Week 6 Lab: Writers Advice

For this week, I decided to do a story lab blog post about the Advice to Writers website. On this website, I read a few interviews with writers who gave their advice and told the readers a little bit about their journey. This week, I wanted to gather some quotes and advice from a few of my favorite interviews, so that I could look back on this whenever I was having trouble writing or finding the motivation to do so. 

The first interview that I read was one with a writer named Diane Cook. First, Cook talked about how she had been too afraid that she was going to fail at writing, so she decided to pursue something else for her professional career. Although many people in this class probably don't want to be a writer, I think that this can be applied to any area of study. It can be hard for one to know what to do for the rest of their life, but this is just a reminder that anyone can pursue whatever they want and still be successful. Another part of her interview talked about how writers shouldn't be afraid to write about what they want. "Write about what you want to write about, not what you think you should write about," Cook said. I liked this quote because it is very true. It makes it so much easier to write if you are actually passionate about the topic. Otherwise, it just feels like a chore. Lastly, there was another section in her interview where she said that writers shouldn't be worried about their story being written before because even if it has, it hasn't been written by that particular person. I thought that this was good advice because I like to write in my free time, and I sometimes am worried that I am copying a story that has already been written. 

Another interview that I read was one with Jessica Gross. Her advice was very similar to Diane Cooks, but she provided one additional thought, which was that there really isn't anything such as writer's block. I thought this was extremely interesting, and honestly probably true. Every time that I have said I have writer's block, I really just don't have the motivation to start writing. She always called it "writer's fear," which I thought made a lot of sense. There are always ideas flowing, but sometimes it can be very difficult to get them out on the page. 

LINK HERE

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