Yes, I’m talking to you. The one over there, not meeting my eyes for fear I’ll see the self doubt and despair that have begun to edge out your sense of purpose and confidence. And you, there in th…This isn’t me yet, but it’s actually really good and inspiring advice even if you think you’re a long way off.
Best part:
Someone in the world desperately needs that story you’re struggling to tell. It might not even be the one you’re working on now, or your first published book. Those might just be building your writing muscles so you can do justice to the real story you need to tell.
Because if there’s one thing that still floors me about reading it’s how much you can connect to someone’s words, how powerful that can be. I mean that’s self-explanatory, but having read a lot of books for which emotional attachment wasn’t the end goal in college, coming back to reading more extensively for pleasure is like… a major reminder how powerful reading and writing are. It’s not even always about what you can say intellectual. I just finished Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell, and what I’m going to carry with me from that book is how devastatingly spot-on the character’s experience of isolation in her first semester as a geeky, socially anxious kid going to college was.
Anyway I don’t know where I’m going with this. I guess it’s that writing can be such an egotistical exercise, and so tied up in wanting to have a career doing what you love… but it’s also a gift to other people, as John Green has said.
AUTHOR | HISTORIAN | ARTIST 