gational tool,” McGuirk says. “Astrology has the amazing
capacity to serve like an owner’s manual.”
But McGuirk emphasizes that if someone wants her to be a
fortuneteller, they’ll be sorely disappointed.
“An astrologer can only tell you the best way to take what
you’ve got and make it what you want,” McGuirk says.
“They can’t and shouldn’t predict the future. Astrology can
never predict the future because we’ve got free will.”
Enrolled at Sarah Lawrence College in her hometown,
0c*uirN began to write and draw freel\ for tKe Àrst time in
her life. Though her teachers appreciated her work, success
didn’t embrace her with open arms.
In 1986 when McGuirk was 26, she started her own company,
72
The McGuirk’s Quirks Design Co., which produced
an environmentally themed T-shirt line based on McGuirk’s
original drawings. Clients included The Nature Co. and Bonwit
Teller.
“I was selling T-shirts out of the back of my car in Portsmouth,
N.H.,” McGuirk says.
Through a stroke of pure luck, Glamour magazine did a
story on McGuirk and her company. Someone from the highend
Japanese department store Takashimaya read the article
and contacted McGuirk.
“Somehow, Japan understood me,” she says. “I was like
Calvin Klein there. I did all the designs for their new Disney
hotel. For someone with no training in art, who was told for
years I couldn’t draw, it was quite something to walk into a
Japanese hotel and see my designs on the carpeting, wallpaper,
bed spreads and curtains.”
Takashimaya has reproduced her environmental designs on
1,500 products.
“I was designing
aprons, pajamas, toilet
seat covers, everything,”
McGuirk says.
“And my children’s
books began selling
extremely well.”
For the 13 years
prior to Japan, McGuirk
wrote and illustrated
whimsical children’s
books with zero success.
“Nada. One book
was rejected over 150
times,” she says. “That’s
why I wanted to focus
on failure in my TED
Talk. Most people give
up after just a few rejections.
If you’re passionate
about something, it doesn’t matter if you get rejected. It’s
a normal part of the path to success. Whatever energizes you
is always worth pursuing because it comes from your core.
:Ken success Ànall\ comes \ou neYer forget wKat \ou went
through. It helps you keep everything in perspective.”
Today, McGuirk is an internationally known writer and
illustrator of best-selling children’s books and the winner of
multiple awards.
Treasure Coast residents know McGuirk’s popular children’s
series about the dogs Tucker, Wiggens and her popular,
If Rocks Could Sing, thanks to her regular presentations at
PEOPLE OF INTEREST
ED DRONDOSKI
McGuirk believes her new book, The
Power of Mercury, can be best used as a
navigational tool or owner’s manual.
>>
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