TITLE: Another "I'm Successful Because I Was Lucky" Admission AUTHOR: Eugene Wallingford DATE: January 26, 2017 3:37 PM DESC: ----- BODY: This one from essayist and cartoonist Tim Kreider, in an AdviceToWriters interview:
What's your advice to new writers?
I first have to say that whatever moderate success I may have achieved has been so much a result of dumb luck that I feel fraudulent presuming to offer any advice to young writers, as if I did any of this on purpose or according to plan.
I appreciate humble advice. The advice Kreider goes on to give aspiring writers is mostly obvious, as he says up front that it will be, but he also shares a quote from Thoreau that I like:
Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all.
As someone who most days runs out of time to read as much computer science as I want, I value this reminder. -----