Non-native English speakers from abroad writing/publishing in English ?

SVenus

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Same situation here, only I'm from Croatia.
Honestly, one of the biggest reasons I'm writing in English (aside from the obviously bigger market [there are only 4 million people in Croatia in total]), is that the stuff I write just sounds... silly in Croatian. I'm not sure if it's the same with other European languages, but English does seem to be a much better fit for fantasy. I remember when GoT was on TV here and the translated dialogue with faux old timey words was just laughable. One reason I think, is that compound words are easy and sound great in English. For example, lots and and I do mean loooots of "cool" fantasy names are just noun+noun or some other variation, like again with GoT, all the cities (Winter-fell, River-run, High-garden, etc.). In Croatian these translations are either laughable or clumsy.
 

Robots

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Same situation here, only I'm from Croatia.
Honestly, one of the biggest reasons I'm writing in English (aside from the obviously bigger market [there are only 4 million people in Croatia in total]), is that the stuff I write just sounds... silly in Croatian. I'm not sure if it's the same with other European languages, but English does seem to be a much better fit for fantasy. I remember when GoT was on TV here and the translated dialogue with faux old timey words was just laughable. One reason I think, is that compound words are easy and sound great in English. For example, lots and and I do mean loooots of "cool" fantasy names are just noun+noun or some other variation, like again with GoT, all the cities (Winter-fell, River-run, High-garden, etc.). In Croatian these translations are either laughable or clumsy.

I totally get what you mean. Feels the same in German
 

Robots

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Hi! I live in The Netherlands and the language I write in primarily is Dutch, but once I've written my stories in Dutch I translate them to English, and sometimes I like the English versions so much that I try to write the next thing in English all in itself.
I also sometimes feel I am better at expressing myself in English, although some things might not be grammarly 100% correct or I sometimes don't know the right word for a very particular thing I'm trying to say... y'know. But that's what a good editor is for :)

I'm always inspired by Elif Shafak, whose native tongue is Turkish but writes in English. She once told she got backlash for not writing in her native tongue, to which she responded that her minds works in all kind of different ways in English and that she likes the way it does. Before I read that, I used to be insecure about my writing in English. After I read that, I wasn't. You do you, and you'll see that things will work out as long as you're doing things you're most comfortable doing. If that's writing in English, that's writing in English!

Goeden Tag Pia ! Great pep talk !
 

Robots

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Huh, I always thought because German is filled with compounds that it'd be easy to just slap all those words together.

You can, but to my ears at least it sounds a bit clumsy in many cases. I think English has the smoother sound overall.
 

konstantina

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Hi, Robots!
I am from Greece. I write fantasy and although my book was published in my country (through a lot of hardships), the fantasy market is quite small. So, I have collaborated with a translator and now I am submitting my work abroad. Things are tough, there is a huge competition, but I wanted to try.
The problem with non-native writers is that you can never know if you get rejected due to the language, unless someone tells you that there is something wrong in the use and feeling of the language. Anyway, I am glad that I have learned many things by this experience :)

- - - Updated - - -

Hi, Robots!
I am from Greece. I write fantasy and although my book was published in my country (through a lot of hardships), the fantasy market is quite small. So, I have collaborated with a translator and now I am submitting my work abroad. Things are tough, there is a huge competition, but I wanted to try.
The problem with non-native writers is that you can never know if you get rejected due to the language, unless someone tells you that there is something wrong in the use and feeling of the language. Anyway, I am glad that I have learned many things by this experience :)
 

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I'm Uruguayan. I should write in Spanish, but I've tried and I just can't. Spanish is such a complicated language and yet, there isn't enough words to describe things imo. I'm glad to find I'm not the only one that feels like this!
 

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There's a bunch of reasons why I write in English instead of Swedish.

First of, while I still have things to learn about English, my Swedish isn't much better. So whichever I pick, I wouldn't be closer to "publishing quality". Writing in English is one of the ways I've been practicing the language.

Then, being a fairly small language, Swedish might not even be available option for the spell-checker in the writing tools I'm using. Just forget about using a grammar checker.

Reading... There's so much more available in English. So I probably read ten times as much in English than in Swedish.

...and if I ever write something good enough to publish, probably 90% of my target audience in Sweden would at least as likely read a book in English as in Swedish.

However, I know the limitation isn't in the language. I'm guessing some tropes have made us more used to hear certain things in English, but I've read enough good books in Swedish to know it can be done.
 

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Well, I write in English because the market for the type of stories I dabble in is international. With a majority of my readers living in English-speaking nations, there's really little sense in writing in any language other than English (or American, which definitely isn't the same thing! šŸ˜‰)

I suppose I could write a story in Danish for a larf, but I have a sneaking suspicion it wouldn't be worth the hassle - that's not to say I'll never do it.

Over the years, I've written a handful of stories that were set right here in Denmark with Danish characters, etc., and they've always been received well by folks around the world.


Norsebard
 

Catriona Grace

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Welcome.

One of my work-study students spoke such colloquial English that I didn't realize she was German until she told me a month or two into the job. Similarly, if one's written English is fluent, the problem with literary acceptance is likely connected to the subject matter, plotting, or characters rather than to one's native language.

All the ESL speakers above seem pretty proficient to me. Of course, my first language isn't quite English... I grew up speaking Texan. ;) My daughter's mother-in-law and I carry on written correspondence in Spanish; no one is going to peg me for a native speaker, but she generally understands me.
 

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All the ESL speakers above seem pretty proficient to me. Of course, my first language isn't quite English... I grew up speaking Texan. ;) My daughter's mother-in-law and I carry on written correspondence in Spanish; no one is going to peg me for a native speaker, but she generally understands me.
Texan? That ain't too bad. I can understand y'all just fine. :)
 
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Catriona Grace

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Texan? That ain't too bad. I can understand y'all just fine. :)
You don't speak fluent Texan, do you? Y'all is plural, used for several people. All y'all is for larger groups.;)

Sigh, I've been away from my native language for a long time and don't speak it as well as I once did. (See: right there I wrote "as I once did" instead of "as I usta.") I go down once a year to brush up, but I'm afraid friends and relatives can spot the rustiness.
 

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You don't speak fluent Texan, do you? Y'all is plural, used for several people. All y'all is for larger groups.;)

Sigh, I've been away from my native language for a long time and don't speak it as well as I once did. (See: right there I wrote "as I once did" instead of "as I usta.") I go down once a year to brush up, but I'm afraid friends and relatives can spot the rustiness.
I have friends that I've visited in Houston. He grew up in Texas, and she is halv-Colombian half Finnish, but grew up here in Sweden. Well, they've lived in Florida for two years now, but thanks to Covid they might move back to Texas before I get a chance to visit them there.

When it comes to "y'all" I must say I haven't fully learned to differentiate between the usage in different parts of the south. It seems that someone that really have mastered "y'all" could at least tell which state someone is from, just from how that word is used (I believe the usage of "y'all y'all" is a very local thing in just part of a state).
 
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I lived in Texas for many years. Y'all is more often plural than singular, but you hear it used to address a single individual all the damned time.

Maryn, who picked up the word but not the accent, and had a hell of a time dropping it
 

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I lived in Texas for many years. Y'all is more often plural than singular, but you hear it used to address a single individual all the damned time.

Maryn, who picked up the word but not the accent, and had a hell of a time dropping it
As I understand it, in at least several locations, y'all can be addressed to a single person, but is kind of used to consider the person being the present representation of a group or set of people (a bit like saying "you people" to a single person, but not necessarily with any negative connotations).
 
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Catriona Grace

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I've never heard "y'all" used by a native Texas speaker to address a single person as a single person, but it's a big state and I haven't talked to everyone living there.
 
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Y'all singular was a thang in North Carolina a few decades ago, but things may well have moved on.
 
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I write stories under a pseudonym on some other sites. People tell me all the time how great and coherent my writing style is, which is super funny because I am really far from being a native English speaker and make grammar blunders and whoopsies all the time.
If we talk, you'd think I am some Russian bumpkin with *that* weird stressed accent, forgetting or misusing articles, and making all that cringy ESL mistakes we all love and cherish.

But we are living in the 21st century (or is it the 22nd already?) and we have the tools to fix that. Yeah, I run my stories through all the grammar tools I could get my sticky fingers on, going sentence by sentence. I would sometimes work on a single pesky paragraph, hammering it over and over for an hour until it has the right shape. It is much harder than for native speakers who would not think twice about where to use articles or how the word order should be - but we just have to.
So it takes longer, it takes extra work, but it can be done smoothly and nobody would know you are an alien from some distant planet.
 

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Americans have so many complicated immigration backgrounds and family histories that they aren't scrutinizing where you are from. (shockingly, sometimes, they don't even care.)
In my experience as a Latina writer, I find this not to be the case. Editors judge me by my name even before they read my query or MS.
Editors ask for your bio, saying that it's just a formality, that they don't care about where you're from and that your writing creds aren't important either, that it's all about the work... That's bull.
Paying for professional editing is definitely the way to go especially if you haven't been able to recruit native-English beta readers.
I agree with this. However, editing services are expensive. The cost would depend on many factors: the length of the MS, the type of editing(developmental editing structural editing, line editing, copy editing...), how much editing the work needs, the category... So, unless a writer is rich, I'd suggest they try to improve their writing skills on their own first. There are lots of free resources available, the key is to find the ones that are suitable for the individual needs. This sort of thing takes time and patience.
 
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In my experience as a Latina writer, I find this not to be the case. Editors judge me by my name even before they read my query or MS.
Editors ask for your bio, saying that it's just a formality, that they don't care about where you're from and that your writing creds aren't important either, that it's all about the work... That's bull.

I agree with this. However, editing services are expensive. The cost would depend on many factors: the length of the MS, the type of editing(developmental editing structural editing, line editing, copy editing...), how much editing the work needs, the category... So, unless a writer is rich, I'd suggest they try to improve their writing skills on their own first. There are lots of free resources available, the key is to find the ones that are suitable for the individual needs. This sort of thing takes time and patience.
It's possible that a writer skilled in the craft who is not a native English speaker could pair up with a beta reader who is a novice writer who has good English skills. #1 offers critiques of the developmental editing variety, and #2 offers critiques of the line editing variety.
 
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It's possible that a writer skilled in the craft who is not a native English speaker could pair up with a beta reader who is a novice writer who has good English skills. #1 offers critiques of the developmental editing variety, and #2 offers critiques of the line editing variety.
I don't have a beta reader, but I have fanfiction sites (fanfiction.net and Archive of Our Own) to thank for honing my written English skills. I spent eight years writing fanfics there before the first time my English-language short story got accepted by a paying market.
 

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Following with great interest as I, too, am an in-English writer living in Germany. German is my mother tongue and I'm half German, but I find it hard to write in German without sounding convoluted and technical. Only my own writing feels that way to me, not others'. Perfectionism? Insecurity? I did win several German short story competitions and got my stories published in anthologies, so maybe I'm too hard on myself. Granted, I just don't feel a connection to all things German. I'm an immigrant.


Anyway, I published my first novel in what I tried my hardest to be consistent UK English, but realize now I've failed as I probably still mixed up words like trash vs rubbish. I self-published on Amazon, partly because what few agents I found who represented my genre, declined it, and partly because I'm super impatient to just get things out there (and by my own rules), but my dream would be to re-publish with a trade publisher. Anyway, it flopped and garnered 1 (one) review, but I'm still proud of it. I told the story I wanted to tell, and people did read it. I'm currently translating it to German and adapting it to a screenplay-like format in order to turn it into a manga, my greatest dream!


I don't have any advice beyond getting native English speakers to proof-read it and catch technical errors, but also mix-ups of different kinds of English if you're as concerned with this as I am. It's very easy for a non-native speaker to mix up UK, US, AU, SA, NZ, AAVE etc., but in the end, this makes your voice unique as you gained your knowledge of it beyond the borders of any one English-speaking country. As long as there aren't too many misunderstandings due to the subtleties of, say, UK vs US, I think it's pretty cool to have a stew of "all the Englishes".
 
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Although it isn't my mother tongue, strangely, I feel more comfortable expressing myself in English and I also love the sound of the language.
That's my case as well - except my mother language is English. I'm on the road to self-publish my first novel this year, and yes, it's in English. To be honest, I haven't read much about the topic, but it seemed easier to me to self-publish first and with it try to build a "fame", then go straight to querying international publishers. Plus, I really enjoy the idea of self-publishing a story, so I wanted to have this experience :D
 
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I grow up in the Philippines. And have been living in Spain for half of my life. No one speaks English around me other than my Norwegian husband, but I write in English.

I'm currently querying my Time-travel romance novel and to be completely honest, I feel a lot of disadvantages against me. I wish I were in the US or UK or Australia, anywhere where they speak English, so that I'll train my English some more because at the moment I feel hard writing stories in any language I know like I'm stuck in the middle :Shrug:
 

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That's my case as well - except my mother language is English. I'm on the road to self-publish my first novel this year, and yes, it's in English. To be honest, I haven't read much about the topic, but it seemed easier to me to self-publish first and with it try to build a "fame", then go straight to querying international publishers. Plus, I really enjoy the idea of self-publishing a story, so I wanted to have this experience :D
Good luck! It's a hard road because you'll be shouldering everything a writer and publisher do, but I know a lot of self-published writers (some are my favs) who gained a good fanbase without the backing of any publisher. I also self-publish my short stories because they're not that famous for publishers haha