How Do Kids Talk?

That’s not what I’m writing. I miss that old boy though.

I used to write. Every day, on any scrap of paper I could find. I knew that most of what I wrote was utter tripe, romantic drivel with no substance and quite a lot of it ‘liberated’ from other writers’ books. I had to. I always knew that some day I was going to be a writer.

Well, I’m not a writer yet. I’m off the pain medication that forced me to stop, though, and I can feel the need to write trickle back, a little stronger every day. After a four year break I started writing my fan fiction again — I’ve almost finished it! I am laying out the bare bones for a ghost story of my own and I am trying to not let the white paper intimidate me too much.

I’m realizing that writing in English for three decades may not have done me any favours. I learned to read on the books of Kipling and Captain Marryat in their Danish translations. My written Danish is… old. I am realizing I have no damn idea how today’s kids speak. At least not the Danish kids. I know what they sound like in English, from the internet and from online games. But Danish teenagers?

Uhhh.

Maybe I should just write in English as I’m used to. Just seems… wrong, somehow, to write about Danish folklore and legend, in Denmark, in English.

It’s funny how the mind makes up blocks and hurdles to stop one from pushing on. I’ve written maybe three paragraphs today but I have deleted at least a thousand. No one talks like that. Does that word even still exist? How do I make this kid sound fifteen — not ten and not twenty, but fifteen!

Writing is hard. But so immensely satisfying all the same. Those three paragraphs are -good-.

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