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't actually mean anything to people who aren't academics, and it takes some time to unlearn the rules so don'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't bound together) story if you want to be inclusive and meaningful to people beyond a very small sphere of folks who've done lit studies focused mostly on the white canon, cheer's (3/3)