I confess. I can't read a book in a normal way. Often I’ll just HAVE to start checking the writer’s birth chart. No exception for John Steinbeck: a few pages in I HAD to check his birth chart.
John Steinbeck is a famous travel writer and also worked as a war correspondent. Looking in a birth chart will give you a very clear helicopter view of life. What I love about it is that you can look far ahead in the future AND really explain and see pain points (and how to deal with them/clear it), opportunities and what directions to best take.
In short it’s like your missing life manual. Feel lost? Check your chart!
Now here's the thing with Steinbeck his chart: there's no obvious first indicators that this is a writer's chart. Nor does he have huge 'travel indicators'. In fact, looking at purpose would even show the direction of "being home", being busy with heritage, family and more than he did. He chose the spotlights and travel though. There’s two important PURPOSE points in everyone’s chart. You can see it as “chosen lessons” for this life. The idea is that you’ll start moving into that newly set direction. Usually this will happen more after your teen years and in adulthood.
One point shows what’s comfortable to you and will feel natural. It’s “old” though. You’ve collected these gifts and you want to start moving forward. I must highlight that there’s NO SUCH THING as only bring here for ONE purpose. There’s many gifts and talents in your chart that you can choose to develop. All your interactions always matter and by being you you already ARE changing status quo. If you want to follow anything in life: flow your bliss.
With Steinbeck that’s an interesting one: with no planets in the 3rd house which are excellent for writers and only 1 in the 5th he starts look like the Bliss follower. However, he does have his path of fortune (area of success) in the 9th house (which relates to publishing). Also a Leo ASC is good for creative expression. I actually found a full page in Travels with Charley in which he describes his looks and his clothes: very LEO rising. Lol.
Back to the chart. So where is his love of writing? He has Mercury conjunct Venus. Always check your Mercury if looking for writers abilities. Ideally Mercury is in Virgo or an air sign. Venus shows love for it (and thus the ability to spend lots of time on this). He also has Uranus in the 'creative 5th house' in Sagittarius. Sagittarius relates to travel and he needed his adventures. Uranus is also rather explosive and can cover lots of different topics and is 'out of the box'. Neptune feeds imagination and also allows the writer to phrase beautiful sentences if it’s well aspected and with his 11th house he was able to reach a large crowd.
Was this a person born writer? I don't think so. Did he follow his “new” purpose point? I also do not think so. I actually think he stayed at his “comfortable” past gifts/lifetimes (however way you would like to see it) and played that out then moving towards the “new life lessons”. And I do think transits likely pushed his writing forward.
He was gifted. Yes.
He absolutely did address some of his own major life themes and lessons in his topics. Like the home/emotions that should receive focus and here you can see that as Steinbeck writing on immigration issues of his home country. Could he have played out purpose a different way? Yes. Does that matter? No. Everyone gets to choose, remember. Working with what’s present in any way that feels right for you and is inspiring and fun is great.
Steinbeck clearly chose to be a writer and continued on his path, while becoming very successful with it. It wasn’t written in stone (your future never is) and he seems to have had the hang of using the law of attraction in manifesting more of what he wanted.