The consensus seems to be that writing fiction in a language that isn’t your mother tongue is a bad idea. There’s a reason why many creative writing bloggers and teachers urge you not to attempt it, as it will usually not result in better stories.
Indeed, writing in another language than your first can be a tedious and slow process, limiting rather than enhancing your creativity.
You might find yourself translating instead of actually working in the language chosen, scrambling for words and means to express your ideas and thoughts.
As such, there doesn’t seem to be much to be gained from turning to a different language. My own experiences and the work of other authors, however, lead me to a different conclusion: interesting literary things might happen.
My Dirty Secret
As a Dutch author living in Belgium, I write mostly in English. This may seem odd, but having worked as a literary studies professor at an international university for over two decades, in large part, my “writerly” brain has been rewired in English.
Arguably, Dutch isn’t even my first language. Instead, I speak a local dialect that mostly draws on Dutch, Flemish, German, and French, mixing them all together into something new.
As such, writing in English felt self-evident, and I did not give it much thought at first. Still, when embarking on my debut novel, Fake Fish, it took some time before I dared to tell friends and colleagues that not only was I attempting to write something as big as a novel, but that I was not doing it in Dutch.
When I finally shared this news, the responses varied, and though mostly positive, quite a few were not.
Some Dutch and Flemish colleagues were even annoyed when I told them, as they were worried about the threat English books pose to Dutch fiction specifically and the diversity of literature more generally.
As English literature is increasingly popular in Belgium and The Netherlands, particularly amongst the Gen-Z and Alpha readership, they believe this would result in less literary diversity.
On the other hand, some English colleagues raised their eyebrows, clearly questioning (in the polite, silent way only the British can) whether it could be any good before having read a word I wrote.
These looks and comments got me thinking. I did not want to be guilty of contributing to a barren landscape with more of the same type of books, especially as I hold literature dear, Dutch, English, and beyond.
Does writing in English indeed automatically lead to less diversity? And are authors better off sticking to their first language?
English in Flux
Although writing in English wasn’t that much of a deliberate choice for me, and it mostly felt natural, there were times when I felt like an imposter.
Unsurprisingly, I have doubts about my writing qualities, doubts I imagine will plague any author, also when writing in their first language. This is not necessarily a bad thing, as they generally drive me to improvement (or at least I hope so).
But the fact that I write in a language not (originally) my own adds another insecurity to the list.
Paradoxically, this insecurity grew when I was admitted to Faber Academy‘s selective course Finish Your Draft as the only person in that year’s cohort who didn’t speak English as a first language.
Thinking back at my experiences at Faber, I vividly remember my mistakes, which mostly concerned tenses and prepositions. The thought of them still makes me cringe.
However, making mistakes also turned out to be interesting. I learned from them, of course, but more importantly, some “mistakes” led to unexpectedly effective and poetic formulations. As a result, I started to draw on the Dutch language more consciously.
Moreover, French and German, which have also influenced my Euregional language, also left their mark. French or German quotes and expressions found their way into my text. Sometimes, I intended them to. Sometimes, they popped up in unforeseen ways.
I am not the first to note that, as a literary idiom, English is not static but changes through exposure to other languages and experiences.
Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe, winner of the Man Booker International Prize and best known for his novel Things Fall Apart (1958), for instance, argued that his English was not the same as that of Nigeria’s former colonial occupier because it was influenced by the local African languages Igbo, Hausa, or Yoruba:
This English, then, which I am using, […] it has to be different because these other languages and their environment are not inert. They are active, and they are acting on this language which has invaded their territory. And the result of all this complex series of actions and reactions is the language we use. The language I write in. And, therefore, it comes empowered by its experience of the encounter with me. (Interview with Achebe in Callaloo, 1990, p. 95).
Not that I would dare to compare myself to a literary giant like Achebe. While he must have felt compelled to turn to English due to the past colonization of Nigeria—as might other authors in the former British colonies and writers who have emigrated to an English-speaking country—I in principle, have the luxury of choice.
In the current globalized world, I am not alone in this. Flemish poet Delphine Lecompte, for example, made her debut with an English novel. And the Flemish-Dutch writer Annette Pas publishes in both English and Dutch.
Following Achebe’s reasoning, we cannot simply assume that their literary English is the same as the original they draw on. New cross-pollinations are more likely to be the result.
Traveling Topics and Themes
This also applies to the content of stories. This became evident during the course at Faber when we had to read and comment on each other’s work.
The English (aspiring) writers seemed to struggle writing about sex and physicality, while I was quicker to employ them for the story I wanted to tell. The Dutch literature I grew up with must have something to do with that, as it does not shy away from these topics.
Just take the sex scenes in Jan Wolkers’ Turkish Delight (1969). True, these are written from a one-sided, male, and patriarchal perspective, but they are undeniably explicit.
More recent descriptions of sex in Dutch novels by female authors are fortunately less stereotypical and do not focus solely on male pleasure. Such as Welkom in het rijk der zieken (2019) by Hanna Bervoets and Falling is like Flying (2019) by Manon Uphoff.
A much better example of how writing across borders has a thematic impact concerns the work of one of my favorite authors: Nobel laureate Kazuo Ishiguro.
The Ishiguro family moved from Nagasaki to Guilford for a two-year research project headed by Ishiguro’s father. Ishiguro was five at the time.
In an interview in The Guardian, he says that back then, his parents did not intend to stay in Britain permanently. Their family members in Japan even mailed the family schoolbooks to ensure Ishiguro and his sisters could keep up with Japanese education. Only when he was already fifteen did his parents decide they would not return to Japan.
At the 2017 Nobel Prize ceremony, Ishiguro was praised for his subtle and precise style and for the way he managed to articulate deeper meanings between the lines.
His first novel centers on a Japanese widow living in England and her thoughts about her past life in post-war Nagasaki. His second book revolves around an elderly Japanese artist who also looks back on his life in Nagasaki after World War II.
However, it is his third novel, The Remains of the Day (1989), which is explicitly lauded at the award ceremony for the insight it would provide into the difficulties of navigating British class society in the first half of the 20th century.
This novel centers on a head butler traveling around England to visit a former colleague while reminiscing about their shared past, feeling regret about what and who he could have been.
A fraught relationship with the past is thus a common theme in Ishiguro’s work. The connection between Ishiguro’s bi-cultural background and his fascination with specifically this subject is strangely overlooked during the Nobel Prize ceremony.
Reference is only made to the influence of European writers on his work, such as Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, Marcel Proust, and Franz Kafka.
These have certainly inspired Ishiguro, but I cannot help thinking that his fascination with memory, forgetting, remorse, and other topics chosen, including his striking sketch of mores in British society in Remains of the Day, are also somehow related to his experiences as an immigrant.
To Conclude
Both literary language and the content are shaped by a writer’s specific background, experiences, and mother tongue.
Authors writing in English as an additional language are potentially an asset to literary diversity. After all, it is precisely at the interface where cultures and languages converge that literarily interesting things can happen.
If you feel compelled to write in English (or another language that isn’t your first), it might be interesting to try it. Even if, in the end, you decide it’s not for you, it might imbue your writing in your first language with fresh air and newly found words.
Some Practical Tips for Writers Wanting to Write in English as an Additional Language
- Read broadly in English. Watch English films and series, and turn off the subtitles. Immerse yourself in the language and read like a writer, with a keen eye for how a story works and how language is used.
- Seek out a handful of friends and/or fellow aspiring writers to entrust with your work in progress and ask them to give you honest but constructive feedback. Every writer needs people who read along, but if English is not their first language, try to involve one or two readers for whom it is. I am lucky enough to have two friends who do not shy away from calling me out on my “Dunglish,” one of them is a professional editor at the university where I work.
- Enrol in an English creative writing course. Faber Academy is great, but there are many other acclaimed institutions out there.
- Accept that you will make mistakes; you would also have made mistakes in your first language, albeit different ones. Embrace them as invitations to improve your language skills and develop a unique style.
