What the fuck is this though, seriously. This looks like the DVD cover for a gay teen romantic comedy, like Cruel Intentions but wacky instead of moody and tragic. Bad boy Zayn makes a bet with his slutty on-and-off bf Louis that he can sleep with uptight virgin Liam on prom night, only then he falls in LOVE while tenderly fingerbanging Liam on the back of his motorcycle, so he tells Louis he lost the bet, but Liam finds out about it just before they’re crowned Prom Kings and he yells at Zayn in front of the whole school like I WAS JUST A BET TO YOU??? I GAVE YOU EVERYTHING!!! and zayn runs after him in the rain but Liam won’t forgive him and then Zayn writes a poem about it and reads it aloud in English class and cries.
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.
Go to any Blockbuster (well, you can’t) and read the titles of the wall of B-listers. Dozens upon dozens of puns that are small variations off a handful of tired, overused metaphors. We laud a good writer as one that can put the words together in new ways – and ESL folks, you can do that without even breaking a sweat.
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.
I really needed this, i feel so goddamn inferior to native speakers
Yes, it is really hard to find the courage to sit down and write or keep writing whenever you realize that you can’t express correctly what you want to say, or that you may be writing it in the wrong way.
So thank you for this and to all other non native English fanfic writers for sharing your work!
"Technically, you killed him." 