Gonzalo Barr

I’m working hard, going through a last revision of the novel, so I have to put off blogging for a couple of weeks, probably until March.  Wish me luck.

Update March 19, 2009: Thank you, gracias, merci, for all the good wishes!  Writing a novel is like solving an algebraic equation — if you change the value of one side of the equation, you have to change the value of the other side.  If you move a scene from one part of the book to another, it changes a lot of other scenes.  Novels are not modular in the sense that you can move scenes around, unplug them from one place to plug them in somewhere else.  The more organic the structure of the novel, the harder it is to move things around.  I don’t agree with Aristotle about the necessity of reversal, but I do agree with him on one thing — the necessity of the unities.  I’ll stop here before I start sounding like a zen master who has had a little too much sake.

The point is:  I am close to the end of these revisions.  After that, I will probably go to sleep for a week somewhere in the middle of nowhere before I return to civilization.  (There is a phrase in Spanish that is roughly equivalent to “the middle of nowhere.”  It is “donde el diablo dió tres gritos y nadie lo oyó” and it translates as, “where the devil yelled three times and no one heard him.”  Now that’s remote.)

I do want to thank everyone for the public and private messages of support.  Writing this novel is still the hardest thing I have ever done.  I’ve learned a lot from doing it.  And I have learned what I am not going to do when I write the next book.  All of it I will report when I come back on line soon.

Update March 27, 2009:  I can see the end in sight.

Update March 28, 2009:  FINISHED!  More on this after I sleep for a few days.

If you are leading a double life (lawyer by day, blogger or fiction writer by night) you need to consider whether your extracurricular activities can land you in trouble with your day job.  Previously, I linked to an article in Washington Lawyer that listed seven points to avoid getting into legal trouble.  The points are common sense — don’t defame your employer, don’t post any trade secrets, that kind of thing.

But what about that gray area lawyers call “the appearance of impropriety?” You aren’t writing about anything related to your job.  You are doing it on your own time and your own computer.  But the partners think that your activity reflects poorly on the firm.  What happens then?

Take the case of Deirdre Dare.  She was a senior associate at the UK firm of Allen & Overy and was assigned to their Moscow offices.  The Daily Mail reported that she was earning GBP 150,000 (about USD 215,650) a year.  That is a good salary for an associate, even if Moscow is one of the world’s most expensive cities to live in.  By day, she was an international finance and projects lawyer.  By night, she was the author of an online pornographic novel.

According to The Daily Mail, Dare’s online novel –

describes the sordid lifestyle pursued by staff at a British-led professional firm in the capital. [The] heroine describes herself as a ‘part drug addict, part alcoholic’ who regularly turns up for work hours late and hungover. She and her colleagues are constantly seeking new sexual conquests, attend obscene sex shows involving donkeys and dwarves, blow fortunes at expensive restaurants and gossip about where they are planning to get drunk next.

When the partners discovered the online novel, they warned Dare to stop or be subject to disciplinary action. The novel, the partner’s believed, brought disrepute to the firm.  Allen & Overy is considered one of the world’s elite law firms.

Each law firm has its own culture. A lawyer looking to jump should be honest with himself and apply only to firms whose cultures are compatible with his own.  No matter how much they pay you, life will be hell otherwise.  You will dread every minute you have to be there.  You will lose (or gain) a ton of weight. You will take up smoking or drinking or both.  And by the time you’re thirty-five (assuming you are still with the same firm) you will look like you are fifty-five.  Life’s too short for that.

An unidentified source at Allen & Overy was quoted by The Daily Mail as saying about Dare –

‘As it is, we’ve still got her name on our website, so there’s no indication she’s facing the sack.’

That article was published January 17, 2009.  A search of the firm website earlier today did not list anyone by the name of Deirdre Dare, in Moscow or anywhere else.

Sources: Neil Sears, “Miss Dare, the £150,000 lawyer, told to stop putting porn on the net,” The Daily Mail (Jan. 17, 2009), Allen & Overy website

Catalan literature, in spite of having been featured recently at the Frankfurt Book Fair, is still largely unknown, even in Spain.  Few books are translated from Catalan to Spanish, never mind other languages. Let’s hope that changes soon.

Your correspondent does not believe in language barriers, only people who refuse to open their minds. Recently, he started reading his first novel in Catalan, a language he has never read before and does not speak.  But why should that stop him?  The novel is L’home manuscrit by Manuel Baixauli.

Here’s a quote [with English translation] –

Hi ha hagut dies que no he menjat, n’hi ha, sovint, que no dorm; no en recorde cap que no haja escrit.

[…]

There have been days that I have not eaten.  There are, frequently, days when I do not sleep.  I do not remember any when I did not write.

The translation to English is mine, after I first translated the Catalan to Spanish.  Thanks to Palimp for setting me straight on my translation to Spanish and to Librosfera for the book.

Photo:  Manuel Baixauli; Source: Manuel Baixauli, L’home manuscrit (2008), at 12