Over the years, I've trained myself to speak using the same language I would use if I were typing: meaning using full sentences in the way that paragraphs and scenes are arranged.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Like, even when I speak, I think I speak the same way I write. I kind of see it a certain way, and it leads me to write it exactly how I'm seeing it.
It's almost better most times to not talk in a scene. I think you can actually express a lot more without words.
Expressing myself through language was always something that I had had to learn to do more so than others.
I did my first movie, 'The Mambo Kings,' in America without speaking the language. I learned the lines phonetically. I had an interpreter actually just to understand directions from my director.
If you have a craftsman's command of the language and basic writing techniques you'll be able to write - as long as you know what you want to say.
I have a wonderful English-language dialogue coach. All the time I have to speak English, he is with me. It is a double effort, because you have to say the words correctly and then act them.
I think my prose reads as if English were my second language. By the time I get to the end of a paragraph, I'm dodging bullets and gasping for breath.
English is my language because of the history, and what I try to do - and I did that in 'Carpentaria' in particular - is to write in the way we tell stories and in the voice of our own people and our own way of speaking.
I know many writers who first dictate passages, then polish what they have dictated. I speak, then I polish - occasionally I do windows.
Speaking English is like tongue-twist for me. I can speak each word perfect, but then you have to string them together like, 'Blah, blah, blah.' That's when I get crazy.