The Hidden Gift of Fewer Words
What Writing in a Second Language Taught Me about Writing
One of the first things you learn when writing in a language that isn’t your own is this: you don’t get to hide behind a wall of words. No synonym safety net. No eloquent elegance to cushion the fall. You work with what you’ve got. And let’s face it, that often feels like bringing a butter knife to a linguistic sword fight. The lack of words and fluency feels like a deficit at first. A frustrating constraint. But over time, I’ve come to view it differently. I’ve come to embrace the strange liberation that comes with having fewer words.
When we can’t dress up our thoughts in layers of language, we’re forced to get to the point in our writing. We’re forced to ask: What are we actually trying to say? That pressure toward precision, toward essential meaning, isn’t a weakness. It’s actually a strength. It can become our quiet superpower.
In fact, I’ve come to believe that having fewer words at our disposal can actually make us better writers. It pulls us toward clarity. It forces us to write with purpose. It strips away the temptation to perform, and focuses us instead on the substance. In academia especially, where it’s all too easy to let complex language substitute for clear thinking, that’s no small advantage.
1. Skill over Fluency
I grew up in the Netherlands, speaking Dutch at home and at school. Like most Dutch children, I started learning English early: mostly from reading the subtitles of US sitcoms, or by translating the lyrics of Britpop songs using a dictionary (remember those?). Casual fluency is one thing. Writing an academic article that can hold its own, or giving a keynote in polished English, is something else entirely. That kind of proficiency doesn't come automatically, and for me, it certainly didn’t come easily.
What I discovered early on in my academic career was that my limited English vocabulary forced me to focus on the essentials. I couldn’t embellish, riff or spiral into flowery prose, even if I had wanted to. I simply lacked the words to pull it off. What I could be is exact. Oddly enough, over time, this turned out to be an advantage. I couldn’t hide behind fancy phrasing. In that constraint, I began to find meaning, and eventually, see it as an important part of developing a craft.
2. One Valuable Lesson
I didn’t learn this lesson on my own. I’ve been lucky to have had generous mentors throughout my career. One person who shaped my thinking about writing more than almost anyone else was Jim Stimson. A towering figure in American political science, whose graduate class on American politics I took during my time at UNC Chapel Hill. Jim is a deeply thoughtful teacher. He also is the kind of scholar who made clarity feel radical. Early on, I remember him saying something that landed with the weight of a challenge and the ring of truth: “If you can’t write it simply, you don’t understand it.”
At first, I bristled a little. It felt like an impossible standard. Surely, some ideas were meant to be complicated, nuanced, layered, even messy. I am, after all, European, raised on the belief that if it’s not deep, complex, and borderline philosophical, it’s simply not worth your while! But as I kept writing, and rewriting, I started to realise what he meant. Complexity isn’t an excuse for confusion. Real clarity means we’ve done the intellectual work to strip away what’s not essential, and that’s much harder than hiding behind jargon.
3. Dealing with My Own Struggle
Jim’s words stayed with me, especially because writing was never something that came easy to me. As someone with dyslexia, I’ve always found writing more labor-intensive than most people realise. And writing in English, on top of that, felt like trying to build a house without all the right tools.
But Jim’s mantra, that simplicity is a sign of understanding, became my north star. I couldn’t always make my writing better or more flowing, but I could always make it clearer. I could work toward understanding, and make others understand it too. And when that happened, writing no longer felt like an obstacle. It started to feel like something I could do. A skill I could work on. Something I could refine.
4. Writing as Craft, Not Talent
For a long time, like many of us, I thought good writing was something other people just “had”. That effortless elegance you see in the best books, the sharpest articles, the clear-eyed op-eds, they seemed to emerge fully formed from minds wired differently than mine. But over time, I began to realise that most good writers aren’t born, they’re built. Especially when we’re writing in a second language, the illusion of “natural talent” quickly evaporates. We’re forced to confront our limitations from the start. We can’t glide through a paragraph on instinct. We build our sentences plank by plank, testing their weight and balance as we go.
For me, that shift, from thinking of writing as a gift to seeing it as a skill, turned out to be truly transformative. I started to treat writing like a craft, one that could be learned and practiced. I made outlines, then refined them. I studied writers I admired, not only for their ideas, but also for their form. I used clarity as a measuring stick, not elegance. I kept a notebook of phrases that worked and others that didn’t. I kept a folder of articles I considered well-written and revisited books that I felt had a good flow. I asked my advisors and later my co-authors to read my drafts with a red pen in hand.
The result wasn’t perfect writing, but it was honest writing: clear, functional, and increasingly my own. Perhaps most importantly, the practice of honing my skill power boosted my confidence. Not because I thought my writing had become great, but because I thought it had become slightly better. That felt more satisfying than talent ever could.
5. A Short Guide for Second-Language Writers
If you're a student, researcher, or writer wrestling with writing in your second language, here's my short guide, forged through countless trials and errors. It might just help you too:
Think in structure, not style: Don’t worry about sounding “elegant.” Worry about whether the ideas are clear and well-sequenced. A strong argument in simple language always beats a vague one in elaborate prose.
Use constraints as a disciplining tool: Limited vocabulary and grammatical simplicity can be a gift. They push us to be concise. If we’re not sure what to say next, it often means we’re not sure what we want to say in the first place. Start there.
Write like we’re explaining it to a smart friend: If someone smart, outside our field or usual circle can understand what we’re saying, it’s a good sign. That’s not “dumbing down”, it’s actually finding clarity.
6. Respect the Marble
I called this Substack Respect the Marble for a reason. Writing for me is like sculpting. The raw ideas are there, but we need the tools and patience to shape them. And sometimes, it's our limitations, our non-native status or our learning disabilities, that become the chisel, forcing us to work more slowly, but also more precisely.
So, if writing in English feels hard, it’s not just you. It is hard. But it’s also learnable. And in the end, our clarity might not come despite the fact that English isn't our first language, it might come because of it. We just need to keep carving.
7. Let’s Keep this Conversation Going
If any of this struck a chord, or sparked a thought of your own, I’d love to hear it. Feel free to reply, leave a comment, or share how you approach writing and deep work. And if you haven’t subscribed yet, consider joining the list to get future posts on writing, research, and the craft behind thinking deeply.
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