Leonard Pitts’ first magazine submission didn’t win him a Pulitzer Prize.
At the tender age of 12, he typed out a thoughtful and well-researched four-page essay on ants and said he was fairly certain he’d receive the $2,000 the magazine offered for accepted stories.
“I waited by the mailbox every day with visions of how I was going to spend my money,” the syndicated columnist told a group of students Friday at Baylor School. “I know this is going to shock you as much as it did me, but Playboy has no interest in 12-year-old boys’ stories about ants. Maybe I should have mentioned that they were naked female ants.”
Despite the early rejection, Mr. Pitts eventually did win a Pulitzer Prize in 2004 for commentary. The syndicated column he writes for the Miami Herald now appears weekly in more than 250 newspapers nationwide, including the Times Free Press.
Mr. Pitts came to Baylor as part of the school’s celebration of Black History Month, but he spoke more generally to high schoolers Friday morning about his job as a newspaper columnist and about finding their own passion in life.
“The secret of life is to figure out what you love … what you do better than most people, and figure out a way for someone to pay you to do it,” he said. “Everybody has a gift. Problem is, some of us, it’s so a part of us, we don’t think of it as a gift.”
After speaking for about 20 minutes, Mr. Pitts fielded students’ questions.
Sophomore Autumn Tucker asked whether Mr. Pitts ever gets frustrated while trying to write.
“Because the things I love are the things that make me want to pull my hair out,” she said.
“Writing frustrates me on a daily basis. That’s why I’m bald,” Mr. Pitts quipped. “Writing isn’t fun. Having written is.”
Other students asked Mr. Pitts about choosing a tone and a topic.
“I write about things which are interesting to me. I look for stuff that catches on the gears of my brain. Stuff that won’t leave me alone,” he said.
He referred to some of his more well-known columns, such as one written the day after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, and another, an open letter to a Cartersville, Ga., newspaper editor who had plagiarized some of his work.
ABOUT LEONARD PITTSLeonard Pitts is a syndicated columnist and author who writes for the Miami Herald. A resident of Bowie, Md., Mr. Pitts joined the Herald in 1991 as a pop music critic. Since 1994 his columns — which appear in the Times Free Press — have covered pop culture, social issues and family life. He won the Pulitzer Prize for commentary in 2004. His book, “Journey to Fatherhood,” was released in May 1999 and reissued in paperback in 2006. Last March, he published his first novel, “Before I Forget.”
Senior Erika Marschall said in all her years at Baylor, she doesn’t remember any speaker who engaged her fellow students quite like Mr. Pitts. The 18-year-old plans to study communications next year at Southern Methodist University in Dallas.
“Picking my major, I definitely have doubts, with the economy, finding a job. But this made me want to stick with my original plan,” she said. “You can be successful in whatever you want to do.”
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