I forgot to mention something in my post yesterday about John Steinbeck. He went to Stanford University off and on for five years but never graduated. I wonder why. Sources say he started out studying English but when switched to marine biology. Do you suppose Mr. Steinbeck flunked English? That would have been cruel irony. According to the San Jose State University Center for Steinbeck studies:
“To please his parents he enrolled at Stanford University in 1919; to please himself he signed on only for those courses that interested him: classical and British literature, writing courses, and a smattering of science. The President of the English Club said that Steinbeck, who regularly attended meetings to read his stories aloud, “had no other interests or talents that I could make out. He was a writer, but he was that and nothing else.”
Steinbeck left college to write and worked odd jobs to support myself. He had three unsuccessful books before gaining critical acclaim for his l935 Tortilla Flats, some ten years after he dropped out of Stanford. My point here? If you are a writer you must have patience. Even if you are the next John Steinbeck.
I’ll leave you with a Steinbeck quote I love.
“It is a common experience that a problem difficult at night is resolved in the morning after the committee of sleep has worked on it.”
Robin Coyle 