Writing in English as a non-native English writer is a bitch.

It doesn’t matter that my life has been in English for the last 12 years. It doesn’t matter that I read over 60 books a year in English. It seems that whenever I’m writing fluidly, my brain mixes Portuguese, expressions I know but have no idea how to spell, British English, and American slang.

It’s an amazing amalgam of things that makes editing an excruciating, time-consuming beast.

Last but not least, after almost 16,000 words written and reviewed, it was clearly time to make a decision between British and American English.

And this was one of those moments when, despite the disadvantage of being a non-native English speaker, at least I could choose what I thought would be better for the potential marketability of my book.

Unfortunately, the decision really pained me. I would 100% prefer to write in British English. God knows how much I love a British accent. But I cannot ignore the size of the US market for the genre I’m writing in, so my management degree spoke louder than my wishes.

And American English it is.