When English isn't your mother tongue

I wouldn't worry about "ironing out your accent", at least not where your fiction is concerned - it's part of your writerly voice, not just your spoken voice.

I would however get a native English speaker to go over the query and fix any errors - you don't want to give the agent any excuse to say no in the 10 seconds they devote to your query.

You could even hop over to SYW here, now you have over 50 posts, and get it nibbled by the squirrels

Sad Soup-eating Girl said:

Thank you!
Yeah, I did post a bit of my actual manuscript in SYW! But so let's say I have a native clean up my query, will the agent acceptingly clean up the manuscript (or expect the publisher to, however it works) or will their jaw drop when they realize that the query had more cleaning-up than the MS?

Click to expand...

Generally, no. Some agents will go over an MS before sending it to editors, but they are not there to clean up your MS. This is your job. If it is a big problem for you, consider paying for an editor to go over it before you submit.

That said, it may not be something to worry about. One of the charms for me of reading Australian books (or even Irish books) is the difference in the way the language is used, despite it still being native English. As long as you are writing according to the rules of English grammar, this may strengthen your writing.

Apply the same "clean up" to the manuscript as you apply to the query. Provided you have a query that gets requests for material, you won't get any further with the agent if the MS doesn't have the same standard. Always send out your best, most polished work. Don't send it out until then.

I don't know if you're asking for yourself, Sad Soup-Eating Girl, or not...but your English reads perfectly normal to me. Having someone go over the mss is always a good idea, but if you're afraid it's going to hurt you, do you really need to say it's a second language? I couldn't tell from reading this post (y'know, except for the part where you said so).

I'd recommend finding a native English beta reader to help you with the MS. It worked wonders for me -- I tend to mix up my prepositions and US/UK terms. Apparently, American cashiers don't use tills, but cash registers. Who'd have thunk?