: Re: Could I reach the level of good writing style as non-native language speaker? I currently write in Russian, but I think of switching to English to gain more audience and to play with both

@Hamaas631

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I posted a comment an answer commented on, so I decided to post an answer...
My answer concerns novels, for technical writing most don't care about style and even legibility if you are an expert in your field

A side note for the OP, you also asked about bilingual play of words and linguistic puns...it is a bad idea and most likely would require your readers to fluent in both languages too, and so would severely limit your audience which goes contrary to the avowed goal of reaching a broader readership.

Short answer: Yes it is possible but highly unlikely

In my comment about Joseph Conrad maybe I was wrong about some details, but my point was mostly that he is one of the very, very, few that achieved that and is often brandished as an example... As if that happened every other day...
Ask the poor tens of thousandths Indian wannabe authors, for whom English is almost a first language as many schools teach in it, who desperately try to get published in English, and are as "successful" at it as Russians, Ethiopians, Mexicans, or Chinese ... So yes it is technically possible but the odds are stacked against you, and even more so if you are not currently living in an English speaking country. It is already near impossible to get published as a native speaker in your own country, imagine the odds of being published as a non-native speaker living in a foreign country...

Let me illustrate from my own life.
I do want to believe since I do want to try to make a living out of being published in English, although I often despair I will ever reach that level.
I am a French native speaker, fluent in 4 languages, I got good grades in English in high school, I briefly majored in Litt and I obtained a top score in the TOEFL before studying in an American University (a couple of years later I retook the test and got an near perfect score)
I lived, and studied, in the US for nearly a decade and wrote countless papers, probably amounting to a million words, and a 500-page long thesis, while I was not an English major I took several writing, composition, and literature classes where I got the top grades and left native speakers biting the dust.
I also got very interested, in writing, storytelling, screenwriting, fiction writing, I have read somewhere between one and two thousand English written books too.
But then I had to leave and return to my native country, for a while I relocated to England where I stayed a few years, but I had to move back home.
That is the main issue I think, not living in an English speaking environment, not being surrounded by Anglo-Saxon culture, though I still almost exclusively read and watch Netflix in English...

For me, one of the many reminders that I may never reach that level is when I write something in StackExchange and a kind native speaker edits it, rightly so, and reminds me I am just a pleb foreigner, an alien who will always be other

Some elements of the writing, such a plot, are not language-specific though are often culturally determined but many others are. On top of my head, the hardest things to get right are sentence structure, idioms, rhythm, and dialogue.

Some people argue that foreigners write interesting sentences, maybe so but their "weirdness" is also jarring and don't flow right, and can take the native reader right off the illusion, which is imo the worst thing a fiction writer can do.

So here I am palely loitering, despondent about
ever reaching native-like fluency. Now, on the one hand, I might just not be any good at writing, and it's true I don't always pay attention to my grammar, on the other hand I think that if someone with my background struggles so much trying and failing, flailing really, to write like a native, it must be awfully difficult to do so.

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