How The Italian Language Has Influenced My Writing

May 16, 2018 | By Melissa Muldoon | Reply More

I have always considered myself a creative person, an artist and a designer. I have expressed myself through a variety of mediums — oil and acrylic and computer graphics — but I hadn’t defined myself as a writer per se. But that image of myself changed when I began to learn the Italian language fifteen years ago.

Naturally, over the course of my academic and professional life writing has been an essential part of my work. But the day writing became my profession was the moment I decided to concentrate on becoming fluent in Italian. That decision ultimately led to the creation of the Studentessa Matta website, a dual-language blog which I write in Italian and English. In Italian Matta means “crazy student.” I selected the name because it gives me license to discuss profusely in Italian everything from pasta to paparazzi.

As my language skills improved and I began to communicate more fluently in the Italian language, using idioms and local expressions, gesturing with my hands and capturing my stories on paper, a curious thing began to happen. Through this process of becoming “Italianized,” I began to blossom and let go of inhibitions and tapped into a different kind of persona and discovered a fresh new writing voice.

In Italian, they say “lasciar andare.” Let things go. And that is what I did. I permitted myself personally to take a few more risks and go on a few more adventures. In writing, I also developed a more relaxed and humorous style and jettisoned insecurities and fears of failure. After all, I was learning Italian, and one needs to have a bit of courage as well as a sense of humor when tackling a new language — especially true when writing in a public internet forum in a foreign language!

But, I’ve discovered some of the best ideas and learning experiences occur when you open yourself up to new possibilities and give in to the flow and even perhaps make a few mistakes.

As I embraced this new “matta” personality and became more outgoing and better able to communicate, my traveling experiences in Italy became richer as well. This only provided me with more unusual experiences about which to write, and the daily discipline of composing articles helped to further craft my style. The more I wrote in Italian and English, the more my confidence in my abilities as a writer grew.

Then, after years of publishing non-fictional anecdotes on my blog, I decided to turn all these stories into a series of novels. Since I started writing books based on my personal relationship with Italy, I’ve been hooked. I love weaving plots, creating worlds and inventing people to populate them based on things I know best — Italian culture, art, and history. But most importantly I want readers to get a glimpse of all the innumerable things that make Italy unique to me: the sights, sounds, tastes, as well as the legends and cultural anecdotes which I can express more intimately and poetically through the pages of my novels.

Now, thanks to the Italian language, when someone asks how I define myself I tell them I consider myself not only an artist who paints with a brush, but also an artist who paints with words.

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Melissa Muldoon is the author of “Dreaming Sophia” & “Waking Isabella.” She is also an artist, designer, and creator of the Studentessa Matta Dual-language Blog and Youtube Channel. Through her many projects as well as her programs to study in Italy Melissa promotes Italian language and culture. She has a B.A. in fine arts, art history, and European history and a master’s in art history. She studied painting, language and art history in Florence.

Melissa’s first two books take readers to Florence and Arezzo and are inspired by Melissa’s experiences living and traveling in Italy. Now in another art history adventure, due out Fall 2018 called “Eternally Artemisia.” readers will go to Tuscany, Montepulciano, and Florence in the sixteenth century and Rome in the 1930s.

Melissa’s websites:

Author Website: www.MelissaMuldoon.com

Studentessa Matta Italian Dual Language Blog Website: www.StudentessaMatta.com

Dreaming Sophia Art History Website (where I blog in English about Art and Artists): www.DreamingSophiaBook.com

Amazon Melissa Muldoon Author Site: https://www.amazon.com/Melissa-Muldoon/e/B01LYC716