I'm almost 30 and I still stumble upon the most basic grammar usage. I get really confused with the different parts of speech like when to use the right preposition, how to link sentences and I can't write a grammar-free essay. I do read a lot of novels but they don't seem to improve my English usage at all. I mean, yes, I learn new words, but that's about it. I don't know how to link sentences well to make them flow and my writing is so one dimensional... I don't know how to write a different sort of style other than the one I do. And I want to become a freelance writer and hopefully a book author in the future because I have a lot of ideas but am unable to project them into beautiful flowing sentences.

Will I ever be able to achieve my ambitions and do I really need to know all the rules of grammar because I don't even know how to read phonetics, and I'm just learning the proper rules of grammar... whatever I've learned in the past was more from hearing than understanding. Thanks!

There was a best selling book recently on Grammar, I think it was called something like "Eats Shoots and Leaves" . It's never too late to learn, but you seem to have a good grasp now, at least compared to the barely literate posts on this site. Yikes! Have you read some of the other questions? People cannot write anymore.

Get back to basics, and start over. English is very complex "amalgam" language, with a huge number of words, and you can spin your wheels trying to get everything "correct."

Start with great poetry, until you know it and "get" the language skills to start with, especially Carl Sandburg, Robert Frost, T.S. Eliot, and Edgar Allen Poe. Read these authors over and over, and one poem over and over.
If you have to write simply, just do so. It might work much better than complex writing, anyway, for what you want to say.

Your standard of English is so poor that you should give up hope.
You stand a better chance learning chinese, because you are almost there.

Better still, try poetry. Because poetry is all about hearing and has nothing to do with understanding

It is never too late to start anything you want to learn. i know a person of 90 year old who is doing MBA from IGNOU, New Delhi, the most required thing is that you must have an intensive urge to reach at your target and achieve the goal. To get rid of the phobia of grammar here I would like to add that there is no any perfect grammar in the wold of language because language itself is a collection of mutually supposed or accepted group of words. To correct your grammar just keep up reading established authors of English language and literature, and ultimately one day will come that you will also become a good writer. Learning by doing is the best formula to learn any language of the world.