You may think the British influence on my writing comes from my love of Jane Austen and the classics. Well, you’d only be half right.
When I was around a year or so old, my father was transferred temporarily to England for work. We lived there for about a year and a half. While I don’t remember any of it, that experience forever shaped my life.
If I remember correctly, we lived in or around Bristol, Manchester, and Disley. My mom can correct me if I am wrong. Those are the place names I recall from conversation. I’ve been to Beatrix Potter’s house, Chatsworth, all over England and Scotland, France, Germany, Italy, Austria, Switzerland, and more places than I can recall off the top of my head. (The only ones I remember are Austria, Germany, Switzerland, and the Eifel Tower from an airplane, but those were revisited on a later trip.)
I grew up hearing stories about our time there, about the places we traveled, and the people we met. Much of the television I remember watching as a child was British, as were many of my children’s books. I’ve spelled and pronounced words in both British and American English all of my life, and I usually have no trouble following British speakers and their lingo. Sometimes it takes me a few minutes to realize they are speaking in a different accent, and there are quite a few different dialects as well.
Nowadays, I still primarily watch British television and movies. The accents are comforting to me and feel like home. Sometimes, I walk away with a slight accent myself, but I’ve never been comfortable sharing that phenomenon with more than my household.
It was such a big part of my childhood that sometimes it comes out in other ways. This is most apparent in my writing. It usually ends up as a hodge-podge of American and British English, but it’s 100% me.
So, if you ever notice that my writing is a little different than the average American writer, this is why. In some ways, I feel more British American than anything else. Patriotically speaking, I am an American and a Tennessean through and through, but the British Isles hold a large piece of my heart (and my DNA). I hope to go back one day and take my husband and daughter, but if I never get the chance, I’ll still always feel that connection across the Pond.
It’s in my blood.
❤️🇺🇸🇬🇧