Mamas, Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Writers
There is, in the minds of some people, something wrong with wanting to be a writer. Tell your parents you want to be a brain surgeon and they’ll be proud of you; tell them you want to be a writer (or artist or actor) and they will weep for you and take away your books—or kick you out of the house, depending on how strict they are. At least that’s how it seems to work in some families.
Admittedly, writing is not the easiest way to make a living, but some parents do have extreme reactions to their children’s dreams. Take, for example, the parents of Paulo Coelho (the Brazilian author of The Alchemist). He wanted to be a writer; his parents wanted him to be a lawyer. When seventeen-year-old Coelho persisted in his determination to become a writer, his parents committed him to a psychiatric hospital (and you thought your parents were control freaks). When he escaped, they sent him back—three times. Coelho was finally released when he was twenty and agreed to go to law school. Fortunately for his sanity, Coelho left school in his first year and became a hippie nomad and worldwide traveler. He eventually became not just a writer, but a world-famous writer. To date, he has published twenty-six books.
Today, on Paulo Coelho’s birthday, writers should get in touch with their inner rebel and honor the courage and determination it sometimes takes to follow your true calling.
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