The second event that I attended was a talk given by author Emma Straub. Unlike the previous event I had attended, this one was a bit of a change, in that it was actually conducted online over a skype session. Emma Straub is a professional writer who has been on the New York Times, best-seller list, so suffice to say, she’s a professional in her field who knows a lot of what she’s talking about. And I, among others, was rather curious to come to know how exactly she got to the position she was now in.

I think I common theme behind a lot of writers in today’s world (not all, but at least a majority), is that they come from some sort of writing background. And, at least for Emma Straub, this was the case. Her father, actually, is a writer as well, and the genre that he writes in is horror. (I found this quite interesting because, as Straub later tells us, she actually grew up near the house of Stephen King, who is another writer of the suspense/horror genre, so I was left wondering if there was any connection between the two authors in that regard). One of the main things that Straub talked about that got her to where she is today, is the fact that she had a interest in writing from a very young age (which feeds back to her father being a writer as well), and on top of that she had a lot of encouragement from her family to pursue her chosen path, which really allowed her creativity to bloom and to flourish.

However, she goes on to discuss that, just because she’s been named a best-seller, doesn’t mean that everything is fine and dandy, and she goes on to dispel some of the “untrue” (for lack of a better word) things about the life of an author. And that would be, that being an author isn’t as glamorous as it might seem, and that oftentimes it’s a very solitary type of work, where you don’t often get to work with other people, and the perceived popularity isn’t the type of that a Hollywood actor might have. She also talked about on the more difficult aspects about writing in general, which is something that resonates a lot with myself personally, and that would be coming up with an idea to write about. And I imagine that for someone like Straub who has to pick an idea to write an entire book about (which could take well over a year), it must be twice as difficult if not more (whereas I only need an idea to write five pages about).

Her closing remarks, were to those who were considering beings writers in the future. And one of the points that she touched upon was not to be too afraid of rejection, and that it was something that she herself also had to deal with. She also stressed the importance of reading, and how reading and writing go hand and hand, and reading books by other authors can only improve your own writing.