How can I improve my writing as an ESLlet? Are there any books that might help or online materials?Occasionally I see decent effort posts here and some of those eloquent substack newsletters make me quite envious (even some x tweets have a certain elegance to them)>inb4 just use chatGPT
Start with this. It has everything most people need and it's only a 100 pages or so. If you're struggling with the basics, you could improve your English skills in an afternoon with this. Beyond that, just read a lot. That's literally how every writer gets good -- by reading good shit.
Like other anon said, Strunk and White and reading a lot is a good start. Daily freewriting or “morning pages” also helps. Also copywork for internalizing a style. If you come across an essay or a book chapter you like, copy out the whole thing by hand. I’ve read a lot of books on writing. Here are the ones that helped me most: Writing Without Teachers, The Elements of Eloquence, Style: Towards Clarity and Grace (there are lots of versions of this, just choose a recent one), and To Show and to Tell. If you want to go deeper into rhetoric and persuasive essay writing, find the textbook Classic Rhetoric for the Modern Student. These writing books are helpful, but no replacement for reading great writing you want to emulate.
>>24720481I forgot. This book is also really good, but you need some base level knowledge of linguistics to really get the most out of it, and it's definitely on the more advanced side. Keep it in mind for when you're further along the path.
Why are there so many ESL posts recently? Did Kash Patel break into /lit/ to get better at writing?
>>24720533I doubt it. Modern day jeets have absolute zero interest in art.
Any advice on how to stop overcorrecting my English? Not a new learner and I swear it wasn't this bad two years ago. I read well, so i think, I'm fine with Shakespeare's or phil doorstoppers even. It's just I've been plagued with second guessing when I write. This probably has something to do with the fact that I'm from bumfuck nowhere where I don't get the chance to verbally utilize it that it starts to spill over. Anyway, um, help?
>>24721860Stop caring. If you're level of English is good enough for your purposes, then what does it matter if you make a mistake here and there? It's not like native speakers are immune from doing that either.
>>24722684Yeah but malapropism really bugs me. It's like I'm losing my grasp on phrasal verbs and collocations.
>>24720402all you need right here
>>24723052>phrasal verbs and collocationsBeing less anal is fine. As long my writing looks and sound good to me, I don't care at all about spelling or grammar.