The Joys of Exile - thoughts on being a British writer in Norway by Gavin William Wright

When I was invited to contribute to the Brit Writers blog, it suddenly occurred to me that i was no blogger, not even a writer with any experience in writing anything beyond the fiction that formed in the daydreams that tumbled as I walked around the streets of my adopted hometown, Oslo.  What on Earth could I possibly contribute, what experiences or skills do I possess as a writer beyond those shared by anyone who has put pen to paper?

Like so many of us, there is nothing special about having suffered rejection at the hands of agents, or sat scratching my head blinking at a blindingly empty note pad - no one needs me to tell them about that experience.

Even my brief flirtation with success and the horror of my publisher going bankrupt on the eve of my book launch is perhaps something I should save for a time when bitterness and vitriol rule me and spite sparks from my words.

I started to think about inspiration, about what it was that made me write and what allows me to pursue that elusive brave agent prepared to take on such a writer as myself, and I found myself gazing out at the strangely exotic wooden villas across from the cafe that I had parked myself in today, suddenly it was obvious...

If I can comfort and reassure myself about one thing, one detail that I share in common with some of my literary heroes – it is the possession of inspiration gained from abandoning my home country.  Whilst I look to Ibsen, Lawrence and Joyce as examples of such exile, I have chosen to differ in my approach; their pilgrimages took them to the sun of dry lands, of endless summers in the Mediterranean, America, Australia, I have taken to the north and have found my creative haven in Oslo, Norway.

In several ways, I now see the benefit of being an alien when it comes to being a writer – the ability to see at distance the culture that has smothered and suffocated me from birth; like looking at a painting, sometimes the perspective only falls true when one steps back, to remove the distraction of detail, the brush strokes of familiarity blur to a whole and the picture is clear.

When I tried to write in England, there was always a sense of being like a chef trying to make a meal from inside of the cooking pot; the people that I wanted to study were just too close, the stage sets of my fiction were heavy and exhaled down my neck – now I can sit in a town that allows my vision and my imagination the freedom to create; the removal of the too familiar sights of my youth gives me the space in my mind to create the worlds I want to pursue, the lives I want to observe.

But it is not just the streets and buildings, as much as they inspire and create permanent moods of vacation, there is more to being overseas than the environment.  Naturally, it is people and relationships that make the real difference.  Isolated amongst unmanageable languages and permanent curiosity, one moves to find understanding, knowing oneself becomes an essential part of adapting to an unknown world. 

In this situation a drive to discover the world and habits of one’s hosts develops without control, it is a survival instinct; as too is the journey inwards, separated from the distractions of familiarity, the comfort of established relationships, landing in a life where friends and relationships must be newly formed, networks and connexions built from a base of nothing; time is abundant for the consideration of one’s own heart and mind, the secrets and essences are drawn to the surface as new acquaintances form with personalities developed from cultures different to one’s own.

So, as a writer, leaving England transformed me, it taught me about the person I was which,  in turn, helped me to understand the worlds and lives of the characters in my stories, gave me the confidence and bravery to speak my mind and from my heart, it helped me to understand what formed my own character– my family and my friends and my home, my community.  And with this understanding strong and alive within me, the words came easily, the ideas formed and flowed and passed to the page unhindered by the repression of not having moved beyond the intimacy and safety of the culture of my birth.

by Gavin William Wright

The Unofficial 'Brit Writers and Writers Everywhere' blog.