No offence to universities (I went to uni, taught at uni) but I feel like academia can sometimes suck the heart out of storytelling by making it SO intellectual and that emerging writers become focused (1/3)

on making work conceptually dense in ways where the writing SOUNDS smart but doesn& #39;t actually mean anything to people who aren& #39;t academics, and it takes some time to unlearn the rules so don& #39;t get hung up on how you THINK you should be writing, (2/3)

just focus on telling a good and sophisticated (but not necessarily ACADEMIC - the two aren& #39;t bound together) story if you want to be inclusive and meaningful to people beyond a very small sphere of folks who& #39;ve done lit studies focused mostly on the white canon, cheer& #39;s (3/3)