nationalbook:YES, your twenties really are terrible. But it...

nationalbook:

YES, your twenties really are terrible. But it gets better!

And Daniel Handler (AKA Lemony Snicket) and Kate DiCamillo know your pain. Here’s what they had to say about being twentysomething.

DH: So then who were you when you were 25? 20?

KD: Ah, yes. Well. I was someone who wanted to be a writer, but who wasn’t writing. I was someone buying books on writing. I was someone telling people that I was writer. But I was not writing. I was working at Disney World, Circus World, campgrounds, greenhouses. That is who I was. Who were you then?

DH: At 25 I saw myself as a profound failure. I was working half-time answering phones and writing a novel I couldn’t sell. The thing that got me through was another dream, that in retrospect the time in my life would look free and bohemian rather than pathetic, and that has in fact turned out to be the case.

via Buzzfeed

DiCamillo photo: Catherine Smith Photography
Handler photo: ©Meredith Heue

20s: I worked at a costume shop, led the YMCA at a nursing home, directed children’s theatre and dressed as Tweetie Bird at a stranger’s birthday party in a state I hated living in. Why doesn’t Harper Collins like the unagented novel I dropped on their doorstep? Debit card bounced repeatedly at grocery store. 

30s: Got a literary agent. Wrote and published novels. Had and are subsequently raising, two beautiful children. Most of the time my credit card works at the grocery store. 

20s are building your life one little brick at a time.

30s are living it.