Ask Ala: Other Questions

Q. Dear Ala, 

I feel like I have issues with writer's block, and sometimes do not know what to write in my story. Sometimes when I am writing a story, it takes me a half an hour to find a topic sentence. Furthermore, I get bored when I have to write something really long and time consuming. Finally, I have to read through my writing to make sure I did not make any spelling mistakes or grammar errors. What makes looking for errors in your writing hard is when you don’t know whether to put a comma or period after a word. Conclusion writing, I find, can be very hard and confusing for me. If you have any advice for me to help me be more efficient with my writing, then it would be much appreciated! Thanks!

Sincerely, Writer’s Block

A. Hello and thank you for the relatable question!

Writer’s block is such a relatable issue for a lot of people, so I’m glad I get to answer your question.

Inspiration is hard to find, so for the instances when you can’t find the topic sentence, I would just focus on the rest of the text or write something just to be there, knowing it is not going to be perfect. You can always come back to it and see what fits or edit it, so it works with the rest of your writing. To conquer long parts of the text planning everything out and dividing it into chunks could help. Let’s say the longer paragraph has 4 main points. Just do one at a time and take small breaks to refresh your mind a little bit. Proof-reading your own work can get pretty boring sometimes; I absolutely agree. To make the process more bearable, listen to some music. Be sure to listen to something that you enjoy, but doesn’t take up all your attention, so you can still focus on editing your paper. Looking for errors such as commas is quite tricky. You will learn more about them in English as you go along, though right now using a program such as Grammarly.com can help. Microsoft Word also has Grammar Check settings.

I hope this helps and enjoy writing!

Q. Dear Ala,

Why do coronavirus cases get bigger in the cold weather? My mom told me it goes down in the summer because the heat kills the virus, but she also said it goes up in the cold weather, how does this work?

-RonaQuestion

A. Hello and thank you for the interesting question!

Everything depends on the type of pathogen you are dealing with. Seasonality’s causes are something the science community is still not entirely sure about. So far, studies show that it is not so much that cases go down in the summer, but with coronavirus specifically, cases increased for the winter since people started gathering indoors where the virus spreads much more easily. Additionally, people are more likely to get sick during the winter as well, because your immune system is not as effective in the wintertime. Coronavirus does not seem to be affected by heat or cold, it’s more about what people are doing and where they do it.

I hope this answers your question!