If I was a father, and my son told me he wanted to go out and be a publisher, I'd say, 'Go get a job.'
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
My dad was an editor and a writer, and that's actually what I aspired to be.
My mom is a teacher, my dad was a writer for television, his dad was a writer for television, and combining those two has been sort of the goal of my life.
My father was the editor of an agricultural magazine called 'The Southern Planter.' He didn't think of himself as a writer. He was a scientist, an agronomist, but I thought of him as a writer because I'd seen him working at his desk. I just assumed that I was going to do that, that I was going to be a writer.
No matter how much money I made from writing, I'd keep the bookstore job.
I always wanted to be a stay-at-home dad making art, making movies.
I always knew I wanted to be a writer. I just wasn't sure what I wanted to do as a money-making job.
I'd gotten the message in my home, starting with my grandfather, that real work, the kind that makes you sweat and gets your hands dirty, is a respectable, necessary thing. But I wanted to write - and writing didn't qualify. Whenever I told my parents I dreamed of becoming a writer, they said, 'Great, but what are you going to do for work?'
Even after I'd published three books and had been writing full-time for twenty years, my father continued to urge me to go to law school.
I'm a much better writer for being a father.
My father realised that for me to become a publisher in his firm would have been the end of the firm!