Three tips for making meaningful and engaging personal pieces

1. Create from who you are and what you genuinely care about. Think about these two questions to try to apply this tip: When do you feel most like yourself? What do you create (or have you created in the past) that best expresses who you are?

2. Focus on something small to tell a larger story.

A small story about, say, making brownies with your stepbrother at 3 a.m. can speak volumes about the experience of living in a blended family during quarantine. You don’t always have to reach for a “deep meaning” — often that meaning is inherent in the details of the story itself, or in the way you tell it.

3. Find a unique way to approach your topic by playing with genre, voice, tone, the use of detail and other craft tools.

Although it’s hard to come up with a topic that’s original. The good news is that you don’t have to — you just need to put your own special spin on it.

20 pieces from teenagers documenting and reflecting on their lives during the pandemic:

The second section starts here.

20 pieces from teenagers documenting and reflecting on their lives during the pandemic:

The first section starts here.

Easier said than done :)

Erin: She showed up in our keynote this morning.