Know the feeling! After being criticised for using an English colloquialism in a piece (one that I thought was really obvious because of the context anyway), I became paranoid about people not understanding what I was writing. For about three days. Then I decided to give up & just write whatever I wanted, and if it happened to be a tad Terry'n'June, so what? No-one ever criticised Jane Austin for being too English You can always go back and Americanise/Americanize/whatever-ise at a later date - just don't let language hang-ups get in the way of the flow
Toodle-pip!