I saw your tags on not being constrained by writing advice, but I do want to ask if the translation work you did/do gives you any insights you want to share.
Hmmm this is a very interesting question, and one I have pondered a lot myself before.
I think, ultimately, translation and creative writing are two incredibly different beasts that aren't always comparable with each other. I wish I had work in literary translation, which would make a wonderful overlap of both, but as it stands I don't (mostly because the market of Spanish literary translation is dominated by Spain).
THAT SAID, being a translator and my relationship with words has also given me the tools I need for creative writing, in a very simple way: my job requires that I know the rules for writing (SPAG, for the most part) and keep to them, because it is imperative that I write well and maintain the spirit of the source text when translating into my target language. This has also given me tools for, well, getting creative with words and solutions and phrasing because things don't always correlate 1:1 from one language to the other (they often don't at all, in fact).
What I mean when I say "don't be constrained by writing advice" is not "break all the rules and do anything you want," but rather "writing advice on any platform tends to be incredibly limiting and narrow-minded, so you have to be mindful and critical of the advice you are given and decide whether it applies to you and HOW." The very bottom line here is that, in order to break the rules well, you need to know the rules, but a lot of writing advice is less about knowing the rules and more about "do XYZ" and "don't do ABC" and that is ENTIRELY unhelpful. Different people have different styles and different stories they want to tell in different ways. Lots of people will try to scare you off run-on sentences and stream of consciousness, for example, but these can be incredible tools in your arsenal to achieve the effect you're looking for on purpose. Lots of advice tells you to avoid repetition, or to avoid adverbs, or to use shorter sentences, or to avoid a specific category of words they deem complicated, or even provide lengthy lists of words to replace "say" with, when often "say" is exactly the word that we need.
From a writer's perspective, the best thing you can do is read. And then read some more. Read all kinds of writing and don't limit yourself to fanfiction and such. I don't mean that fics are bad (I write fics myself!), but the broader the spectrum of literature you cover, the more tools and resources you will see in action and adopt into your arsenal for future use, which will make developing your own style much easier.
In the same vein, as a writer, some people will tell you that you need to have a consistent and recognizable style. This is a lie. You need to write however you want to write, in whatever way best serves the piece you're writing. Maybe one piece will be in the second person, one in first, and the rest in third. Maybe you'll play with viewpoints or maybe you will not. Maybe a certain piece requires more flowery and flowy language than another, and maybe a different piece requires liberal use of the word "fuck." And you, as a writer, can write ALL of these pieces and more... if only you don't let yourself be constrained by the limitations imposed upon you by other people with their own tastes and preferences in writing.
I don't mean to say that writing advice is wrong, per se. Many times it can be very useful! But you do need a wide and varied arsenal of tools at your disposal, and the more media you engage with the more tools you will incorporate into your lexicon and collection that you can then repurpose to make your own.
And to bring it all back to my job... as a translator, I come across many, and very varied texts. From letters that inmates receive from their families, to clinical trials, classified technical specifications, legal documents of all kinds, medication leaflets, user manuals... you name it, I have probably worked with something of the sort, even autobiographies! My point here is that, depending on my source document (and sometimes even on the target audience for said source document), I have to adapt the language I use and how I use it to fit the tone and intent. Every piece of writing, every document that has ever crossed my desk(top) comes attached to a specific end use, target audience, intention and set of requirements, implicit or otherwise, that I need to account for. And that means that the writing I create in my target language, as a result, has to reflect those needs.
So... there is a time and place for every stylistic and linguistic resource, and knowing how to use them and what to pick when, is a very useful skill to have when you're doing creative writing. In that regard, at least, my job has helped a lot, because it requires that I be a linguistic chameleon of sorts and adapt my writing to the tone of the piece.
