To those fanfic writers that are not english native speakers: sometimes, when I read your work, I notice that english isn’t your first language, because there are strange phrases. I know immediately that to you, they are perfectly normal, since it’s the way your language describes things. And I love that, because here you go, creating your art, in a language you spent so much time learning, just so that other people can enjoy your stories! It is so amazing and I will never criticise you for that, but instead I will be thankful that you put in all the effort.
I love you all, you are amazing. Keep creating, please!
Writing is hard. Writing in a language that is not your native tongue is even harder. I love and respect the hell out of you all!
I read a book a while back, which I have completely forgotten the name of, but the author mentioned teaching poetry workshops to children of different age groups and said that the a lot of the younger kids came out with some really sublime stuff because they hadn’t internalised as many cliches and boring stock phrases in the English language yet, while the older kids tended to write very formulaic stuff in comparison. I think that writers working in a language that’s not their native tongue bring a similar quality to their work. You’ll see phrases that a native speaker could never come up with that are so fresh and beautiful.
We native English speakers tend to do a lot of washing in each others’ water, so to speak, when it comes to writing. We’re all drawing from the same stock pool of set phrases, idioms, metaphors, and classic literary references.
You second-language folks, you bring the fresh and the new into that pool. You put words together in ways that are absolutely correct, but we never would have thought to. You make our language younger and I absolutely am grateful for that.
Hear hear!
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