Last month, I spoke at the San Diego State University Writer’s Conference. As always, it was an inspiring event with extraordinarily accomplished writers as keynote speakers, such as:
- Jonathan Maberry
- J.D. Jance
- Sherrilyn Kenyon
- R.L. Stine
What struck me about each of these writing rock stars is that ALL of them had difficult childhoods and struggled as adults before they garnered success as writers.
We all have our struggles and if our situation ever leads to our thinking that writing is just “too hard” given our touch circumstances, learning a bit about their life stories should encourage us to keep plugging away.
As one example of these travails, Jonathan Maberry, New York Time best-selling writer, and five-time Bram Stoker Award winner, grew up in a home with an abusive father who allowed no books in the home. It was his way of keeping his family in bondage. Maberry found freedom in his local library.
Juxtapose this with a recent piece in the Sunday New York Times Magazine about Carla Hayden, the 14th Librarian of Congress. The article is entitled: Carla Hayden Thinks Libraries Are A Key to Freedom.” You can read the entire piece here.
I’ll share more insights from the San Diego State University Writer’s Conference in future blog posts.
