From Matthew Cheney, on the blog of literary agent Colleen Lindsay, comes advice to young writers (and older writers still finding their groove), of the following flavour:

Actually, I might have been happier if I had been able to give myself permission to study something in college other than writing. But I was convinced the only way to become a good writer was to major in it. Not so. For many people, in fact, the best way to be a good writer is to spend some time doing things other than studying writing. My writing benefited more from my time working in a high school on Manhattan’s Lower East Side than it did from the classes I was taking when not at work.

That passage in particular rang true for me. I remain rather puzzled how I came to be ‘naturally’ a much better writer (or so I kid myself) by the time I started up again a year ago, despite having produced only a few thousand words of fiction in the previous decade. The magic is breadth and depth of experience, I suppose.

Read on, MacDuffs.