“[The] best writing advice I’ve ever gotten was from my first college creative writing professor, whose name escapes me. It was either Goldenthal or Rosenburg and I can’t remember the exact wording she used for the saying, but I suppose that’s the nature of it. She wasn’t keen on advice, so it was more so a phrase that I took to heart along the lines of, ‘Anyone can tell a story, but it takes skill to show a story.’ She had a bunch of sayings that I still remember in pieces like that one, but this is the one I took as advice. This is what I think of whenever I’m stuck on a creative project I’m working on. It also works vise versa, where if I’m spending too much time trying to show an insignificant detail, I can just tell it and be done.”
Nick Ketchum is a Mason alumnus taking his Masters at Old Dominion University