A local bulletin taught me a huge lesson about creative writing

Before I start with this story I want you to know that half of the populace above the age of 40 in my hometown didn’t know how to read.

These folks don’t know how to read but yet they are addicted to this bulletin. They will buy this bulletin and call someone to read it aloud for them while they grin from ear to ear.

This was my first experience of a company or media becoming a culture. This bulletin came with all the news and insight from all the surrounding kindred but they were written so that it felt like the demography they were trying to reach was listening to a live radio of some sort.

It gave that kind of impression to these folks like my grandma back in the village. It was fun, it was interesting, it had intrigues and it sounded like gossip, and with every article, you are glued to what the hell is happening in the next kindred.

They knew how to create heat and tension and they knew how to get the argument going for a group of people not educated enough to fall for this emotional and psychological swing. You must know the writers and publishers of this bulletin were ahead of their time.

This bulletin was in business while I was still at the tender age of 12–13. I remember returning home on holidays and reading this weekly bulletin to my grandma and most of her friends.

After reading an article the next thing that followed was an argument that lasted for 30 minutes among this women in our local dialect.

It was so fun to watch back then and though I had no thought of becoming a writer at that early age I started noticing the power of entertainment. That bulletin changed how I view anything worth reading till my adult age.

It grew a belief in me that when something isn’t interesting and captivating enough to keep my attention then it is boring and most especially it is bad writing.

If these folks writing for elderly and uneducated men and women can have them take their money to buy written words then anyone choosing to do writing has no excuse about getting good at keeping and getting attention.

As I got drawn into writing and creative business I started using that bulletin as a blueprint and a height to reach. It still influences how I write today and it influences my thinking that writers are not supposed to be writers alone but entertainers too.

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