“My advice for writing would [be to] just throw it on the page, just go and keep going and don’t worry that it’s perfect because you can always go back and edit. I sometimes get stuck with the perfect opening sentence, and I have learned over time that it doesn’t matter, you have to keep going…Just put stuff up there and see what sticks, not being afraid to edit. That prose at 4am that looks beautiful is not beautiful at 8am, so you have to not be afraid to challenge your own writing, but also not afraid to just get it on the page and see what sticks.”
Laura Poms is a professor in Global and Community Health at Mason.