Authors Wake Up in the Morning with Scruffy Hair
When I was growing up we played a card game called Authors. There were Shakespeare cards, Robert Louis Stevenson cards, Louisa May Alcott cards, and on and on—fun game! I looked at those authors’ pictures and thought, “Wow! They must have had it all together!” To me those authors were a cut above.
Well, Dickens was in the deck too, and later on in life I read his biography. What an eye-opener! He struggled with the same kind of stuff of life that you struggle with and that I struggle with as well. When he got up in the morning, he had scruffy hair! So did all those other authors, except for those without hair! Simply put, authors are everyday people.
I Take on the Guise of a Story Character
I struggle with the same kinds of things with which you struggle. The only difference may be that I write about them in the guise of a character in a story. That is my way of dealing with life and sharing the insights on life that I have learned in the process. I have faced some really horrendous realities and enjoyed some truly wonderful experiences. That is the nature of life. I have known depression—been at the brink of suicide—and I have known joy inexpressible.
God has used all that “stuff of life” to mold me into the man and the author that I am today. And it is the fact that as an author I wake up in the morning with scruffy hair, that I am an everyday person, that qualifies me to write, and that makes what I write worth reading, gives it value beyond the stuff of mere escapism. There is a bit of me, of my life, of what I have seen, of what I have experienced, of what I have learned in every story I write. And although many of my stories have a fantasy element to them, they are real to life.
How do you view authors? Do you put them on a pedestal? Do their lives seem somehow more interesting? What author do you particularly enjoy and admire?
I would enjoy dialoguing with you.
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