Motherless Tongue
The exciting, terrifying adventure of writing in English as a non-native speaker
I’m putting my novel on Wattpad, and my heart races. I’m nervous in a way that I’ve never been before, not when I handed in my first book (well, maybe I was), not when I finished the following ones, not when they were published and sold and read by people. No, that’s not it, I’m not nervous. I’m terrified.
This is different. This is a different story. It’s been sitting there for years, unread, unseen. I’ve picked at it at several points in time, read and re-read it to check if the flame that coursed through it had died. It hadn’t. That story, unlike other things I wrote, still had heart. What it didn’t have, what I was unable to find for it, was a publisher. Because when you’re an Italian writer trying your hand at writing fiction in English, insecurity is the least of your problems.
The English language and I go back a long, long time. I don’t recall exactly when I first fell in love with it, but it must have been around the time local TV stations in my area started broadcasting Much Music and, later, MTV. English came to me as sound years before I was able to break it down into the smaller components of grammar and vocabulary. I memorized song lyrics from album sleeves and sang along, letting the rhythm of the language guide me. I learned to tell British English from American English, and over time I developed an ear for regional accents. There’s no reason for this love that isn’t love itself, and like all the things one loves, I returned to it obsessively. It was my thing, above other things.
I have no Anglophone ascendants. My mum and dad and the rest of my family don’t speak any language other than Italian. My accent — I sound distinctly British, a combination of accident and choice — is entirely the result of a good ear. English is my motherless tongue.
For quite a long while I’ve been able to get paid to put all those years of practice to good use (want to hear about the time one of my articles for Vogue.it was quoted in the New York Times? It involves Madonna, Twitter and a lot of death threats), but it ultimately wasn’t what I wanted. Non-fiction — in both languages, English and Italian — is something I do when I’m not writing fiction. For me, fiction is where it’s at. Fiction is the place I want to be.
I’m talking about writing in English, and my heart races. What if I get something wrong? I don’t want to be graded on a curve. I don’t want to be good enough. I just want to be good. All of my stories here have been edited over and over again. There is always something wrong with them, faulty grammar, wrong prepositions, words that are not quite right. English comes to me as sound in my head. What if the sound it makes in my head, shaped by years of reading fiction by authors I like, isn’t the sound you’d expect from a native speaker? Have I learned enough? What is happening to my Italian? Is English chipping away at it, eroding the solid foundation created by years of reading and higher education? Am I losing more than I stand to gain?
Insecurity is a bad beast, regardless of the language you’re working with (there. I ended a sentence with a preposition. I know I shouldn’t! But it sounds better!) Writing in a language you have learned is a constant exercise in self-doubt. Jhumpa Lahiri has recently done the opposite: she wrote an entire book of essays in Italian (Paulo Rodrigues Ferreira wrote a story about it that also goes into what it means for him to write in English: I feel you, brother). Aside from being a bestselling author, Jhumpa Lahiri is also an adult learner of a language that is ancient, nuanced and sustained by a grammar that, even at a basic level, is far more complicated than that of English; one in which even inanimate objects have a gender. Jhumpa Lahiri is making me optimistic about my odds of eventually getting it right.
Back to my starting point: my novel on Wattpad. I’m nervous. I’m afraid. But it’s going up. It’s already up. (The original artwork for the cover was done by the incomparable Kate Jackson. She has a new record coming out, by the way!)
It’s here. The first two chapters, at least. I’ll put up more soon.
(I feel naked right now.)
It’s called I Promise You. I wrote it four years ago over eight feverish days of not eating, sleeping or showering much. Snow, an unusual occurrence in Rome, had all but paralyzed the city: I stayed in, wrapped in a blanket, and typed, typed, typed. I started on the morning my boyfriend left to go on tour with the band he was managing. When he came back, on Sunday, I was already halfway into it. I finished it the following Friday, not knowing what I’d do with it, only knowing that I had to write it, it had to leave my head, and it had to be exactly what it was.
My mother says I’m ok, but I know I’m dying.
That’s the first line, and it came to me like that as I was sitting in a crowded theatre during a panel on the future of music. Totally unconnected to anything that was happening around me, and clear as day. I heard Aimee talk, the way I always hear characters in my head: I heard her voice, and I chose to listen. It spoke of the city where I live in a way that is simultaneously familiar and completely foreign to me. It spoke of love, loss, religion and finding yourself as a young woman discovering the world.
Have I been going on too long? It feels like ages. This has been difficult to write. I’m still scared. I don’t know whether anyone will want to read my novel. But I had to try, I had to give it a chance, and give myself a chance, too.
Update: the full story is now up. Hope you enjoy it.
Still with me? Excellent.
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