To Young Writers: Run While You Still Can

Reach big, read widely, and, most of all, never give up even when that’s what the adults around you think you should do.

These remarks were delivered as the keynote address at the awards ceremony for the New York City Region of the Scholastic Writing Awards of 2004, Long Island City High School, Queens, April 27, 2004.

Photograph by Wayhome Studio, licensed via Bigstock

There’s a time-honored tradition in writing, whether it be a science fiction story, a newspaper article, or a brief speech, that you open with an attention-grabbing sentence that will keep the audience reading or listening.

I’m going to break with that tradition this evening. My opening line will be this:

“Run while you still can! Stop listening! Get out! Go!”

Well. I don’t see anyone leaving. All right, I guess that means you’re going to have hear to the rest of my remarks. And that’s good, because they’re directed at young writers who are too stubborn and driven to get out when other people tell them to.

I’ve been given that same advice many times, but most memorably at the age of seventeen, on my first day of class at the Clarion Writing Workshop at Michigan State University, an intensive, six-week summer program in science fiction writing. The…