Later that same year, he was named first chief journalist in the Coast Guard, a rating that was created just for him. Ten years after enlisting, Haley was finally able to change his rating to Journalist. Soon, they started asking Haley if he would pen them love letters to their girlfriends for some money in exchange.Īs Haley honed his literary ability, he published articles in Coast Guard Magazine and was even appointed editor for two other Coast Guard publications. As his fellow sailors endured boredom and the anxiety of being far from home, they watched Haley write copious letters to his friends and family. During the Pacific War, Haley cultivated a love and appreciation for writing. Joining in 1939, Haley was subject to restrictions within rankings and found that many positions in the Coast Guard were not open to Black Americans at that time. Alex Haley was in the Coast Guardįor Alex Haley, who is widely known for writing The Autobiography of Malcolm X and Roots: The Saga of an American Family, the resonant writing career didn’t flourish until some years into his career in the Coast Guard, a direction chosen by his father and him in order to bring discipline and growth into his life. Lindsay’s promotion of Hughes’s work was a major factor in the success of Hughes’s first collection of poems, The Weary Blues (as was Lindsay’s story of having “discovered” a talented busboy, despite Hughes’s already being a published poet!). One day while bussing tables at the Wardman Park Hotel, Hughes spotted Vachel Lindsay at a table with a leap of faith, he went over to the renowned poet’s table and shared some of his own poems. He eventually moved back to Washington, DC, living with his mother while continuing to write poetry, which he hadn’t stopped doing since he graduated. Hughes disembarked in Paris, where he accepted a stint as a cook at a nightclub. Malone, where for six months he traveled to Africa and Europe. After working various odd jobs in New York after graduation, he worked as a crewman aboard the S.S. Langston Hughes was a busboyīefore poet, playwright, and novelist Langston Hughes went on to shape the Harlem Renaissance in the mid-1920s, he had brief lives as a cook, launderer, and busboy (though always while writing). Being erudite and readerly is important to any writers who want to create good work, but for many of the below, there would have been nothing without gaining life experience outside of a room with a pen and paper. Some of the best advice that renowned authors tend to share is that aspiring writers should live a life outside of writing-many other lives, if possible.īelow is a look into what six of the most renowned, impactful American authors of the 20th and 21st centuries were doing when they weren’t writing the books, poems, reports, and short stories that moved, radicalized, and even criticized a nation.
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