"The need to write comes from the need to make sense of one's life and discover one's usefulness."
American Novelist
1912 - 1982
We all have a need to understand our lives and the things that happen to us. Some turn to religion. Others turn to history or politics or science. Creative leaders turn to their art. The stories we tell help us to make sense of who we are and why we are here. And often we change the facts of our lives to tell a better story. What stories are you telling in your artistic works? How have you altered the facts of your stories to tell a greater truth?
John Cheever is a perfect example of a writer who rewrote his life in his short stories and novels. Born on May 27, 1912, John Cheever was the unwanted second child. His father tried to convince his mother to have an abortion. A storyteller from a young age, Cheever read Proust's In Search of Lost Time at the age of fourteen. He dropped out of high school and never went to college. He sold his first story to The New Republic at age 18. For more than twenty years he published only short stories. His first novel was not published until he was in his mid-forties. In 1979 three years before his death, he won a Pulitzer Prize for a collection of his short stories that I highly recommend all creative leaders read.
