https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oCSlIvbk-yUI finally started writing my first side-story for practice.
It feels like mining for gems in an unlit cave.
When you write something taking even great effort to read yourself, it's like lifting a bowling ball with your pinky.
I can't even read the Latin classics, so I'm sure that my work will contain some peculiar artifacts of English. It's more for practice than anything else.
My English has already acquired some peculiar artifacts of Latin. It can't be helped, but now I come of as somewhat artificial.
I even have trouble with my own English, since I seem to be unable to make it sound more natural. It may be that my brain has begun to prioritize grammatical and syntactical accuracy over semantics.
A great quality for writers who don't want their work to be misinterpreted. My sentences also stand alone, requiring less context.
However, I'm less dependent on set or stock phrases in English than I've ever been. Ordinarily, we are slaves to these things.
As soon as I type, what I wrote seems to become encrypted in an ancient language requiring ten times as much effort to read.
It is twice as dense as English, so it's half the length, but it's not enough.
I do find it more natural to say certain things in Latin, however.
I'm going to want plenty of criticism from people more familiar with the language than I am.
It will take years to be truly comfortable with this language, I think.
But I'll see my skill increase as I write. I may stop when I shall have written ~2000 words. I have only finished about a tenth of that goal so far.
I already am beginning to see how my decision to write in a foreign language is paying off.
