No age limit to success

“The secret to being a writer is that you have to write. It's not enough to think about writing or to study literature or plan a future life as an author. You really have to lock yourself away, alone, and get to work” – Augusten Burroughs

Perhaps best known for his bestselling memoir Running with Scissors.  Burroughs' essays and feature writing, often seen in such publications as The New York Times, House and Garden, and Attitude, focuses on subjects such as advertising, psychiatrists, religious families, and home shopping networks.  A former advertising specialist, he has a knack for writing great titles, including those for his books.  Among them are Dry (about overcoming alcoholism), Magical Thinking, Possible Side Effects and Sellevision. 

Born on this date in 1965, Burroughs said that for a time everything he was writing seemed to be rejected out of hand, but he noted, “As a writer, you can't allow yourself the luxury of being discouraged and giving up when you are rejected, either by agents or publishers. You absolutely must plow forward.”  

                                              But Burroughs, the son of renowned poet Margaret Robison, perservered.   “I knew that if I wrote a new book every six months or every year, if I continued to read great books, eventually I would write something worthy of publication. I understood I might be in my forties or my fifties or even my sixties, but I felt confident that it would happen.”

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