Peter S. Beagle

from Writer's Alamanac

It’s the birthday of fantasy writer Peter S. Beagle, born in New York City (1939). He attended the Bronx High School of Science, where he wrote poems and short stories. During his senior year, he submitted a poem to the Scholastic Writing Awards contest, without checking to see what the prizes were. His poem won first place, and it turned out that his prize was a college scholarship, so he went to the University of Pittsburgh. His first novel, A Fine and Private Place (1960), was published when he was just 19.

“The best advice I know to give is to learn to put up with boredom and frustration. You have to sit through the dull times when nothing’s coming and stay there, for however much time you’ve given yourself to write, even then. It doesn’t have to be all day that you do this — it could be an hour, two hours maybe — but the ability to just stay there in the face of soul-wearying emptiness, that has to be developed just like any muscle. Because that’s what imagination is: a muscle, and it has to be worked out. So you sit there in the face of nothing, or you write gibberish you know you’re going to toss the next day. But you stay there. You work at it. You fill the time. And gradually, the empty days grow fewer, and the frustration periods shrink. You never lose them entirely, but they shrink.”