share it on this blog.
What 20 Of The World’s Most Famous Writers Were Doing in Their Twenties is a good read for aspiring, emerging and established writers alike. It mentions the lives of authors like Stephen King, James Baldwin, John Updike, Ernest Hemingway, Toni Morrison and 15 others. To get where they are today, the authors
mentioned either suffered a great deal on their path of becoming published or were very lucky.
My writing might not be on the level of the famous writers mentioned and unmentioned, but like them, I have something to tell. Why else will we sit in front of a computer, plugging away on the keyboard, building a world, whose existence was solely within our minds? Why subject ourselves to such arduous work, with no guarantee of a book deal at the end of it? Even if it comes to nothing, as writers, something is borne within us, sometimes whispering, sometimes screaming, to be let out and shared with the world. That is why we write.
What I went through in my 20’s wasn’t as tragic or harsh like other writers. In fact, it can be considered mundane but my experiences are my own. In my early 20’s, I was still a college student. By then I’ve already
changed majors from Mass Communication to English Literature-Writing track. I’d like to blame the professor and the Creative Writing elective class I chose in my freshman year, but really the blame was mine. From before entering the first grade and until entering college, I was never seen without a book in my hand. The writing was on the wall.
Also by then, I reverted back into my shell, tired of the college campus social/party scene and tired of not being looked into my eyes, but other body parts. My life consisted of four things, classes, close friends, the
library and my single dorm room; my earth, air, fire and water. At this time, I met my future husband online, beginning a long distance relationship.
Months after graduating, we were engaged and I was working through a temporary staffing agency. The next year we got married, moved south, and started working for another temporary staffing agency. Not long after, I was hired permanently by a non-profit fundraising organization and have been there for seven years. And in
those seven years, I gave birth to two sons, with no daughter in sight. I’m holding onto the name I came up for her, IF she ever shows up. In the meantime, my main female character in another future work, will bear her name.
Here I am, now 30, and working on a debut novel, a story I thought up in my mid-twenties, waiting for a late train, after work.
You see? My 20’s might not sound as exciting or inspiring when compared to writers of the likes of Stephen King or the unmentioned J.K. Rowling. But like I said before, it’s mine. So what’s yours?