The Naysayer
By Kathy Dueck
This was sent to me in
an email in 2009 by an aquaintance:
“I did not want to
discourage you from writing or photography and I think you have a gift for
both, but I am a firm believer in getting an education before trying to make
something a career, and so it was hard to encourage you to try to make money at
something you loved but for which you did not have the educational background.”
This suggestion rankled
and shortly after receipt of that email, I did some research. While its’ true there are successful authors
that have the appropriate degree(s), many don’t.
Here are just a few
examples:
S.E. Hinton wrote her
first novel, The Outsiders, when she was in her sophomore year at High
School. Published in 1967, it became the
one of the most successful young adult novels in publishing history and has
sold over 8 million copies. She subsequently obtained a B.S. degree. The Outsiders and Rumble Fish were both made
into movies. S.E. Hinton continues to write.
Christopher Paolini, the
author of the Eragon series, wrote the first book of this series at the age of
15. Eragon was subsequently adapted into
a movie. From wikipedia:
“Eragon was the
third-best-selling children's hardback book of 2003, and the
second-best-selling paperback of 2005. It placed on the New York Times Best
Seller list for 121 weeks.”
William Paul Young,
author of The Shack, has an undergrad degree, but in religion. His book has, as of March 2009, according to http://www.warnerpacific.edu/news.aspx?id=5179
sold over 5 million
copies since first being published in May of 2007 and has been translated into
many different languages. There’s talk
of a feature film.
J.K. Rowling’s degree
was in French, and I’m not terribly sure how useful that was to her as she
wrote the Harry Potter series, which sold gazillions of copies and several of
the books were made into movies. She
seems to have done alright for herself--it is said she is one of the few
millionaire authors.
I wonder how many people
told them “that’s impossible”?
Since receipt of the
email in 2009, I’ve had a short story published, two articles published in a magazine, several
of my photo cards purchased, worked as a technical writer on a short-term contract,
written content for websites, and last week, one of my photographs won a
contest in a major newspaper.
The naysayers in our
lives would like to tell us “that’s impossible” – the trick is to keep going
anyways.
Kathy Dueck is a married writer with two cats from
Calgary, Alberta Canada. She's a non-conformist, a burgeoning
activist, a recipe developer, a voracious reader, a patron of the arts [which
is a fancy way of saying she watches way too many movies and TV shows], a blogger,
and a volunteer. She believes that “going to church doesn’t make you a Christian
anymore than standing in a garage makes you a car” and likes to think that “if
church were a washing machine, I would be the agitator.”
Kathy has two blogs, one is a food and recipe blog www.chronicinthekitchen.com and the other a "personal" blog called FibroDAZE http://bignoises.wordpress.com/ where she blogs about life and sometimes about life with chronic illness. She also has a photography blog rkdphotocreations.wordpress.com in its' infancy.
Do you have a short-short story, essay, or poem you'd like to share? Email us at awcswriterscorner@gmail.com
Thank you so much.
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