TOW #6: The Success Story of a Failed Novelist

In the essay The Success Story of a Failed Novelist the author, Nina Badzin, talks about her numerous failed attempts of becoming a novelist and trying to get her books published. Despite how much she tried, she was lead onto the path of blogging short stories rather than writing novels. With this, she found her true calling, and felt that this best fit her. Although many of her books were turned down by publishers, Badzin still has credibility because she is successfully maintaining and posting on her blog, in which some of her short stories have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and twice short-listed by Glimmer Train Stories.The author's intended audience is aspiring writers because she describes a difficult journey that is applied to a writer's career. The context that is directed at this audience is spoken in a way to show that being a writer isn't easy, as she recounts all her attempts of being a novelist, and from that, how she went on to writing short stories. Throughout the text, Badzin uses essential rhetorical strategies to achieve her purpose of telling aspiring writers to not give up, and to acknowledge that the path they think they want may not be right for them and that they might end up on a different path. She does so by using an informal tone to connect with her audience, which also shows backs up her purpose to show there is nothing wrong with failing. Another device that is used is metonymy, this substitution carries an emotional response by applying humor and to make the topic a little less vain. I believe that Nina Badzin did a good job in achieving her purpose because she is able to backup her evidence of how her failure turned into success, and because she uses pathos to draw in her reader's attentions.