Acriter Vivens
asked
Shaun David Hutchinson:
Hey, I have a genuine question, did your editor ever properly check the script for "We Are The Ants" because the German sentence "Ich habe dich so sehr, Papa verpasst" page 35 makes zero sense. It translates to "I have you so much, Dad missed". Apart from the wrong syntax, "verpasst" isn't "missed" as in "I miss you", but as in "I missed the train." So, no offense but did your editor ever check the translation?
Shaun David Hutchinson
The short answer is that, yes, I know the sentence doesn't make sense. That sentence (which has become the bane of my existence) is what happens when a writer thinks he's being clever but is, in reality, just making things more confusing.
The longer answer is that when I was writing the end of the world scenarios, I was writing them from Henry's POV. In my twisted writerly logic, I thought it made perfect sense that, since Henry didn't speak German, he would attempt to use the internet to translate the sentence. In my head, this made perfect sense. In hindsight I now see that it made things far more confusing than they needed to be, and if I had to do it over again I would definitely use a proper translation.
The longer answer is that when I was writing the end of the world scenarios, I was writing them from Henry's POV. In my twisted writerly logic, I thought it made perfect sense that, since Henry didn't speak German, he would attempt to use the internet to translate the sentence. In my head, this made perfect sense. In hindsight I now see that it made things far more confusing than they needed to be, and if I had to do it over again I would definitely use a proper translation.
More Answered Questions
Cass
asked
Shaun David Hutchinson:
What advice do you have for young, queer authors (such as myself) who want to write YA books with queer characters?(: (Also, I finished "We Are the Ants" pretty recently, and it's amazing. Only two books, before this one, have gotten me hooked onto a book with the first sentence, but yours is now on that list.)
Kamekaz
asked
Shaun David Hutchinson:
why did the sluggers kidnap Henry Denton? PLEASE PLEASE I NEED TO KNOW, its been buggering me since I've read it. (if he thinks he wasn't so special, he was as ordinary as anyone else, why him? I mean why not OBAMA or OPHRAH or PRIME MINISTER OF INDIA or the COMMANDER IN CHEIF OF THE CCP or Freakin STEPHEN HAWKING.)
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