Get Out of that Comfort Zone, Write in a Foreign Language

Daring and hard work pay off. That’s what I learned from six months of writing in a foreign language.

English reflects my emotions in a lovely way. I feel prettier in English than in French, my native tongue. The world looks wider. Its boundaries, endless. Life tastes like freedom. It’s exciting and new. Hazardous and risky. Tempting.

Writing in English sometimes tastes like blind-testing exotic cuts on an African farmers market. Never know what’s going to turn up between a roasted cricket and a delicious curry sauce. You might even not distinguish the kind of meat hiding in your curry sauce.

Handling a foreign language is the kingdom of unexpected sensations — good and bad ones. A sweet-and-sour flavour sometimes rushes through your brain. Your worst fears battle with pride, you never know who’s going to win.

I first started to write in English because I had to. Back in school, then in Uni, ability to write a 200-words decent essay meant proficiency. You could brag about it at lunchtime because most students couldn’t articulate a correct answer to the simple question, ‘where is Brian?’

Anyway, I love writing. I also love foreign languages. Life hazards helped me reach a fluent understanding and speaking level in English. I can read properly as well, novels, essays, or plays — a high dose of fun and broader reading horizons.

When writing became a full-time job, I realized I wouldn’t feel complete doing it in French only. Over time, English has become an extension of my thoughts. I now journal in English. I write the characters I create in the language they speak. Which means I sometimes have to translate myself from English to French. Weird, isn’t it?

I also have some money-making ideas in the back of my mind. Writing in English will help me build an audience in the UK where I live, although most of my jobs remain in France. It is also the only way to make it on platforms like Medium.

Yet, there is a higher point to this. The dough seldom makes me willing to impose more pain on myself. Yes, pain! Sometimes, writing in English is hard. Most of the time, as a matter of fact!

Welcome to a world of challenges

Writing in English travels me way out of my comfort zone.

You know the sensation, right? When you click on that green “publish” button up there, thinking: what if my stories aren’t worth reading? What if I haven’t spellchecked correctly? People could laugh at me. I could never have any readers at all. What if the world falls apart?

Publishing in a foreign language means revealing flaws and insufficiencies to the world. It grows self-interrogation digs in self-confidence. Any non-native writer understands the feeling.

Perfectionism is not a quest for the best. It is a pursuit of the worst in ourselves, the part that tells us that nothing we do will ever be good enough — Julia Cameron

I found the quote in Week 7 of The Artist’s Way, a 12-weeks course to enhance creativity. And related immediately.

Letting go of perfectionism is my greatest challenge. At least, I could open the door to “average plus.” I don’t spell at perfection, OK! I leave a few grammatical mistakes, although I use magic tools like Grammarly. I sometimes misuse a word or an idiom. So what?Big deal!

Building an audience is hard

Building an audience when you start from scratch is even more challenging.

Most writers share their stories through their social media and start from there. A like here, a clap, a share, and the story get viral, at least in their neighbourhood.

It may not sound much to you. But, it is quite an incentive. A way to fill in the well of pride. A fuel of love and approval that most writers need in the beginning to supplant their lack of self-love.

As a non-native, I can’t even rely on my mother to read and clap for my stories. She only understands French. Seemingly one of the many reasons I write in English more than French, by the way.

I miss my first circle, my fans, my cheerleaders. I have difficulties in reaching for feedback, whether it is positive or negative. Feedback only comes from outsiders. I need to ask strangers for comments on my work. It is a dare by itself.

I recently took part in writing sessions on Zoom, with a super supportive group and a spirit of sharing skills and reciprocal improvement. All participants were kind, keen to help each other. I still waited six weeks to shyly ask if one of them could read my work (which they did and liked, thank God!)

Most times, I have to rely on Medium’s curators and publications to assess my stories’ quality. Yes means: yeah! No equals: work harder, keep improving, and come back later!

Curation’s intricacies

I seldom get curated, though. Happened three times over the last six months. For various reasons, I guess.

Quality, or lack of quality, is the evident (probable) number one — imaginable leftovers of grammatical or spelling inaccuracies despite thorough checking.

Curation and publications submission guidelines also have their complexities. They reveal meandrous, indeed. I remember spending hours trying to make my subtitles work when I first submitted to The Writing Cooperative. Eventually, the story didn’t cut for content motives, but my subtitles were decent. I hope!

Quantity is another trick. My English flow decreases by two in comparison to French. Maybe more. Brainstorming, elaborating a storyline, writing, spell checking. Everything runs slow when you are not in your comfort zone.

I had three curated stories out of 17 published ones, which is not much in six months on Medium. Quarantine and homeschooling my twin daughters didn’t help for sure. But they fail to explain my low publication rate.

The main reason is plain simple: I am a slow writer. I will never achieve a daily publication rate, of that I am sure. Twice a week already seems quite a decent target.

Reaching for the stars

I seldom get curated or make it into major publications. But every time I do, I have this victory rush speeding through my veins.

My first curated story (Is mothering and performing at the highest level realistic at all?) made less than 100 views and $1 earnings. I still danced in joy around the marital bed for an hour or so when I received the curation notification. We were on a romantic weekend in the South of France. My husband called me crazy.

When Write in a Foreign Language, How to Enhance Your Skills was published in The Startup, it felt pretty much like playing on the Louis Armstrong Stadium at the US Open 2010 — a gift tended by the tournament organizers to celebrate my last appearance on Tour. I got 14 claps, about 500 views, and $5 on my Stripe account for that story — a self-earned achievement to strengthen my vocation. It does not pay the bills, for sure.

It means the world to me, though. People might indeed be interested in what I write. Publication standards become achievable. It says: work, improve, dare.

For the first time in my life as a writer, I didn’t feel “not good enough.” I thought I could do it.

Hard work is key to achieving more, to reaching higher, to getting to places where I never thought I belonged. Being proud of myself is not much far around that dark corner.

A learning journey

Daring is an affront to self-confidence. It is also an invaluable source of pride — a big bite of learning I had to swallow over the last few months on Medium.

Most of my stories didn’t trend — just yet. But I can see how much I have improved already. When I look back to my first stories, I feel like deleting them, even the first curated one. I leave them because they are an excellent way to measure my growth.

I thrived. I thrived on many levels. Writing in English opened new fields of words for my emotions. Sentiments do not feel the same way in both languages. I have the same impression when I listen to music. Rain doesn’t sound alike in November Rain (Guns’n Roses) and La Pluie (Orelsan, feat. Stromae).

The languages’ interplay reinforced my emotions’ granularity, parallelly improving my writing skills in both tongues. I now write more and better in French.

Publishing in a different language also feels like adopting a pen name. It’s you, you are talking about, but it doesn’t feel that way. It makes it easier to expel unwritable stories. I have experienced this a lot.

When Music and Meditation Soothed Insufferable Pains was quite an experience to write. It was both cathartic and impossible to translate. I still have to find my way around the French version to make it accessible to my family, my mother in first. But I am proud to have it out there, even if it is just in English. I am relieved too.

Writing and publishing in English feel good. It makes me feel better. In the last few months, I understood how publishing in a foreign language could help me embrace my story. And accept, once for all, that I am good enough.

My voice matters. Whichever language it speaks. What matters is that I speak up.

I am a writer, speaker, Paralympian, mother of twins, and constant dreamer. I earned bronze twice in Beijing 2008 in wheelchair tennis.

Reach out on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and on my website which features work in French and in English.