Tuesday, October 05, 2004

The Best Advice for the Young Professional

I've heard a lot of advice from professors and those working the "real world" when it comes to succeeding post-college. Some of the best advice I've received is to read everything. This is no exaggeration. I'm glad to see that Jennifer Weiner is passing on this advice on her blog in a section called, So You Want To Be A Novelist?


Read everything. Read fiction and non-fiction, read hot best sellers and the classics you never got around to in college. Read men, read women, read travel guides and Harlequins and epic poetry and cookbooks and cereal boxes, if you're desperate. Get the rhythm of good writing in your ears. Cram your head with characters and stories. Abuse your library privileges. Never stop looking at the world, and never stop reading to find out what sense other people have made of it. If people give you a hard time and tell you to get your nose out of a book, tell them you're working. Tell them it's research. Tell them to pipe down and leave you alone.



If everyone read just one more book, one more magazine, surfed three more news sites, added a few blogs, and added a newspaper to their monthly routine, I think we'd have a much more educated public in terms of current events and cultural awareness.


3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I would tend to agree, but we dwell in a society of instant gratification in this nation. Growing up in the MTV generation that any 20 something and 30 something and younger did I seriously doubt most have the attention span to do a little more reading.

Alexandre da Silva said...

Can we talk about everything?

alexandre_792@hotmail.com

battlemaiden said...

*sigh* There aren't enough hours in the day for all things I want to read.

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