Made, not born

July 15, 2021

"There are dragons in the twins' vegetable garden."

That's the first line of one of my favorite novels, A Wind in the Door, by Madeleine L'Engle. L'Engle was one of my childhood heroes; her A Wrinkle in Time series had a profound impact on my understanding of what it means to think for oneself, and the dangers of sliding into what today we call "groupthink." At the age of 12, I knew with fist-pounding certainty that I could never be as good a writer as L'Engle. But that was okay, I told myself, because she was a genius, and I was not.

Madeleine L'Engle died in 2007 at the age of 88. And yet, she recently rocked my world all over again.

A friend showed me a copy of a story L'Engle had published before A Wind in the Door, called Intergalactic P.S. 3. It was, in essence, a first draft of A Wind in the Door, and it was... not so good. The first line was: "It started at the dinner table." Much less grabby than dragons in a vegetable garden, and the rest of Intergalactic P.S. 3 was not even close to the genius standards that L'Engle set in book after book throughout her career. And this fact thrilled me.

How could I possibly be rejoicing in a dead author's crappy first version of a story? Because it showed me how wrong I'd been: L'Engle's genius didn't reside in some Talent Spark conferred by the Universe, but in her persistence and guts. And this means that the world is filled with more possibilities for mere humans like you or me than I'd imagined. If success is more a matter of work than of luck, then it's in my grasp, or yours, or our kids'. So how about this: The next time you sit down for a nice meal with your family, talk with your kids about how geniuses are not born, but self-made, like Madeleine L'Engle.

It all can start AT THE DINNER TABLE. Hmmm... Maybe that's not such a boring beginning, after all.

—Deb