All advice about the process of writing is important. However, aspiring writers should not get hung up on the bits of advice that the experts - those who have had some success in writing - from time to time, toss out to the curious, probably excessively "fan girling" or "fan boying" interviewer. These successful writers were once aspiring writers. They wrote and wrote and wrote because they believed that they had stories to tell. Some of them pitched their work over and over to publishers, and were rejected over and over and over, until finally they reaped success. This success may have come by being published by a traditional publishing company or being self published. What all these successful authors have all had in common are some positive attitudes: Perseverance. That is, faith in their abilities to write and translating their faith into action Willingness to expend the necessary effort to realise their dream; willingness to make sacrifices to fi
How did you learn to write? Not the letters of the alphabet but a composition. Probably a composition about your pet, or the summer holiday, or your best friend, or your visit to some site... I am sure that you wrote one such composition. And you used one of the following guidelines that your teacher gave you. Structuring Writing 1 In primary school your teacher told you that you needed to have a beginning, a middle and an end, when you wrote your composition. That is, the first paragraph being an introduction, the second paragraph being about the thing that you were writing about and the third paragraph being your conclusion – a three paragraph structure. When you went to high school, you upgraded from compositions to what your teachers called essays. This time, your teacher told you to write your essays having a beginning, middle and end. That is, an introduction, a middle with at least three paragraphs and a conclusion – the five paragraph structure. So
If you are a student of literature, you would have met Francesco Petrarch. His name is immortalised in the term Petrarchan sonnet , even though he didn’t develop the form. He lived in the 14 th century and survived the Black Death , the Plague that ravaged Eurasia between 1347 and 1351, killing millions of people. Interestingly, that Plague started in the East before moving to Europe and, like the COVID-19 disease which is ravaging the world in 2020, it made a devastating pit stop in Italy of that time. Petrarch was Italian and reflected in many letters about the course of that Plague. One of his reflections has much resonance today. Kevin Shau , in an article on Medium , shares some excerpts from Petrarch's letters that he wrote to his friend and fellow literary great, Giovanni Boccaccio. Of the passage of the Plague, Petrarch wrote : “While I am lamenting in vain and unburdening my spirit of these sorrows, I am accusing men who cannot reply: if only, dear f