WRITING IN SPITE OF YOURSELF
“A real writer (or artist or entrepreneur) has something to give. She has lived enough and suffered enough and thought deeply enough about her experience to be able to process it into something that is of value to others, even if only as entertainment.”
Steven Pressfield • Nobody Wants to Read Your Sh*t: Why That Is And What You Can Do About It
It seemed I had an honest-to-goodness short story in my hand. I titled it “Despair.” I read it again and again, but the more I read it, the less I could tell whether it was good or not. I eagerly awaited my parents’ return from work.
Andrew S. Grove • Swimming Across
Which is -- you know, like check it out, I'm pretty young, I'm only about 40 years old. I still have maybe another four decades of work left in me. And it's exceedingly likely that anything I write from this point forward is going to be judged by the world as the work that came after the freakish success of my last book,
... See moreElizabeth Gilbert • Your elusive creative genius
John Kennedy Toole’s great book A Confederacy of Dunces was universally turned down by publishers, news that so broke his heart that he later committed suicide in his car on an empty road in Biloxi, Mississippi. After his death, his mother discovered the book, advocated on its behalf until it was published, and it eventually won the Pulitzer Prize.