Today is July 2nd, 2007. I turn thirty today. By all definitions I am officially no longer a kid. Some might say I’m no longer young, eye of the beholder and all that.
Most of my thoughts on turning thirty surround a post John Scalzi made which was an update to an older post, one of the primary thrusts of which was young people need to know their writing sucks.
From my personal experience, I have to agree. I’m a pretty late bloomer as a writer. For me Scalzi’s advice comes as good news. I wrote a few short stories in high school, and always enjoyed the idea of being a writer but never gave the notion any serious thought until a few years ago. I’m a little bit glad I didn’t waste my time. I honestly don’t think I had very much that was meaningful or entertaining to say when I was younger. I was too busy head butting reality and being a dumb hippie.
What I didn’t realize until I read the Scalzi piece is that I wasn’t fit to do much writing when I was younger for a wide variety of reasons, but the main one being lack of perspective. I used to be very naive. Even though I was an angsty, rebellious, cynical teenager, looking back I was still every bit as naive in contrast to my adult understanding of the world.
For example, one of the things I didn’t grasp when I was younger was the idea that people can perform good deeds with sneaky or even ulterior motives. Celebrities can donate or perform charity events because their publicists and agents tell them it would be good for their image. Maybe even your favorite rock star does this.
Politicians hire people to make movies for them on an impassioned topic like global warming, even though the power bill for their mansion might be, oh, $13,000 a month. No, not everything everyone does is out of the goodness of their hearts, even when it’s a good cause. Even ‘good people’ may have motives and hidden agendas which would shock or frighten you. And almost everyone is a hypocrite.
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