Guest Blog

Featured Guest Blogger:  Nate Barnes 

For my guest post on Victoria’s blog, I found a website that provides many quotes that can be called “Words of Wisdom”.  The website is http://www.ikedaquotes.org/ and the quotes are written by Daisaku Ikeda, who offers Buddhist wisdom on topics ranging from attitudes to hopes to strength.  Additionally, Victoria has cited the Dalai Lama (the leader of the Buddhist faith) in one of her quotes, so I figured a website of this nature would be particularly helpful for her.

One quote that I found which relates to Victoria’s blog in particular is in the Happiness section, as Victoria has posted quotes on that subject before.  The quote reads:

“The exclusive pursuit of one’s own interests cannot bring true happiness. It is in striving for the sake of others that the great path to genuine happiness is opened.”

I find this quote interesting as it says something about our interactions with others, especially because I think that is the point of our blogs for the class.  We learn a lot about not only our classmates’ writing styles and voices, but also about them personally through the creative liberties we are given for our blog.

It also relates to the non-fiction genre as a whole as non-fiction writing is all about people.  We aren’t making things up as we would in a short story or any general piece of fiction.  It’s all real, and I believe the most powerful stories are those of the non-fiction canon.

Writing is all about the people.  That is where your story comes from, and that is what your story is about.  When I write my articles for The Pitt News, I do my best to do my interviews before I write so I can use the quotes I get as the foundation for my story.  Human interaction is fundamental towards doing such a thing, in order to understand the attitudes of the people you write about towards the topic they are involved in—which in my case is sports, where I believe some of the best stories come from.