Blogger's Block

I have been living outside of Turkey for the last 8 years. More than half of that time, I have been living in the US. If we include earlier times that I have been abroad I can roughly calculate that almost for a quarter life time my primary everyday language has been English.  I teach my classes, I read my books, I talk to my partner and my friends in English. Some nights I dream in English. Nowadays I realize that I am even writing my to do list in English.


However...when it comes to writing blogs in English,  it looks like I have a permanent writer's block.
That is how it has been so far. Now it is time to break it.

Oh, well, I wrote my 220 page long master's thesis in English! C'mon!

Turkish novelist Elif Shafak -to whom words sometimes come in English and she writes novels with those words- mentions in one her TED talks, Turkish language is poetic and emotional and for her English is cerebral and mathematical. She finds joy in writing in both languages.

She also mentions for people like her, for whom English is the acquired language there is a continuos and perpetual frustration. I exactly know what she means by that. She says "There is always more to say, we want to crack more jokes but we end up saying less". It is the gap between the mind and the tongue when you are speaking an acquired language. This gap is very intimidating yet it is very stimulating as she tells us. It is in this gap we think about what we really want to express. We create the same gap in our yoga practice when we deal with the habitual mental/emotional patterns.

I am a prolific blog writer in my native language. Words come to me and flow from me with no problem. Some say I know no other way of expressing myself other than poetic and emotional writing therefore I can only write in Turkish. (Some may go further to argue that I know no other way to live than poetic and emotional anyway.)

Whatever the pattern or the reason I am here to break it! And I am well aware what a unique relationship could be built through blogging between people who are geographically apart.

So I am here to break the blogger's block and keep the connection between myself and people whom I have already left or about to the leave on the other side of the world.

Your comments are always precious. Please let me know what you think about what I write or simply how you are doing!
Keep the connection!

Love to you all,
Defne

If you would like to listen to Elif Shafak's talk on politics of fiction here is the link: (I really like her)

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/elif_shafak_the_politics_of_fiction.html

Me Blogging

Defne