Probably the most clichéd and widely spouted piece of writing advice comes in the form of ‘show don’t tell’ - Rather than saying how you feel, instead you should show that emotion with imagery, comparison, symbolism, analogy, or specificity of word choice - This is because in general, people respond far more to emotions felt than emotions told…

Throughout my entire schooling career, I was a left-brain thinker. Math made sense. It had a right and a wrong. It felt like the only solid base in a chaotic world, spawned by a tumultuous home life. This was combined with incompetent and out of touch teachers and terrible examples of poetry that I simply couldn’t relate to. I was left feeling that at best the entire artform was beyond me, and at worst that it was a refuge for pomposity and prose, written by people who have experienced less than they would ever write.…