Junior Lillian Roberts has always loved literature. She went from reading stories to writing stories for herself and then to writing for the school newspaper, the Mountain Echo.

On the Mountain Echo, Roberts has written a variety of opinion and news stories and even has a music blog. However, her favorites are her opinion articles. 

“I like all of my opinion pieces. Especially my last three or two. I feel I really had very strong opinions. I feel some of my earlier opinion pieces were really tame because I was still getting used to [it], now I feel like I say things that I would have been scared to say,” Roberts said.

When she isn’t writing articles for the school newspaper, Roberts likes to write fictional stories. While her stories can range from genre to genre, her preferred genre is realistic fiction. 

“I feel like I like that one the best but I like to make it really dramatic. So right in the middle of the story a character dies, like that, kind of. It’s not the easiest to write, but for me it’s easy because I can just take real scenarios and be like, here’s a book,” Roberts said. 

And that’s exactly what she does with many of her stories. 

“I never actually got [it] published, but it was about characters. It was this book and the main character was just living his happy, jolly life. And then he just kind of died in the middle. It changed perspective to someone else that he’s close with. And I feel like I really liked that book because I like a good sudden change that’s really dramatic in the middle of writing,” Roberts said. 

She also shared how writing isn’t always easy. Writing, like any hobby, takes talent and practice. But Roberts says neither of those are the issue. 

“Honestly, just getting the motivation to write. I feel like if I have an idea, and I’m really strongly opinionated on it, I have the idea, you know, yes, yes, yes, I want this and this and this. And I lay everything out and have an idea of how I want it to look, but then I just need the motivation to actually do it. So it’d be three days before my story needs edited and I’ll be like well, shoot, got to write my story,” Roberts said. 

Even though finding motivation is a common problem for her, Roberts refuses to let that stop her from reaching her writing goals. She continues to write regularly and is even considering a job in writing in the future.