Anthony Burgess was 40years old when he learnt that he had only one year to live.
He had a brain tumour that would kill him within a year. He knows he had a battle on his hands.
He was completely broke at that time and didn’t have anything to live behind for his wife, Lynne, who will soon become a widow.
Burgess had never been a professional novelist in the past, but he always knew the potential was inside him to be a writer.
So, for the sole purpose of leaving royalties behind for his wife, he put a piece of paper into a typewriter and began writing.
He had no certainty that it would even been published, but he couldn’t think of anything else to do.
“It was January of 1960,” he said, “and according to the prognosis, I had a winter, a spring and a summer to live through, and would die with the fall of the leaf”
Knowing that he was about to die in a year time, Burgess wrote energetically and passionately, finishing five and half novels before the end of the year.
The goodnews was that Burgess did not die. His cancer had gone into remission and then disappeared altogether.
In his long and full life as a novelist (he is best known for A clock-work orange), he wrote more than 70 books, but without the death sentence from cancer, he won’t had been a writer.
Many of us are like Anthony Burgess, hiding the greatness inside, waiting for some external emergency to bring it out.
Like Anthony Burgess asked, “If you have one year to live, what would you do differently?
What will you do to ensure that you leave a legacy behind and that you are not forgotten even after you had gone?”
Waste no time and start making use of your gifts, talents and hidden potential. Yes it’s in you!
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Ben Prolific Odes
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