Why writing in a different language can free you
Imagine you are driving on a road abroad. Every now and then you are confronted by a complicated roundabout. Even though the car GPS gives you precise directions, ultimately it is up to you which exit you take. You can pick the one that will make the trip shorter or you can choose a more exciting one, adding a new spontaneous stop to the plan. The fact that you’re not used to driving on the left side of the road doesn’t help to make the decision — although the rules are similar and you just need to make some adjustments, you’re never as confident as when you’re driving on the familiar roads of your country, those comfortable paths where you can open the window and curse your fellow drivers in your own language.
I have a similar feeling when I am writing in English. I constantly need to slow down or put the pen aside to make decisions. I can choose the easiest exit and write the word I was repeatedly taught in so many years of my twice weekly English classes, or maybe the first option that Google Translate lazily offers me. But I can also opt to make things more interesting, exploring a synonyms dictionary (my new best friend) or risking using a nice-sounding word I read in a book a couple of days ago. When I change the language setting of my Word document, I am never at ease. And this can be liberating.
I invite you to leave your comfort zone and embark on this road trip (I probably should have chosen a different metaphor, since I am a terrible driver on either side of the road. Buckle up!). Writing in a different language demands a lot more than the choice of the right word. It requires a change of mindset: you need to adjust the sentence structures you normally use, the rhythm of your writing and, ultimately, you need to start thinking in the new language. The first step towards this voluntary self-brainwashing is to read in the language you are aiming to master. Compulsively. For me, after devouring countless pages, there was a moment when I started borrowing the words and styles of the books I was reading and using them to create texts in my mind — an almost involuntary process. The natural consequence was that I increasingly felt the need to put these new thoughts on paper.
However, when you see yourself alone with a blank page and you have to stop echoing someone else’s writing, you realize how limited your vocabulary really is. And this is an important step: you need to make your peace with the fact that the range of your new vocabulary will never be as wide as the one you grew up with. This can be infuriating and discouraging; it seems like you are trespassing on another person’s property and you are not welcome, your foreign status screams from the sock drawer where you keep your passport; the need to give every word a special attention is overwhelming and you think of quitting…
… And then the rage is replaced by the excitement brought by new challenges. You have a limited set of tools in your hands to get the best possible result. This thought stops being constricting as soon as you realize you are allowed to make mistakes. When I write in Portuguese, I am extremely harsh on myself. Sometimes, the words don’t even reach the paper because my brain acts like a dictatorial agent conducting prior censorship of bad writing; it keeps reminding me that I have no excuse to fail. Whereas in English, I am “coffee with milk” — an expression used in Portuguese to refer to someone who is not a real contender in a game. Instead of making me feel smaller, this feeling frees me from my ego.
I have been thinking about this since I started a writing course in English, in October. A few months later, I came across a copy of Jhumpa Lahiri’s “In Other Words” at Islington Library. In this book, she describes her relationship with Italian and the process of starting to write in a language with which she had no real connection, only an uncontrollable desire to learn it. Even though our circumstances are completely different, I could see my own messy thoughts in her beautiful writing and was glad to find out that a real writer can also relish the “freedom to be imperfect”. This passage is one of my favourites:
I use up one notebook, I start another. A second metaphor comes to mind: it’s as if, poorly equipped, I were climbing a mountain. It’s a sort of literary act of survival. I don’t have many words to express myself — rather, the opposite. I’m aware of a state of deprivation. And yet, at the same time, I feel free, light. I rediscover the reason that I write, the joy as well as the need. I find again the pleasure I’ve felt since I was a child: putting words in a notebook that no one will read. (pages 57 and 59, Bloomsbury, bilingual edition, 2015)
As a child, I used to write every day in my diary and tried to sell short stories to my relatives. “The fourteen patients of Dr. Humberto”, a mystery tale inspired by one my father’s busiest days at work, was a big hit and was acquired by my lucky grandmother. As I grew up, writing became more and more a professional skill and lost most of its personal charm. The hodgepodge (a word I’ve learned from Jhumpa’s book) of feelings that come with writing in a different language is allowing me to rescue the personal voice that was buried somewhere during my career and to take greater risks — even if that means stumbling on the tortuous and deceiving path of “ons”, “ins” and “ats”.
