Recently, I’ve had conversations with two different writers – one a poet, the other a novelist – about the art and craft of writing. My fellow writers found themselves at something of a disadvantage, as both of them come from non-English speaking backgrounds, while both were attempting to express themselves by writing in the English language.

I find English to be a tricky language. It is not written quite the way that it is spoken, and the rules of grammar focus on sentence construction more than they do (in my opinion, at least) to the way the language is spoken, or the ways in which it is heard by a listener.

How difficult must it be for a writer who has English only as a second language.

Actually, never mind that writer, I can declare that it is more than difficult enough for me, a person who uses it in various forms of written or spoken expression every day in the pursuit of my craft.

It was the experience of reading my work to live audiences that started to seriously impact on the way I wrote my stories and verse, because I found that I could not retain mastery of long passages of writing. I lost my sense of rhythm, of lilt and nuance. I found that a comma was not of great assistance in determining when I should pause for emphasis, or to take a breath. Apostrophes were ruinous.

Music addresses these issues, but written English, in my view, does not.

Take a look at the passage I’ve written into the table below. Above is my group of sentences. Three in total, on two lines, so not such a great mass of writing.

Below, the same sentences are presented in the style I use for my readings.

What are the features of the rewritten sentences in the lower pane of the box?

• There is minimal or no punctuation to distract me. As a matter of routine, I use only a capital letter for the personal pronoun (‘I’), and an apostrophe for contractions (it is = it’s).
• I have inserted a line break at each point (to my ear) of emphasis or inflection, equating to a short – sometimes almost imperceptible – pause.
• I have employed a stanza break where I believe a pause is needed for breath.

What I’ve found in practice is that this use of short line structures and the search for emphasis points allows me to also find the music that is inherent in the language. Remember I trade in the craft of free verse – no rhyming to set the rhythm and cadence. The free verse form needs to find the music that is hidden in the song of day-to-day speech or it becomes difficult to read as poetry.

I have also found that when inviting a member of the audience to join me on stage (as I do, sometimes) the experience is less daunting for my unwitting co-reader, and quite straightforward for them to read coherently and without significant stumbles.

I think about this in a context that I recall, of children trying to read aloud while standing at the front of their class – book held up high, nose down low to the page and an unbroken gabble of words pouring out. The pause being, generally, to allow a moist, nasal sniff, as the reader comes up for air.

What advice did I offer to my two writing friends each with their different language backgrounds?

Listen, first, to your native speech. Listen in order to find and hear the music hidden within it. The cadences and metre of speech and the song that belong to that language.

Then, listen to English. Break it down until you can find your own sense of song in this language. That is when your English writing will begin to run more smoothly.