Author visits LHS to talk about his book ‘The Escape of Light,’ share insights into life
February 28, 2022
On Feb. 28, author Fred Venturini paid a visit to the Lafayette Library to talk to students about his book The Escape of Light.
“This was a great opportunity, really. Even though I am an introvert, and these types of activities kind of drain my energy, I love doing them. I think that getting to go out into the community and seeing how my stories have impacted people is one of the best parts about being an author,” he said.
For Venturini however, being an author was not always his goal career.
“Being an author isn’t always the goal. You start out as a writer, and then becoming an author is kind of like going pro. You hope that something you have written is something that will get the attention of an agent. But I have been writing since I was eight, and it became routine. Everyday I would sit down and write something. It almost feels unnatural if I have gone a couple of weeks without putting something on paper,” he said.
The Escape of Light is a story about a young boy who gets burned at the hands of an old friend, and then how he navigates the world of high school while recovering from the event. While it sounds like the work of fiction, he said the story is actually far from it.
“So in my story, the young boy named Wilder Tate is essentially me. The events that he lives though are actually ones that I went though myself. I was burned by someone I used to call a friend when I was 10. And I was in the burn unit for about two months following that event. And now, almost 30 years after that event, I am still seeing the effects of it,” he said.
After his visit, Venturini said hopes to leave the students he talked to with some important messages that might help them.
Look at setbacks as opportunities. — Fred Venturini
First he said there are two skills he believes everyone needs to emphasize in their own lives. The first is to be able to do things without always having to be motivated to do them.
“That’s the number one thing that stops people from being successful. That is the gene that a Michael Jordan or Kobe Bryant has. Great things don’t rely on motivation. As a matter of fact, Tim Grover, who trained both those guys wrote a great book. And he says ‘motivations for losers’. If you need to be motivated in order to take any sort of action, you’re not going to be very successful at it. So get used to doing things that you don’t feel like doing,” he said.
He also said people need to develop more resilience.
“That’s the skill that you need to have. ‘Okay, this happened. Now what?’ Instead of kind of crawling a hole, look at it as an opportunity. So when something happens, read the tea leaves. Pivot off of it. Make it into an opportunity. It’s really looking at things in a very intentional way and saying, I’m going to respond to this instead of reacting to it. Because at the end of the day, has anger never really made anything better? That’s another little thing. I always tell myself, when you’re really, really mad, you want to go off, has anger ever improved the situation? No, not really. I can’t really think of many times that it has. That usually gives you a split second, that’s all it takes. Catch yourself and add that pivot yourself to practice becoming more resilient,” Venturini said.
