“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 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, and Sellevision.
For a time, he said 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.”
And Burroughs, who was born in Pennsylvania on Oct. 23, 1965, perservered. “I knew that if I wrote a
new book every six months or every year (and) 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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