Writing Non-native English

By Juha Haataja

Writing in English is for me like wearing too strong eyeglasses and winter gloves while writing. The right words don't come easy, and sentences are awkward and halting.

Still, I have lived with the English language for a long time. I started reading books in English at high school while being 16 years old. The first book was The Animal Farm by George Orwell. This book was an easy read for my English skills. My second book was A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway. This book opened the English language for me. For the first time I understood the quiet elegance of the written word, and even wished I could write like that. I even now remember reading how the hero of the book rode a motorcycle on a gravel road, and the sand floating in the air got to his mouth and gritted between the teeth.

My first text was published in a book of essays by young writers while I was in high school, 16 or 17 years old. The essay was written in Finnish. I wrote a lot, and read both Finnish and English books. When I went to the university, I moved almost completely away from the Finnish-language books. I instead read English texts, both for study and for recreation. I had discovered the huge continent of science fiction written in English.

My first summer job at the university involved organizing a course on vector processing. I also wrote a guide on the subject during the summer. My writing was in Finnish, although I was mostly reading English, except newspapers. In fact, at about this time I subscribed to Time, and later to Newsweek.

However, it is a different thing to read English texts, and to write good English. Professional texts are straightforward, but creative writing is a different thing. You only learn a personal style and tone by living the language, and this was not available to me. I like Finland as a country too much to think about moving abroad for a longer period of time, even to learn English.

Writing in English doesn't come easy, although I must have read about a thousand books in English during the last 18 years. I have read some books several times, trying to understand their structure and style. Perhaps the difficulty with writing is caused by too little practice. I have written and edited books in English, but basically only about my profession.

So, to improve the fluency I have to write different kinds of texts than I have previously managed to write. This is why I have started the weblog Universal Rule. I hope to use the weblog medium as a forum for improving my writing skills. There I can post both short pieces and longer stories. I also hope to have some fun while doing this.