I was born, and for the first 37 years of my life, lived in northern and central Michigan, in the USA. The last 31 years have been spent in Scotland, living in the urban sprawl just south of Glasgow. I am now a UK citizen, hoping to become a Scottish citizen upon independence. My novel is set in the USA, but a couple of the characters have parents who emigrated from Scotland.
Crikey. I'm reading the wrong books from Canada. Atwood ticks off a couple of those boxes, but the only other Canadianly Canadian author with whom I am familiar is Robert J. Sawyer. Science Fiction author and most of his stories do take place in Canada, but more than that, he tends to go overboard with the "here are the Canadian things that Canadians have so that you know this isn't happening in the U.S.A. {insert exhaustive list of typically Canadian products}". He did give me a well-endowed, parallel universe crossing, bisexual Neanderthal guy who has both a husband (with whom he lives) and a wife (whom he visits just during mating season) that I thought was pretty cool.
I haven't read any Sawyer. But I once read three Canadian literary novels in a row that ALL had sibling incest as a main feature. And quite a few others, but not in a row. For a good overview of what Canadians apparently choose to write about, see: http://the-toast.net/2014/07/22/every-canadian-novel-ever/ and/or http://www.cbc.ca/books/2016/02/got-writers-block-check-out-the-canlit-premise-generator.html Good times at the Canadian bookstore...
That's not as political of a statement as it seems, or perhaps it is. At the time of my departure, George W. Bush had just been sworn in. A matter of days, literally, under his presidency, and all the stress and uncertainty that led up to him taking office. Following through to the US spy plane that collided with the Chinese fighter jet, which you and I are probably the only ones here to remember, then Rachel Corey, then the four American missionaries arrested in Afghanistan, and we're about 8 months into my scheduled year in Japan. Had things continued as they usually do, I probably would have been back to the States with my horizons slightly broadened, and continued moping around trying to decide what I wanted to do when I grew up before falling into something that stuck. However, there were a couple minor changes in the US, and a couple changes here that set things on a different course. I'll always be a gaijin in Japan, but I've literally (archaic meaning: in a literal sense or manner: such as a : in a way that uses the ordinary or primary meaning of a term or expression <He took the remark literally.> <a word that can be used both literally and figuratively> b —used to emphasize the truth and accuracy of a statement or description <The party was attended by literally hundreds of people.>) spent less than five months in the post-9/11 USA. Possibly less than four. And as Carl Sagan noted in Contact, (although his example was more extreme, with characters living in orbit) it's hard to keep your nationalism when you're thoroughly removed from your nation, and forced to defend, or at least explain, the hows and whys of your country to your colleagues on a daily basis. The new semester should be interesting. ETA: Yeah, that did come out political, but that's because that's all we really see out here, through the lens of the internet. Let's add a couple more things. How, exactly, does Netflix work? Does Redbox still exist? What is Redbox anyway? How do you do self-checkout at the supermarket? Is there any way to check your balance when you use a debit card? Do people still use checks? Did you know that indoor smoking in restaurants and bars was made illegal in your home state? And vaping? But concealed carry is legal now? How much does a car cost? How about a Big Mac? Why does my bank keep getting merged and bought and sold, and invalidating my debit card each time it does so? So many questions.
More sociopolitical. In America, where I was raised, I'm "that little Puerto Rican dude. In Puerto Rico, where I was born and to which I am ethnically beholden, I'm "Ese gringito allá."
Nova Scotia looks like such a beautiful little place. I have two stories that take place in Nova Scotia actually. How is it like living there day to day?
Add moonshine, domestic violence, and suicide to that, and it's starting to sound like a typical Finnish literary novel. This is the five-step program, the basic plot: 1) Get drunk on moonshine, alone (add self-pity for good measure) 2) Feel up your teenage daughter 3) Throw your family out into the snow and threaten them with a shotgun 4) Visit the pigs in the barn 5) Blow your brains out I think the only component I've taken from the literary canon of my home country is off-putting, in-your-face realism. My writing is not suffused in it, but it rears its head sporadically through an unpleasant/ugly scene, character, or plot twist.
I may joke about the lack of intellectual stimulation, but the beauty stimulation completely makes up for it. My wife and I have traveled every byway within a hundred kilometers. We are better tourist guides than the locals. It would be hell to go back to Montreal. We went through a near catastrophe a couple of years ago when the frackers almost took over the province. They wanted to put 20,000 fracking wells in the Annapolis Valley and directly on the land where I live. They would have succeeded if not for the massive public outcry, and even that made it a close call. There is a town in the Valley called Paradise. I like the sign on the town boundary that says, 'Leaving Paradise, Please come again.' The people are friendly, but sometimes not welcoming to CFAs (Come From Aways). One of the guys installing my Internet antenna (lousy rural Internet) was an extreme joker but I could only catch half of what he said. I told him his accent was so strong that I couldn't understand him. I've picked up the accent a little. My old tablet could never understand the word house. It always wrote hose.
I write a lot of stories set in nature (mountains, forests and the likes), and I guess that's pretty Norwegian of me. I don't write crime novels, though, and I don't attempt to do so either.
I'm from Finland, and I have lived my whole life here. I can't really say how it has affected me as a writer. On one of the few courses I have been on the teacher told us to keep things simple, and maybe that tells a little about Finnish people. My writing style has always been a little... Overflowing. I like to paint a picture with much detail. So for a moment that made me think that I will never ever be good at writing. In Finland people usually seem to settle for less, we think that nobody really cares what I have to show and that none of us is talented. There are only the few and because of that you shouldn't even try. And that is the thing that mostly affects me, and I affect my writing. More than anyone or anything.
Same thing in Portugal too. The *selected* few and all that crap. There would be so much to say about this, and on so many levels, that I don't have the time. But since I'm on this thread, I'm surprised that so few non-English writers have spoken up. We must be very shy.
For me too it was very hard to start writing anything on this site actually. On any thread. Maybe I'm scared about my grammar or not explaining myself well enough. Or it's my young age: I feel like what I'm going to write isn't important or comes of just completely idiotic.
The best thing to improve one's English is practice, practice, practice. You've already taken the first step breaking free from your shyness. It's all win from here.
I'm Australian that's fairly foreign. Currently live in the inner-west (basically the upper-middle-class hippie area)
I'm Iranian, Farsi's my mother tongue, but I've been living in the UK for the past 2 years, London specifically. Interestingly enough, I've never written anything in my native tongue, every story I've ever written, every piece of writing, and the novel I'm currently working on, all have been and are in English. That's in part because all of my favorite books, books that have inspired me to become a writer are by English-speaking authors, also the fact that I'm intending to write for an English speaking market. At this point, It honestly feels more natural to write in English than in Farsi. I'm not complaining though
No actually. My current WIP is set in the US, with mostly American characters. Actually I've yet to write an Iranian character in any of my stories.
Born in the US. Spent time on five continents counting North America. Don't know why I've not yet been to Asia, but I expect to visit there before I die, Antarctica, not so much.
That's pretty cool. Iranian, living in the UK, writing about the US. You should probably try to write your book in a third language though, just to complete the oddness
Hmm, seven (or six, depending on your views on Eurasia) continents, minus five is two, and Asia (so we're at seven) and Antarctica are mentioned at the end, so I'm guessing she's been to North America, South America, Atlantis, Lemuria, and Mu.