Shine A Light

On her Facebook page, Dani Smith wrote an inspirational message:

Decide what to be and go be it.

My reply:

OK. Here’s the thing. When I was a kid, I always wanted to be about 74 different things, and that was OK with everybody. But when I said I wanted to be a writer, the adults were all over me: “Oh, you can’t do that.” “Nobody’s really a writer.” “Writers don’t make any money.” “Girls aren’t writers. Girls are mommies.” “What do you know that you could possibly write about?” “Oh, honey, Marilyn’s good enough to be a writer, but I don’t know about you.” “A writer? What do you want to do that for? No, you should be a teacher.” I didn’t want to be a teacher. Damn adults. But being a writer, like being an actor, is one of the only jobs where you can pretend to be the person who does the 74 different things. You can jump out of planes without jumping out of planes. You can navigate the Seven Seas without getting wet. And you can get revenge on the adults.

MORE: Dani very nicely provided the link to the clever video of the Avett Brothers’ song, “Head Full of Doubt/Road Full of Promise.” Thanks, Dani!

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 14th, 2013 at 7:00 am and is filed under Books, Inspiration, Ponder This, Smile a While. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.