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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/24565
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/24565
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Joseph Conrad was one of the greatest novelists ever to write in the English language. He was born in Poland and did not become fluent in English until his twenties. It can be done.

But writing a novel is not about being able to write a grammatical sentence. It is about being able to tell a compelling story. There is no certain way to equip yourself to tell a compelling story, but reading lots and lots of them, including the very best ever written, is a great way to go about it. I would suggest starting with Joseph Conrad.

There is no way to guarantee that any specific skill will stay marketable. Not even for the time it takes to get a degree, let alone for a career. (I studied to be a teacher because there was supposed to be a huge demand. Only three people in my graduating class got hired. The boom was over by the time we graduated.) If your heart is set on a career that requires specific training, like teaching or law, you should study that, not because it is marketable but because you love it.

You do not need a degree in technical communication to get a job as a technical writer. A degree (or experience) in a subject related to what you will be writing about can often help much more. Tech writing is one of the most diverse fields on the planet. No one qualification will make you a candidate for all tech writing jobs.

You only get to go to college once in your life. Study the thing you are most passionate about. You will be a better student for it, a more engaged student, a happier student. Whether the subject you study will be marketable or not one, five, ten, or twenty years after you graduate will be impossible to predict, but you will be more marketable.

Original score: 4