100 Ways To Motivate Yourself, Third Edition

72. Go to war

Anthony Burgess was 40 when he learned that he had a brain tumor that would kill him within a year. He knew he had a battle on his hands. He was completely broke at the time, and he didn’t have anything to leave behind for his wife, Lynne, soon to be 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 he would even be 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 and spring and summer to live through, and would ...