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Late Bloomers

By Todd Henry

Thanks to David Quigg for forwarding this article by Malcolm Gladwell in the latest issue of The New Yorker. Gladwell investigates why some artists are successful and prolific early in their careers and why some labor in obscurity until their genius is finally recognized late in life. (This article also references Daniel Pink’s WIRED article in which he discussed research on coneptualist vs. experimentalist creativity.)

Gladwell opens his article with the story of Ben Fountain, an attorney who decided in his late twenties that he wanted to write fiction.

He began his new life on a February morning—a Monday. He sat down at his kitchen table at 7:30A.M. He made a plan. Every day, he would write until lunchtime. Then he would lie down on the floor for twenty minutes to rest his mind. Then he would return to work for a few more hours. He was a lawyer. He had discipline.

Fountain had some immediate success, and continued to write – eventually gaining critical acclaim for a collection of short stories. But lest you think this was an overnight success story, the article continues:

Ben Fountain’s rise sounds like a familiar story: the young man from the provinces suddenly takes the literary world by storm. But Ben Fountain’s success was far from sudden. He quit his job at Akin, Gump in 1988. For every story he published in those early years, he had at least thirty rejections. The novel that he put away in a drawer took him four years. The dark period lasted for the entire second half of the nineteen-nineties. His breakthrough with “Brief Encounters” came in 2006, eighteen years after he first sat down to write at his kitchen table. The “young” writer from the provinces took the literary world by storm at the age of forty-eight.

It was through disciplined, regular creating and supportive relationships that Fountain was able to engage in his work in a meaningful way. For those of us questioning the value of our creative disciplines or who are still on the fence about establishing unnecessary creating time in our lives, please read this article.

LINK: Late Bloomers (NewYorker.com – Article) | Late Bloomers (NewYorker.com – Podcast)

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