In my last article for 2020, instead of taking stock of the year that is about to end, I chose to propose you some suggestions for the 365 days ahead. I assume that no one wants to remember the unusual and sadness that the twenty-twenty year brought us.
In spite of everything, I often felt in a countercycle… Do you want to know the secret?
The pandemic forced me (and so many others) to reinvent myself professionally. I took the face-to-face training in the area of communication, writing, digital marketing and put them online, which allowed me to take my words further than I ever dreamed. From my kitchen—the makeshift office—to the world.
It was and still is more or less like that. I assume that the previous format of face-to-face training will hardly ever have the same strength as before.
With the focus on writing, learning new skills and (re)discovering dormant passions, confinement was more bearable. Let the more than a thousand people who followed my free writing mini-course say so — honest, dedicated and hard work — which, for five days, challenged participants to go further with their words.
Reading and writing was the vaccine I prescribed myself, as well as so many other people — and believe me, COVID-19 is passing lighter.
This is the message I want to leave you for 2021: invest in yourself, in your knowledge, especially in the area of writing.
We all need to write on a daily basis, whether professionally, for therapeutic reasons or for literary creation, and nothing is as disgraceful to a professional in any field as a misspelling or a meaningless sentence. Of course mistakes do happen, but the more awake we are, the less likely it is to happen.
If you have a secret desire to write and publish a book, don't let that dream fade. Take full advantage of the "democratization of culture" that the tree online training made possible, especially for those who do not live in large urban centers and use this maxim in their training investments: "good knowledge is the knowledge that can be put into practice". It's quite easy to get lost in the various options, which then serve us for nothing.
If you're having trouble choosing your books or can't keep up with your reading pace, join an online book club — one of the most interesting positive phenomena the pandemic has uncovered. Surround yourself with people who share a passion for books.
Nothing better than exchanging opinions and looking at the pages we read alone, from the perspective of the Other — the stories and characters take on a new dimension and we all get richer. I may even prefer real encounters to virtual encounters around literature, but what I really like is reading and exchanging ideas about the books I read, so the format ends up being almost irrelevant.
There are some paid options, but, for example, the online reading club «The Literary Encounters The Pleasure of Writing», already with more than 800 members, promoted by myself and David Roque (responsible for several years for the Creative Writing Club of the Municipal Library of Lagoa) is completely free. In this club, one reads, but also plays with words in the monthly creative writing dynamic.
The novelty for 2021 will be the possibility for readers to exchange views with the writers of the work being read at the Zoom session taking place on the last Saturday of each month. For February, the presence of Luís Cardoso, a writer from Timor-Leste, has already been confirmed.
A minimum reading of twelve books in a year is thus guaranteed. It may be little, but it's better than nothing.
As for writing, I suggest you start the New Year, with the second free edition of the «Writing Week Minicourse», January 11-15, and join a Facebook community of more than a thousand people who have already invested their greatest resource — time — to discover the pleasure of writing and writing more and better. Who knows what this window of opportunity will bring you for the rest of the year.
In 2021, write more, read even more and encourage your children (if you have them) to do the same. Reading, in addition to being a pleasure, allows us to travel without leaving the couch, dreaming, thinking, growing. Reading increases our knowledge, our vocabulary and much more… As Christophe Clavé recently wrote, “If there are no thoughts, there are no critical thoughts. And there is no thought without words».
Since we can't leave the house this end of the year, enjoy and read a good book. I leave you with some suggestions, which you can find in free PDF format at «The Pleasure of Writing Literary Encounters»:
>>«A Amiga Genial» by Elena Ferrante
>>«Submission» by Michel Houellebecq
>>"The Story of a Servant", Margaret Atwood
>>«1984» by George Orwell
>>"Brave New World" by Aldous Huxley
>>«A Queda Dum Anjo», by Camilo Castelo Branco
Literary greetings and even for the year!
With esteem,
Analyta Alves dos Santos
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