Monthly Archives: October 2019

Was 20,000 Leagues Inspired by a Woman?

Did one of Jules Verne’s female fans inspire history’s most famous undersea adventure novel, a work that includes not a single female character?

First, readers of my posts will note I’ve been writing a lot about 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea lately. That’s because I’ve teamed up with editor par excellence Kelly A. Harmon of Pole to Pole Publishing to develop 20,000 Leagues Remembered, an anthology filled with short stories paying tribute to Verne’s submarine masterpiece. It’s scheduled to launch on June 20, 2020, the sesquicentennial of the famous novel. Write your own story now, and submit to this site.

Let’s set the scene. It’s 1865, early in Jules Verne’s career. He has contracted with the famous editor Pierre-Jules Hetzel, and two of his novels have already achieved fame in Paris and across France: Five Weeks in a Balloon (1863) and Journey to the Center of the Earth (1864). Another novel, From the Earth to the Moon, will soon be released.

Sometime during that year, Verne receives a letter from a woman. After she praises both Five Weeks and Journey, she writes “Soon I hope you’ll take us into the ocean depths, your characters traveling in diving equipment perfected by your science and your imagination.”

Within a few years after that, Verne sails on the ship Great Eastern to visit America, and acquires his own sailboat, the Saint-Michel. Writing aboard his boat, he boasts to his publisher that he’s writing a new novel with an oceanic setting unlike anything written before. It will be “superb, yes superb!” By March 1869, the first chapters of 20,000 Leagues begin appearing in Hetzel’s magazine.

What can we conclude? Did Verne get the idea for 20,000 Leagues from a fan letter? Had she not written to him, would Verne have begun such a novel?

First, who was this mysterious woman? She was none other than George Sand, the pen name of Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin. By 1865, Sand had achieved fame in her own right, having written numerous popular novels and plays. Her publisher was the same Pierre-Jules Hetzel who published Verne’s works. When she wrote to Verne, she would have been about 61, and he about 37.

No doubt Sand had noted Verne’s talent and observed the success of what would come to be known as Verne’s Voyages Extraordinaires. She had a keen sense of what would catch on with the French reading audience of the time.

So, was Sand’s letter truly the spark that led to Captain Nemo and the Nautilus? We may never know for sure. I’ve seen no evidence that Verne wrote back to Sand or admitted to anyone that the idea had originated with her.

We know, too, that Verne visited the Exposition Universelle (World’s Fair) in Paris in 1867 and saw a model of a primitive (and unsuccessful) submarine, Plongeur. He also saw demonstrations of electrical apparatus there. Could these exhibits have inspired 20,000 Leagues instead?

It’s impossible to say with any certainty whether George Sand provided the true impetus for Verne’s novel. It’s fun—and a bit ironic—to think she did, for there are only a few minor mentions of women in the novel.

Still, in case George Sand did inspire Verne to write 20,000 Leagues, she deserves this sincere thank-you, sent back through time, from—

Poseidon’s Scribe

October 27, 2019Permalink

Writing on the Move

What happens to stories when a writer moves? I mean when an author pulls up stakes and relocates to a different place. I’ve just done that and I’m wondering how it will affect my writing.

How much is a writer affected by locale? When you write in a room with a window, or even write outside, does that sliver of outside world influence you? When you go about your life—working, shopping, dining out—how much do the immediate surroundings and the local people seep into your fiction?

Assuming that effect is greater than zero, then something has to change when you box up your household goods, load a truck, and transport them to a different location. If your new place is far enough away, maybe several states away, a change in perspective occurs. Nature looks different in the new place. Local people talk differently and have different views.

Remember the famous New Yorker magazine cover from March 1976, showing the world from the perspective of someone living in New York City? Local streets and buildings were well defined, but things got vague and nebulous beyond that. It’s like that for all of us, isn’t it? We have a good handle on our nearby vicinity, but only a rough mental map of the rest of the world.

Now, suddenly, my idea of ‘near’ has undergone a disruption. I have to create a whole new mental map. As of now I must view the entire country from a different angle.

Thanks to modern instant communication, I won’t lose touch with my writer friends from my previous state. We’ll keep our critique group going. But I’ll likely establish new writer friends close to my new house. Assuming I can join a new critique group nearby, their critiques are likely to be different and to emphasize different things. They may well shape my writing, molding it into a slightly altered form.

Only time will tell if readers can discern any difference in my stories, or if I’ll detect any differences myself. I’d love to hear from other writers who have moved. What changes did you experience? Did the move help or harm your writing? Did the new setting for your real life become the new setting for your stories? Did your characters start talking differently?

Let me know. I’d love to hear about the impact of your move on your writing. For me, of course, some things won’t change. I’ll still come up with blog posts; I’ll still have the same electronic contact information; and I’ll still be—

Poseidon’s Scribe

October 20, 2019Permalink

20,000 Mistranslations Under the Sea

If you’re a really good author, your book’s reputation can survive even a botched translation. As evidence, I offer the first English language translation of Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.

Before we get to that, I’ll remind you of an upcoming anthology I’m co-editing, along with the talented and creative Kelly A. Harmon. We both encourage you to contribute a short story to 20,000 Leagues Remembered, our sesquicentennial tribute to Verne’s novel. You can find more information about that here.

The success of Verne’s undersea masterpiece in France prompted its translation into several other languages. As bad luck would have it, the first translation into English got rendered in 1872 by Lewis Page Mercier, a Protestant Reverend in London.

Among his many translation errors are the following:

  • Sea or Seas? Mercier should have translated the novel’s title as “…Under the Seas” (plural). Note how that one little ‘s’ could have spared countless mix-ups between vertical depth and horizontal distance. You can’t go 20,000 leagues (43,000 miles) deep into one sea, but a plural ‘seas’ clarifies the meaning.
  • Disagreeable Territory. Verne knew his geography and wrote about his character Pierre Arronax returning from the Badlands of Nebraska. In one of his worst howlers, Mercier rendered the Badlands as “the disagreeable territory of Nebraska.” In other words, the phrase survived the English-to-French translation, but couldn’t quite make it back the other way.
  • Lightweight Steel. Mercier translated some dialogue of Captain Nemo as “These two hulls are composed of steel plates, whose density is from .7 to .8 that of water.” If Nemo had discovered a type of steel that could float like wood, it would be worth more than that casual mention. Of course, Verne wrote “whose density is 7.8 times that of water.”
  • Cork Jackets. When the (Mercier-translated) Nemo asked Arronax if he’d like to don his cork jacket, he didn’t mean a garment woven in Cork, Ireland nor a coat made from tree bark. Verne’s words should have come out as ‘diving suit.’
  • From Where to Where? Mercier translated the title of Part II, Chapter XX as “From Latitude 47° 24′ to Longitude 17° 28′.” Wait…from a latitude to a longitude? For all its numerical precision, that title tells you nothing about the path of the Nautilus. A competent translator would have rendered it as “In Latitude…and Longitude…”

These are only a few of the atrocities Mercier committed against Verne’s text. For example, he left 20-25% of the novel untranslated. Perhaps these were the parts he considered the dullest.

Perpetuating Mercier’s many errors, subsequent English editions of the novel used his translation. Up until the 1970s, his was the most widely available. When I first read 20,000 Leagues, I read a Mercier.  

As pathetic a hatchet-job as Mercier’s translation was, the innate greatness of Verne still shone through. When a bad version is all you have, you pause only a second to wonder at the odd phrasings and logic flaws, then read on. I wish I knew French and could read the novel in its original tongue.

Fortunately, today’s English readers have several good translations from which to choose, including the following:

Translator: Anthony Bonner; Publisher: Bantam Press (1985)

Translator: Imanuel J. Mickel; Publisher: Indiana University Press (1992)

Translators: Walter James Miller and Frederick Paul Walter; Publisher: Naval Institute Press (1993)

Translator: Ron Miller; Publisher: Penguin Books (1998)

Translator: Frederick Paul Walter; Publisher: SeaWolf Press (2018)

Translator: William Butcher; Publisher: Oxford University Press (2019)

While writing your own story inspired by Verne’s classic and preparing it for submission to 20,000 Leagues Remembered, consider re-reading the original work. Avoid any version translated by Mercier, and read one of the newer ones recommended by—

Poseidon’s Scribe

October 13, 2019Permalink

6 Common Traits of Successful Fiction Authors

Thought experiment for the day: Let’s call your present state You 1.0. Imagine a future version of yourself, You 2.0, a very successful author, climbing toward the top of Wikipedia’s list of Best-Selling Fiction Authors.

Why is You 2.0 so much more successful than You 1.0? Perhaps the 2.0 version developed new traits, new approaches to the craft. What might these traits be, and how can You 1.0 attain them?

Vivian Giang and Robert Greene might show us. Ms. Giang wrote a blog post summarizing some aspects of Mr. Greene’s book Mastery. Greene interviewed and researched those he considered masters in their fields, and came up with six common traits or habits that differentiated those people from others.

Greene’s analysis considered masters across a wide variety of fields, but I’ll concentrate on fiction writing. What follows are the six traits from Ms. Giang’s wonderful post, put in my own words and geared toward the craft of writing.

1. Bleed and weep over your keyboard

That’s my way of suggesting you should have a passion for writing. You should care about it, love it. You should miss it when not engaged in it. You 2.0 thinks about writing nearly all the time.

How might You 1.0 develop this trait? According to Greene, you should look deep inside yourself, perhaps using a journal to discover and explore your strongest feelings.

2. Grow rhinoceros skin

This means to stop caring so much what other people think of you. Remember, You 2.0 is one of the greatest authors of all time, so is quite a bit different from everyone else. That sets up You 2.0 for criticism, for derision. Does You 2.0 care? Nope. That version of you uses others’ disparagement as a prod for future improvement, not as an excuse to slink into a pool of self-pity.

How did You 2.0 grow rhinoceros skin? You 2.0 learned not to take criticism personally. You 2.0 values the craft of writing far more than the opinions of others.

3. Forge new calf-paths

Here, I’m referring to the poem “The Calf-Path” by Sam Foss. Don’t let your brain get stale. Think differently. Carve out and explore new mental routes. This is and especially valuable attribute for a fiction author, who must get into the minds of a variety of characters.

You 2.0 developed this habit through constant striving to: learn new things, meet new people, study new fields, try new activities, and read books in unfamiliar genres.

4. Outsmart your smartphone

When did that phone become your boss? When it rings or vibrates, do you feel an overwhelming urge to answer it, no matter what you’re doing? And after you answer, do you take the time to wander the tangents of social media, check email, catch up on news?

You 1.0 can break this bad habit by going without the phone for a day or more. Just turn it off. Funny how life will still go on, and you’ll concentrate better on what you’re doing. Remember trait 1 above: you love writing more than you love your smartphone.

5. Go to your focus cave

Great authors find a place, a time of day, a mental state, where they wall off the world and become one with their writing. Within that private niche, they become laser-focused on writing, and words flow with little effort. Here, no distractions tempt them, no interruptions disturb their work. Their life isn’t about reacting; it’s about creating.

This focus cave is different for everybody. You 2.0 found it by experimenting with different routines in different surroundings before discovering the one that worked best.

6. Push beyond success

After an author gets a book published and enjoys some earnings, there’s a strong urge to build on that success by writing a similar book. After all, that’s what the publisher wants, and what readers seem to want. That’s just resting on laurels.

A truly great author such as You 2.0 will avoid that comfort-zone thinking and strike out in a different direction. Challenge yourself. Keep growing as a writer.

There you have it. Six attainable traits that may well propel you from You 1.0 to You 2.0. Good luck! Still holding at Version 1.1, I’m—

Poseidon’s Scribe

October 6, 2019Permalink