This time we are looking at a short allegorical writing exercise in three steps:
- Start from a real tension. Yours: balancing science and creative writing, with day-to-day product work drifting into administration, and doubt about whether understanding playwriting translates into being able to do it.
- Turn it into a physical symbol. Two symbiotic plants that need tending: they sometimes bloom, sometimes wither for no clear reason, and are often overrun by weeds.
- Write a first-person scene on a tiny planet, Little Prince style, where the narrator interacts with that symbol. Maximum 300 words.
It was then revised by cutting about 40% (stripping adjectives and explanations so the symbol carries the meaning), expanded back to around 160 words with a stronger ending, and translated into English for essence rather than word for word.
La enredadera doble
En mi planeta el sol sale cuarenta y dos veces al día. Nunca sé si llego tarde a regar.
Hay dos plantas. Una de hojas plateadas, en espiral, que huelen a tiza. Otra de tallos como trazos de tinta, enroscada en la primera. No sé cuál sostiene a cuál.
Empiezo limpiando las malas hierbas con hojitas cuadradas, en filas. Las arranco y vuelven. Algunos días el planeta queda limpio y no he cultivado nada.
La temporada pasada se secó una rama de tinta sin motivo. Todavía la riego.
Hoy la planta de tinta tiene un brote.
Me arrodillo. Podría dibujar sus pétalos de memoria. Le doy agua, sombra. Le quito una hojita cuadrada que trepaba por su tallo.
No se abre ni se marchita.
La planta plateada deja caer una hoja sobre el brote, y éste, despacio, se gira hacia ella.
A mi espalda oigo crecer las hojitas cuadradas.
No me vuelvo. Quizá solo me toca seguir regando las plantas.
The Double Vine
On my planet the sun rises forty-two times a day. I never know whether I’m late for the watering.
There are two plants. One has silver leaves that grow in spirals and smell of chalk. The other has stems like strokes of ink, wound around the first. I can’t tell which one holds the other up.
I start with the weeds: small square leaves, in neat rows. I pull them out and they come back. Some days the whole planet is tidy and I’ve grown nothing.
Last season an ink branch dried out for no reason. I still water it.
Today the ink plant has a bud.
I kneel. I could draw its petals from memory. I give it water, shade. I pick off a square leaf that was creeping up its stem.
It neither opens nor withers.
The silver plant lets a leaf fall over the bud, and the bud, slowly, turns towards it.
Behind me, I can hear the square leaves growing.
I don’t turn round. Perhaps all I’m meant to do is keep watering.