As a young writer, I often felt I needed to write about something beyond myself — something accessible only to writers older, more intelligent, more talented than I was. This pressure often resulted in stagnant, dreadful writing, full of clichés.
Her email arrived thirty minutes before we were to meet. She wrote: "Attached is the same draft I sent you, but my parents had someone else look at it. The second version on the document was primarily written by my dad."
A few years ago, when a student in the audience at a talk I gave about writing the college-application essay asked me what I would say if I could give only one piece of advice, I responded: “Start paying attention to what you pay attention to."
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