Hello, I'm trying to get my program running but I ran into an error. When I want to type a block of text on a new line, I get this error below:

AttributeError: 'str' object has no attribute 'append'

What am I suppose to adjust in order to fix it? The error occurs on the line right before the Text Analyzer Menu shows up.

    #Prompt the user to enter a block of text.
    done = False
    print("Enter as much text as you like. Type EOF on a separate line to finish.")
    textInput = ""
    while(done == False):
        nextInput= input()
        if nextInput== "EOF":
            break
        else:
            #The Error occurs here.
            textInput.append(nextInput)

    #Prompt the user to select an option from the Text Analyzer Menu.
    print("Welcome to the Text Analyzer Menu! Select an option by typing a number"
        "\n1. shortest word"
        "\n2. longest word"
        "\n3. most common word"
        "\n4. left-column secret message!"
        "\n5. fifth-words secret message!"
        "\n6. word count"
        "\n7. quit")

    #Set option to 0.
    option = 0

    #Use the 'while' to keep looping until the user types in Option 7.
    while option !=7:
        option = int(input())

        #If the user selects Option 1, print out the shortest word found in the
        #text.
        if option == 1:
            print("Shortest word: " + (min(textInput.split(), key = len)))

        #If the user selects Option 2, print out the longest word found in the
        #text.
        elif option == 2:
            print("Longest word: " + max(textInput.split(), key = len))

        #If the user selects Option 3,
        elif option == 3:
            word_counter = {}
            for word in textInput.split():
                if word in word_counter:
                    word_counter[word] += 1
                else:
                    word_counter[word] = 1

            highest_words = ""
            highest_value = 0

            for k,v in word_counter.items():
                if v > highest_value:
                    highest_words = []
                    highest_words.append(k)
                    highest_value = v

                elif v == highest_value:
                    highest_words.append(k)

            for word in highest_words:
                print("The word that showed up the most was", highest_words)

        #If the user selects Option 4, extract the first letter of the first word
        #on each line and merge into s single string.
        elif option == 4:
            print(''.join(l[0] for l in textInput))

        #If the user selects Option 5, grab every 5th word in the text and merge
        #into a single sentence.
        elif option == 5:
            five = ' '.join(word for i,word in enumerate(textInput.split()) if not i%5)
            print(repr(five))

        #If the user selects Option 6, print out the total number of words in the
        #text.
        elif option == 6:
            print("Total word count:", len(textInput.split(" ")))

        #If the user selects Option 7, kill the program.
        elif option == 7:
            print("You have ended this program. GOODBYE!")
            break

        #Execute if the user enters a number that's not between 1 and 7.
        else:
            print("Incorrect option number... try again...")
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