Been thinking of Writing your First Book for a Long Time ?

Pick A Book has been heavily focused on all things books ever since it spread its wings. We have a huge readers community and the fact that participants get together to discuss more about books has just increased our appreciation for all things literary. As is the common case with most avid readers, a lot of people consider the option of being able to publish their own book one day. All of us have stories to tell and some of us are more eloquent in it, while some others struggle with the art of penning their thoughts into words.

However there is so much hidden potential among young and aspiring authors who cannot find the time to actually sit down and commit to writing a book. This is why we decided to conduct a discussion webinar on this topic. To share some valuable insights, we invited Captain Elmo Jayawardena, an award winning writer in Sri Lanka whose book Sam’s Story won the Graetian Prize in 2001.

While this lockdown situation has undeniably been hard on all of us, it has given us a lot of time on our hands, which makes it the perfect opportunity to work on that book you’ve always wanted to. During the course of the webinar, Captain Elmo described the challenges he faced when he started writing books and how he overcame them successfully. Additionally, he also shared many inspirational stories of people who have encountered difficulties in writing books but stand as successful authors today. The session was an inspiring one, particularly for those who needed some encouragement to write books during this lockdown season.

The webinar was conducted on the 1st of May and was moderated by Ragulan Tharmakulasinga. A highlight from the webinar was when Captain Elmo shared a very inspirational story based on the book “Go slowly lovely moon” which are some autobiographical notes by a Sri Lankan woman with motor neurone disease. The insights he shared from this motivated many of our participants to pursue their dreams of telling the world their story as well.

Captain Elmo also discussed how a story should be told, how a book should be structured, how to actually pen your thoughts in a way that would keep the readers hooked and how to overcome writers block, which every author inevitably faces. Writing a book is a challenge on its own but having some guidance from a veteran author sure does help in putting our doubts to rest. We’re sure the webinar has inspired aspiring writers to work on telling their story to the world!