Keeping the promise - about The Writing Process, Part 1 (the return of the debt, vol. 1)
Hello, everyone, who may see it.
Little background story. When I started this tumblr thing, I promised to write 5 posts in total until deciding, what to do with this blog next. It isn’t hard to count that, for now, I have written 3 posts. Which means that I have to keep my promise and write 2 more posts. So, here it goes – first of at least two planned posts about the writing process, for your evaluation.
I had some interesting experience during the last two months. In December, I worked on the Final project that was mentioned in previous posts, which is written and will be finished until the end firstly in English language. In this month, January, I worked and will continue to work on another creation, an unfinished work from, mainly, 2015, which is written and will be finished firstly in the Lithuanian language. I think, these are two potential novels; I hope reasonable time length of completion for both of them. Both works are at similar stages, still having a lot of work to do, but their plots are already ‘set’, some action have already been developed, so, they can’t be called just undeveloped ideas and even now have some worth in themselves. What I want to do now is to give you some thoughts about this bilingual situation, what kind of differences, advantages and disadvantages I was able to observe while writing in my mother tongue and in my first foreign language.
Probably first important thing that comes to my mind is the particularity of the text. It is one of the things that I really like to do in my works – to give the reader a considerable amount of details, because, as I think, it’s important thing to do in writing. Sometimes it’s a slim thing – you may give too much attention for details, and, in that case, your text may become tough to read, or action may be really slow. Text has to have dynamic aspect in it, for reader to not become bored while reading it. One side of the coin is that in Lithuanian, I can master the art of details much easier, comparing to writing in English. I can describe things easily and with a rich language. But, as I said, that creates a danger of getting in the details for too much and really forgetting to develop dynamic and inclusive action. And this how I get to the other side of the coin – in English, natural limitation of smaller vocabulary forces you to develop action quicker (I sometimes use dictionary, but you can’t use dictionary for checking every fifth or tenth written word). Although I think, that, so far, I was able to balance particularity pretty well in both creations (of course, only readers will be able to evaluate this statement impartially), I can visibly notice that the action in the Final project, which is written in English, has already gone further, than in the Lithuanian (potential) novel. I will continue to observe this situation while I’ll be working on both creations and make conclusions out of it.
Another thing that I noticed is that language isn’t an obstacle that you can’t overcome when you try to keep you characteristic voice in your works. Of course, good writer is like a chameleon, he is able to change the voice in his works, only if he wishes (and, I think, it is valuable for every writer to try to do this at least once in a while, for further self-improvement). But for me, as a young and aspiring writer, developing my own characteristic voice or natural ‘style’, as you can describe it, is of more importance at these early stages of my writing journey. And I noticed that I was able (so far, of course) to keep my own voice in both languages. Maybe I am more poetical in Lithuanian and more concrete in English, but it may be connected more to the themes of each work than to my voice. Can I grow into a writer, who can qualitatively write in at least two languages? I don’t want to make any premature statements now, but it’s clear, that this kind of universality would be great advantage in today’s global world.
That’s all for Part 1. I will continue this theme (and maybe will add some new topics) in Part 2.