Thinking about this subject, it came to my mind some of the feelings and funny experiences that I’ve had through the process of becoming a writer or, at least, a regular student who writes. I’ll explain what writing is like for me in three different stages taking into account that Spanish is my native language, and I consider English as my second language and French as a foreign language.
Writing in Spanish for me is like learning how to ride a bike; it could be easier once you have learnt the basic rules, but during the process you're surely going to fall down with your face on the ground... Painful! Isn't it?. That's exactly what happened to me when I started writing at the university; my Composition in Spanish teacher here told me that I sucked in writing. In that very moment I felt my face scratching the classroom floor. As from that day my practice in writing started and I haven't stopped; I even was part of a quasi-writing group, (so-called “CESCRIBE” or something like that), with some classmates that had the same interest in improving the practices of writing. We didn't succeed in the organization of the group and finally we couldn’t make it. For now, I’ve been riding this bicycle quite well; I’m not as bad as that teacher said, just decent.
When writing in English, on the other hand, I feel like playing as a quarterback in a football game. You don’t want to be tackled by the opposite team, and you need to be sure that you profit every single second to get a touchdown to win the game… that’s the difficulty! When I say tackled by the opposite team, I mean by Spanish, because sometimes when writing in English I’m just literally translating the exact words I have in my mind and it sounds really primitive; as long as I don’t stop thinking in Spanish I’ll be tackled over and over again. So I’ve been trying to improve this and using English everyday is the best thing to do; listening to music, watching TV or simply practicing with a classmate would really help. My touchdown would be a good text in English without, or at least, with less Spanish taste. I’m still running to see if I can finally win this game.
Writing in French is like running a marathon; when you think you’re almost done you realize that you still have 10 miles left. Every step you make seems not to be enough to get you safe till the end. And it is frustrating when you see other competitors far ahead from you, even though you are giving your all for it. I just feel so far away from writing a decent text in French, and my biggest concern is that I don’t really know when am I going to finish learning grammar rules that don’t even make sense for me. And I go back to cero every time I learn a new piece of rule that contradicts what I thought I knew; it’s like I’m no longer running but crawling. What makes me stand on my feet again is the fact that I love French, so I’m doing my best to catch up with the other competitors of this marathon.
Anyway, for me the experience of writing has been an adventure because I’ve suffered in the process but I’ve finally enjoyed it. At the beginning everything seemed to be very difficult; however, it turned into a doable work. I can define my process of writing as a sweet pain, a tough pleasure, or just an oxymoronic experience. It doesn’t matter what language I’m writing in, even if it’s hard to do it, at the end it has a healing effect in my soul.
Iveth Rodriguez.
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