How Being Unprepared Makes You a Better Writer

There’s great value in being a little ignorant

Photo by Nick Seagrave on Unsplash

The piece of advice I most often give to journalism students— which also happens to be the piece of advice that makes most journalism professors regret that they invited me to speak to their classes — is to commit yourself to being unprepared.

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Staff writer, The New Yorker. Author of The Library Book, The Orchid Thief, and more…Head of my very own Literati.com book club (join me!)

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Susan Orlean

Staff writer, The New Yorker. Author of The Library Book, The Orchid Thief, and more…Head of my very own Literati.com book club (join me!)