In a letter to his daughter of 15 after her enrolment in high school, the great F.Scott Fitzgerald heralded some poignant advice to writers;

“Nobody ever became a writer just by wanting to be one. If you have anything to say, anything you feel nobody has ever said before, you have got to feel it so desperately that you will find some way to say it that nobody has ever found before, so that the thing you have to say and the way of saying it blend as one matter—as indissolubly as if they were conceived together.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald

He argues that brilliant writing is original in both form and theme.

It’s not enough to have a story worth telling, nor is it enough to have mastered the technicalities of the craft.

The best storytellers find a way to execute both.

It’s not easy. But as Fitzgerald himself said later on in the same letter to his daughter,

“Nothing any good isn’t hard”

F. Scott Fitzgerald