Thank God for Malcom Gladwell

Ever since I decided I wanted to be a writer I've had this angst about writing. It is an angst I presume is common to most young artists: am I actually any good? Will anyone ever actually read my stuff? Of course, these are the usual predictably vain questions common of youth -- especially those narcissistic youth who believe that people should care about what they say. My minor successes in writing -- and I mean minor -- had quelled such thoughts for a brief period of time. I somehow imagined that the transition from editor of my university newspaper to writing for the Walrus Magazine would be a simple one. My naivete would have me believe that life would somehow happen; that one day I would simply wake up with a best selling novel or a byline on the front page of the New York Times. Instead I woke up at age 23 with no writing job, no degree, and nothing but a hard drive full of unfinished stories. T.S. Eliot published “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” at 23. Mozart was like nine when he started composing symphonies. Hendrix, Cobain, Joplin, and Morrison all died at 27. Could I ever accomplish this feat? At the rate I'm going, I'll be lucky to have a short story or a decent article published by the time I'm 40.
As I'm going over this in my head -- lamenting the passing of my youth and admonishing myself for failing to become a child prodigy -- my idle, my saviour, Malcom Gladwell tells me it is all alright. In an October 20th article for the New Yorker called "Late Bloomers" Gladwell single handedly puts to rest any fears about growing old (www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/10/20/081020fa_fact_gladwell).
"On the road to great achievement, the late bloomer will resemble a failure: while the late bloomer is revising and despairing and changing course and slashing canvases to ribbons after months or years, what he or she produces will look like the kind of thing produced by the artist who will never bloom at all," writes Gladwell. "Prodigies are easy. They advertise their genius from the get-go. Late bloomers are hard. They require forbearance and blind faith."

Thanks buddy. Now I can sleep at night knowing that just because I am as of yet a failure there is still hope for me.