I wanted to bestsell, it was easy. I'd just have to write in English, then translate. But until now I had been tied up by the language "of my own" - I write around it.

  link to this post ~ 11:39 AM
blog_sibylla (English version) - by Simone Campos

New novel

Don't bother to buy any of it, it's all in Portuguese.
Title:A feia noite
Style: obsessive, grotesque, baroque, fabulous
Plot: a political consultant with scruple and a libertine with a cause go awry.
Release: september/2006.

  • Prologue and 1st chapter (in portuguese)
  • Maria Luiza's blog (in portuguese)
  • Bygones

  • No shopping (novel, 2000)
  • Um Sete Um (short story, 2002)
  • Tort, Sonho Lúcido, Frades, Peça Publicitária, A cabine (short stories, 2003)
  • Bondade (short story, 2004)
  • More of the same

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