“Anthony Burgess was forty when he learned he had a brain tumor that would kill him within a year. He had no money at the time and nothing to bequeath to his soon-to-be widow, Lynne.
Burgess had never been a professional novelist in the past; but he was always aware that he had the talent to be a writer in him. So, just to be able to leave at least the copyrights to his wife, he put a piece of paper in the typewriter and began to write his first novel. It was not even certain that what he had written could be published; but he couldn’t think of anything else to do.
“It was January 1960,” he said, “and according to the diagnosis, I had a winter, a spring, and a summer ahead of me. That year, when the leaves began to fall, I would have died too.” With that speed and haste, Burgess had managed to write five and a half novels before the year was out. E. M. Forster could only write so many in almost an entire lifetime; J. D. Salinger, one of America’s greatest writers, managed to write only half of it in his entire life.
However, Burgess did not die. His cancer first regressed; then it disappeared altogether. In his long and full life as a writer, he produced more than seventy works, most famously A Clockwork Orange. He might not have written even one of these novels had it not been for the death sentence that cancer had inflicted on him.
Most of us are like Anthony Burgess; we hide a great talent waiting for an emergency to emerge from within us.
A USEFUL EXERCISE IN SELF-MOTIVATION IS: to ask yourself what you would do if you were in Anthony Burgess’s place and found out that you would die of cancer within a year… “What would change in my life, how would I live my last year if I had learned that I would only live one more year? ? What exactly would I do? Considering the brevity of life is a useful exercise; it often brings up surprising thoughts in your mind that will reveal your unused talents that have not yet surfaced.”
Author Unknown – Very inspired story: A Year to Live.
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The focus of my Daily Positive Impact posts is to provide readers with sites that make available resources focused on creating positive impact, amusing stories that help us all smile during these difficult times, and examples of positive daily actions that have been taken that are included to energize readers to take their own actions to make our world a better place. If you are already there, thanks!!
Have a healthy, positive and impactful life, Peter Prichard CMF
Have a healthy, positive and impactful life, Peter Prichard CMF
-WEBSITE/BLOG – https://havepositiveimpact.com/
-AUTHOR – the International #1 Amazon Bestseller and Readers’ Favorite 5 Star Award Recipient – “Have a Positive Impact During Uncertain Times” – https://www.amazon.com/dp/1732793808
Readers Favorite 5 Star Review stated, “If you want to make a difference in the world, but don’t know where to start, or want to make a difference in your own life, but don’t know how, this book was written for you.”
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100% of the revenue from the sale of my 3 books available on Amazon goes to organizations and individuals I know (some of the links are below) who are supporting the themes of those books:
–LESSENING INSTANCES OF SEXUAL ASSAULT AND BULLYING (“Dawn of Hope” – www.theuncomfortableconversation.org and https://www.stopitnow.org/ ),
–LESSENING DEATHS BY TOBACCO (“Dawn of the Tobacco Wars” – www.tobaccofreekids.org ), and
–INCREASING INSTANCES OF POSITIVE IMPACT (“Have a Positive Impact During Uncertain Times” mentioned above – The Care Package – https://lnkd.in/ethChzu3 and The Greater Good Science Center – https://www.greatergood.berkeley.edu/ )
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#positiveimpact #kindnessmatters #positiveleadership #teachers #librarians