I wrote my debut novel, Friday Evening, Eight O’Clock in Russian, and the truth is, I don’t have an explanation why. Russian is not my native language, nor is English, to which I then translated and published it. The words, phrases, characters, their surroundings, and the whole story that I was writing about were born that way. Unconsciously, almost intuitively, I chose first Russian and then English to be the language in which the book would be born. I wrote without much of the thinking or analyzing, why. I was just following my gut and writing what came to mind.
Several years and three books later, I’m still finding it inexplicable how and why our mind functions when we’re writing, choosing some words over others, and most importantly, choosing another language, not our native one, to write in. Why do we feel more comfortable writing in a foreign language, which, no matter how good we are at it, remains foreign, and sometimes, to be honest, adds a bit of a challenge to the writing process? So why bother?
It’s probably one of the most mysterious things about writing, choosing the language in which you’re writing your book, when your mind, your vocabulary, your phrasing switches instantly, and often you start remembering words that were stored somewhere far, far away in your memory until that very moment when you sit down and actually write. It’s as if you’re living in several multi-lingual, different, and often opposite worlds, each with its own realities, and you’re able to explore them only if you use another language. That’s when those imaginative doors or passages open, letting you in, a little like Alice in Wonderland. It’s like being an actor, diving into another person’s life and living it for a given moment as your own, transforming into something new, unknown, unexpected, and mystifying.
When I write, I often have one reader in mind. Instinctively, I sense that what I wrote will resonate with at least one person in the world; a person who reads women’s stories, women’s fiction, or non-fiction. A reader, who may be far from me geographically, has a whole different cultural or social background, may be living on another continent, and still, may discover something emotionally fulfilling in reading my work.
When I write, I can’t help but imagine my readers of different ages, with different life stories of their own. How do they live? What do they worry about? Are they happy? What do they dream of? What do they want to achieve? Are they single? Married? Divorced? Do they have pets? Or maybe they’re allergic to pets? Do they have big families? What are their passions, aspirations, or regrets?
Who is that one reader, somewhere, very near, or very far?
