EXILE in literature often refers to writers who have fled their homes due to some sort of persecution that has emerged because of what they have written. However, in a sense, any type of writing that is done away from one’s home – away from what one knows and expects – can be considered a kind of exile, even if the move is voluntary, since the writer is away, separated from what he/she knows, deprived of familiarity, and plunged into an unknown environment.

There are a great many writers who wrote some of their best works about their countries of origin while being in exile (whether self-imposed or not) from their home countries. Some examples of such writers include Salman Rushdie, Jamaica Kincaid, V.S. Naipaul, Lord Byron, and our very own Edgar Mittelholzer. So the question is, does being away from a place lead to a great change in one’s writing or the writing process? I am currently in the US Midwest. Will this affect my writing which has always been about Guyana, and written in Guyana? Based on my own experiences thus far, and with the knowledge that everyone’s experience is peculiar to that individual only, I would have to say that the answers to these questions are both yes and no.

There is a change in one’s writing in the sense that there is a possibility of writing becoming easier or more difficult. There’s no denying that living in a first-world country is vastly different from living in a third-world country. Therefore, writing in the first world and in the third world is also different. The most pronounced change that Guyanese writers will be able to appreciate is the lack of blackouts and the presence of an efficient internet service outside of Guyana.

To some, these might seem like simple things, but being a writer who is currently experiencing something different from what I have always known, I can say with much assuredness that being allowed the freedom to finish one’s writing without having to worry about a power outage striking, and getting research done with fast internet, are two of the main components that have resulted in the actual enjoyment of the writing that I’ve done in the US so far. Sometimes, circumstances force us to forget to enjoy the process of writing.

On the flip side, writing can be slowed down immensely. In a new place, there is so much to see; so much to do. It takes immense self-discipline to decide to stay in and write rather than checking out the diner downtown that sells really good burgers. It takes great effort to convince yourself to stay in and finish a story or a poem when you can go out with new friends to your first gay bar, or the nearby Museum of Natural History or the Art Library across the river.

The writer in a new world exists in a world of distractions. There are things in the writer’s home country that he or she knows, is the norm and, in a sense, the mundane. Outside of that sphere exists the exciting and the new. To write well in exile, a writer must know how to balance his or her writing with exploration, or unearth a compromise that allows exploration of the new to transfigure itself into some sort of fuel for the writing.

Of course, the simplest way of dealing with the previously mentioned point is to simply incorporate the new people, new buildings, and new events into one’s writing. Perhaps the story you write will be set in the Midwest and it will tell the tale of a Guyanese girl who moves there and has to deal with culture shock. Perhaps the poem will draw comparisons between the Iowa River and the Demerara River. And so on. Good writers will find ways to make use of what surrounds them.

Another point to consider is how being away from something that you would want to write about causes you to lack the ability to correctly visualise or feel that thing. For example, hypothetically, can you really capture the shape, smell and texture of sugarcane if you are only surrounded by oaks and birches for weeks? One way around this that I have found useful in these past few days has to do with using what is available to you as triggers for the thing you want to experience. So, for example, several writers were recently on a trip to Iowa’s Lake MacBride.

I was sharing a kayak with Kenyan writer, Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor, and we spent close to an hour paddling around the lake, sometimes going into what appeared to be a main inlet that was bordered by forests on one side. This was a lake in the middle of the United States, but in several ways, it reminded me of the black water creeks at home in Guyana.

Surprisingly, I was able to better visualise the black water creek that was a part of the setting in a story I am writing by comparing and contrasting my experiences in Lake MacBride and in the creeks in Guyana. So when I asked Yvonne to take a picture of me and she laughingly complied, she reminded me of several other people who laughed in the same gleeful way when I had asked them to take a picture of me in the waterways of Guyana, and so we have a similarity forming itself in my mind and this could help me to create a character for my story.

I noticed that the water of Lake MacBride was dark, but not as black as the stew created by fallen leaves that make up the creeks in Guyana, and, therefore, I picked up on a difference that would allow me to better describe the creek in my story. And so on and so forth, until you sift through such similarities and differences to create a version of the entity you’re writing about that is as close as possible to the original.

I guess, in the end, when it comes to writers who write in exile from their home countries, the kind of writing they do and the works they create ultimately stem from the writer him/herself, rather than stemming from the environment in which it is being written. It is the writer who decides how to use the resources available. It is the writer who decides what will distract him/her. It is the writer who develops tactics of pulling out from the environment elements that will be used, almost like a montage, to create the world so far away that he/she knows to be home.