Come Write In Anywhere! Jes Andersen On Writing in Two Languages

Our Come Write In program has partnered with bookstores and libraries around the world for four years. This November, for the first time, we welcomed community spaces of all kinds to become novel-writing havens.  Intern  Steve Genise talks with Danish librarian Jes Andersen about the benefits of writing your novel in two languages at once! (Sadly, the conversation is only in one language):

First, how did you hear about the program? 

I first heard of NaNo two years ago, when I was approached by a British expat English teacher who had introduced it to her international class of 15 year olds here in Fredericia. They needed a place to meet up, and that ended up being at our library.

I thought NaNo was brilliant, so I hosted a gathering at the end of the month, where the participants read from their stories and were filmed for the library’s website. Last year, the library had the full CWI experience, and I decided to give it a go myself as well. 


How popular is NaNo in Denmark?

I don’t think NaNo is very established in Denmark yet. I know there’s a Facebook community based in Copenhagen, and another CWI community in Aarhus, both based at public libraries like us.

One of the things we hope to get out of NaNo this year is to attract attention to a bootcamp for young writers, which we’ll be starting up in the coming year.

Do you write your novels in English or Danish?

I wrote my novel last year in both English and Danish, with the real world being in Danish, and an imaginary, internal, world being in English. Most of the young adult participants wrote in Danish, but a couple wrote in English. 


I think that I might give fan fiction a go, too. I love the idea of taking on an established universe and expanding it.

English and Danish? That’s probably the coolest thing I’ve ever heard. How did you first come about the idea of writing your novel in two languages?

To me, the idea was pretty straight forward, as soon as I knew that I wanted to have an internal world alongside the real world. Probably because most of the time I think in English anyway, even though I speak Danish. 

For our other bilingual participants, what are some of the advantages you see in writing your novel this way?



One advantage for me was that it’s easier to make the novel personal, as English isn’t as hard to express feelings in as Danish is. It’s also a great way to clearly separate characters and storylines.

It does however make it pretty much impossible to imagine ever publishing the novel, as Danish is a tiny language to begin with, and the percentage of Danes who read English for leisure is relatively small. Luckily, I wrote my novel just for me, but if you want to get published it’s something to consider very hard before starting your novel.

I know many North-Germanic languages form large compound words that could even be four or five words in English.  Do you find it more difficult to reach the 50,000 words because of this?

I think you have a point here. Writing in English often gives you two words for the price of one Danish word. If we were counting the letters and not the words, we Danes would win much faster.

However, I don’t think it’s all-important to reach 50.000 words, and most of our local participants set themselves more realistic targets, like 10.000 or 30.000 words, which I still think is a great achievement for students writing alongside their regular homework and social activities. 

Jes Andersen is a librarian at the Fredericia Bibliotek in Fredericia, Denmark. If you’re interested in checking out their website and learning more and also happen to speak Danish, you can visit www.fredericiabib.dk.