Easy Targets:
The purpose of a writer is to keep civilization from destroying itself. That’s at the highest level, of course. Your aim should be to improve your craft.
The gods had condemned Sisyphus to ceaselessly rolling a rock to the top of a mountain, whence the stone would fall back of its own weight. They had thought with some reason that there is no more dreadful punishment than futile and hopeless labor. Don’t let this dissuade you from revising again and again, which can really improve a piece of writing.
I don’t need some pencilneck with four Ph.D’s, one-thousand hours of simulator time, and the ability to operate a robot crane in low-Earth orbit. I need someone with four years of broad-but-humanities-focused studies, three subsequent years in temp jobs, and the ability to reason across multiple areas of study. I need someone who can read The Bell Jar and make strong observations about its representations of mental health and the repression of women.
Please stick to universal themes. My students are taking five other classes. Most have part-time jobs. Therefore, even if I explain all your cleverly woven-in local references, they won’t care. They don’t have time to care. Melville, if I can use you as an example: all that information about the domestic uses of whale oil is honestly not worth including. They won’t remember it.