Living

In high school I used to fantasize that I’d get Discovered. Everyone would be blown away by the enormity of my talent at such a tender age, and I would be heralded as a teenage prodigy as millions rushed to buy my books. I’d be set for life by the time I graduated.

I wanted it so badly, I wondered how I would ever survive without it.

Obviously, and thankfully, that didn’t happen.

I don’t know if there’s some sort of spiritual plan for everyone, guided by God, the Universe, or anything in particular, but I now know that my talent would have been wasted if I had achieved fame at such a young age. Oh sure, practice and maturity would have improved a few things here and there, but the ideas I played with would have, without a doubt, stagnated.

You just can’t replace the importance of experience.

And if I had been set for life right out of the gate, I wouldn’t have experienced what it means to be alive. My writing wouldn’t have gained any true depth. I would have become trapped rewriting the same fluff over and over with a different title every time. And that would have been that.

Instead I was forced to live outside of my comfortable worlds of fiction. I’ve learned that sometimes the best way to improve talent is not by reading or writing, but by living.