Literary writing, media writing and translation

Literary writing expresses life through language that is aesthetically pleasing; imagination plays the defining role. In Moliere's play Monsieur Jourdain learns he has been 'speaking in prose' for forty years without knowing it.

Prose includes essays, novels, stories, plays, biography; verse is a metrical arrangement of words (nursery rhymes, jingles); Walt Whitman's lines are close to prose, while Vikram Seth wrote a whole novel, 'The Golden Gate', in verse.

A Tamil proverb: you can ladle soup out only if it is in the pot — you need 'something' to write about, and you choose the form that suits the experience.

Media writing reaches huge audiences and must be objective, straightforward and just (example: the National Bravery Awards news); citizens too can be journalists. Translation carries works across languages — 'Geetanjali' won worldwide recognition through translation.

Mammat's shloka (Kavyaprakash) names three sources of creative writing: शक्ति (talent), निपुणता (skill from studying the world and great works) and अभ्यास (practice under those who know).