Sound Advice

Today we had a profile writing workshop with Julia Gregson who has written for titles including Rolling Stone and The Times. Aside from the specific advice she offered on that particular form of writing she also offered her worldly wisdom on life as a journalist. This was deeply significant for me.

Whilst Julia has clearly had a highly successful career in the industry, she told us many anecdotes about occassions on which she really messed up. What a treat to hear that everyone goes wrong sometimes.

She also said that she knew some of us might have thought we were outstanding writers before coming on the course and that we might now think that we are crap. We might get writers block. We might wonder why we're doing the course. We might be desperately jealous of fellow students who appear to be much better than us. We might turn every writing exercise into a drama. We might well feel downright miserable sometimes.

Let's just say that this struck a chord with me.

What was of comfort to me was that Julia admitted to feeling all of this herself at times. She described those silly quirks of human behaviour that most of us would like to swear we never displayed.

Her advice on such matters was quite simple. "Get Over it", she said.

Whilst on occassion these are the cruelest of words someone could say, today they offered comfort. If we're just to get over these problems then surely they can't be that bad, certainly not insurmountable.

Julia said it is natural to get upset and feel desperate when you're trying to do something that you want so badly to be good and yet you're rubbish.

Good to know.

But anyway, I'm over it.