For Non-Native Writers: Top Five Challenges To Overcome.
Below are the top five challenges I have had to overcome in my journey as a non-native writer.
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1. Self-doubt
Self-doubt can creep up in any creative person’s mind. Whether wondering if you are good enough, or if anyone will care about your work, or dreading if you can repeat past success, self-doubt can take many forms.
If you write, or are considering writing in a non-native language, there may be additional qualms. First of all, the term non-native itself can make you feel as though odds are stacked against you. There are the usual challenges associated with starting a career as a writer, publishing a book, or whatever your writing goal maybe. But non-native writers have additional language-specific hurdles to overcome as well.
Let’s say you are writing in English and describing things that are happening at night and in the morning. For native writers, referring to different times of day using two different prepositions, at and in, may be intuitive. But for non-native writers, this seemingly simple matter can feel daunting and confusing, especially if their native language uses the same preposition or no preposition to refer to any time of day.
Solution: Understand that you are not alone. I, and probably many other non-native writers, go through this too. That does not mean you cannot be successful. Here are some very successful writers who write or wrote in a non-native language.
Focus on your writing, your story. Use your perceived disadvantage to your benefit. Non-native writers bring perspectives that are alien to native writers. You have a genuine story to tell, find that story within yourself and write.
You are not the first person to suffer from self-doubt, so relax. Don’t let it define who you are. Self-doubt is like a mirage—it will exist as long as you stay away from it; get closer, understand your self-doubt, and it will vanish swiftly.
Always remember you are a writer and a storyteller. The fact that you write in a non-native language is a tertiary matter.
2. Getting Stuck in the First Draft
You overcame your self-doubt and are now writing your first draft. Let’s again assume that the first sentence of your story begins with at night. But you are immediately confused if the correct form is at night or in the night. What do you do? Open Google and search which form is correct? Maybe you are a tad old school and prefer to consult The Bedford Handbook instead?
Don’t do either.
Solution: Write like a drunk. Keep writing without worrying about sentence structure, grammar, spelling, etcetera. The image of your high school teacher or college professor might pop in your head, ignore them too. Ignore everything you have been told about writing. Just write.
This way, you will be able to listen to the story that is within you. If you check for errors after every sentence, this will stop your creative juices from flowing smoothly. Pour it all out, without interruption, on a piece of paper or in a word processor. You will need to revise your writing multiple times anyway, so don’t worry about errors in your first draft.
3. Perils of the Second Draft
Alright! Your first draft is complete. So, let’s clean up the drunken mess right away, right? Wrong!
Solution: Your second draft needs to ensure that your content looks like you intended. You may have digressed from your topic in certain places. You may have omitted materials you meant to include. Revise with content in mind. Naturally, you will notice some glaring mistakes and spelling errors, and it’s fine to correct them along the way, but keep your focus on the content.
4. Third Draft and Beyond: The Great Unknown.
Start your third draft at the beginning of your story and edit it for flow, sentence structure, grammar, spelling, etcetera. You don’t want to do this by yourself. Now is the time to use Bedford or Google.
For the fourth draft, edit in reverse—starting from the last sentence and ending at the first. This may sound odd, but I have caught many errors this way. The rationale is that when you start with the last sentence and go up to the first, your brain does not have to focus on the flow. Hence, you will naturally concentrate only on a sentence, its form, and whether it can stand independently or not.
Beyond the fourth draft, it’s a personal choice. Some writers tend to repeat the process from first draft to fourth draft again to further refine and polish their writing, and others don’t. This is where you will need to figure out what works best for you. I finish my first round of editing and let my writing sit for a week or two. Then I will go for a second round of editing. If I am working on a novel, I will do a third round as well.
Remember, the best gauge of whether you are done with your editing is you, yourself. I will get to a point when I have edited my writing so many times that I don’t want to look at it again, but something inside me will complain if my manuscript needs more work. Listen to that voice, don’t ignore it.
After you are satisfied with your edits, I strongly recommend hiring a freelance editor to professionally edit your work. This should absolutely be your last step. You cannot skip your own edits and hire someone else after the first draft.
You will find a lot of good editors online with excellent work experience and glowing reviews from previous clients. For example, www.upwork.com hosts a lot of freelancers. (Disclaimer: I am only sharing my experience, Upwork did not pay me to have their name on my blog. Maybe one day they will.)
5. Showing Off: A Fool’s Temptation.
Ego lurks under our skin and will knock many times, wanting to come out and declare to the world how great we are, how elegant and eloquent we can sound. Be very careful! There is nothing wrong with eloquence and elegance in itself, only that your story should not sound elegant and eloquent, but be elegant and eloquent. If you are honest and tell your story clearly and concisely, elegance will be visible without even trying.
Also, watch out for the temptation to embellish with fancy words, especially during the editing process when you can substitute your words with better sounding synonyms. If you are a non-native writer, what better way to prove that you have mastered the language than by using big words, right?
Don’t overdo it. Your readers will notice it, just like you notice someone wearing too much makeup. Use words that come naturally to you and your story will feel more authentic. People connect with that. Only those who have orange skin and think everything about them needs to be HUGE and GREAT will put too much attention on fake stories and fake news. Normal human beings don’t.
As you read and write more, you will naturally develop more vocabulary and you can use it then.
Okay! That’s my top five. Now shake off whatever is stopping you from writing and write.
What are your thoughts about the top five? What other challenges do non-native writers face? Please comment below, and don’t forget to Subscribe!
