This week, first-year writing student Sophie Flores, who’s taking Kristi Steinmetz’s Multidimensional Storytelling and the Art of Seeing, published a piece at The Shizzle, hosted by a publishing venture known as Publishizer. Sophie’s short essay—a 5-minute read titled “Aspiration and Writing: Another Stab at Writer’s Block”—offers practical advice for writers with misplaced ambitions (or so she argues).

Here’s a little piece of the essay, where it gets personal.

My goal now is to write freely. To not think at all about what I’m going to put on the page, but to think on the page. It helps to think of writing as an external thing. Like dancing or playing piano, writing is not about thinking, but about letting your actions be your thoughts. Art isn’t made in the mind; it is formed completely outside of the self. Art comes to you and through you.

Sophie’s is the first piece of student writing to be featured here, but I hope it will not be the last. Please send published student work to me at korbs@newschool.edu.