Hello, I missed you all!

Following the election, I conveniently ducked out of the country to a printmaking residency in Oaxaca. In my creative soul, I mostly consider myself a writer. At the same time, there is a long-neglected visual artist self that is starting to elbow her way into the fore. But that is a story for another platform.

Being back stateside, my tongue has reacclimated from attempting the rolled ‘r’ sounds and extensive verb conjugations of Spanish—a language I’ve been self-studying for several years now. Learning a foreign language has a fun way of revealing the quirks of your native one. For example, sentence structure in Spanish is more flexible than in English. Take Daniel ate that sandwich, your classic subject-verb-object pattern. In Spanish you could follow that pattern or also say: Comió Daniel esa torta (V-S-O) or Esa torta la comió Daniel (O-V-S), whereas neither of those work in English.

While English is relatively more restrictive, there’s still so much room to play based on where you want to put emphasis. Some examples:

😕 — The storm rolled in as dark clouds gathered in the sky.
😊 — Dark clouds gathered, swallowing the sky as the storm rolled in.
The second sentence leads with a concrete, foreboding image before referencing the general event of the storm. ‘Swallowing’ is also doing a lot of work to add to this sense of claustrophobia.

😕 — The children played happily in the park while the sun shone.
😊 — Laughter echoed through the park, sunlight catching in the children’s hair as they played.
The first clause of the second sentence is ‘played happily’ made explicit. The detail of sunlight catching in their hair is an observation of the scene at like, 100x magnification.

Next piece you revise, take your editor’s scalpel and magnifying glass and see what elements of your sentences you can switch up, bring more detail to, or make work even harder.

Jamie

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