4 ms·
I was 45 when I had my first fiction published and I’ve published at least one story a year since then (although there have been years that it’s felt like I jus
by dhosek 3y ago
I was 45 when I had my first fiction published and I’ve published at least one story a year since then (although there have been years that it’s felt like I just barely met that goal). I think my MFA thesis advisor assigned Fitzgerald to me as a role model of a late-in-life writer (it’s amusing to think of my then-45-year-old self as “old” a decade later). But like Fitzgerald, it’s not like I wasn’t writing before. I’ve written my whole life and while I took multiple extended breaks from sending things out and I have notebooks full of unfinished stories, I still wrote and after really pushing myself back into writing (and more importantly, finishing) when I was coming up on 40 years old and subsequently pursuing an MFA to further polish my craft, I managed to get that first bit of external validation in the form of a published story (one which was paid, and in print). The seeking of validation is a bit brutal and soul-crushing (at best I’ve gotten 1 acceptance for 25 rejections, overall it’s more like 49 rejections for each acceptance), but as W. P. Kinsella said, it’s not the publishing that makes a writer, but the writing.
And a bit more apropos of the article, I’d add that to a large extent, I think that the 45 years of life leading up to my first publication were a big part of what made me able to write something worth publishing.
- HenryOliver87 3y agoWhat's interesting about PF, of course, is that she just didn't do very much writing earlier on. Glad to hear you have made some progress!
- dhosek 3y agoBut she did. From the article: > The other answer given is that she wasn’t, in fact, such a late starter. Critics point to her childhood stories, anonymous reviews for the Times Literary Supplement, her probable contributions to Desmond’s history of the Irish Guards, and the literary magazine she and Desmond ran together when the children were little. There were also four short stories she wrote earlier in life: two as a young child, two in the 1950s when she was a mother. (Fitzgerald wrote very few short stories overall.) I would guess that were I to die today, there would be very little evidence that I wrote anything before 2014.
- soneca 3y agoI wouldn’t consider that much writing over 30 years (from 15 to 45 yo). Fiction as just 4 short stories, being 2 as a child. I’d would say that’s very little writing before your first novel.
- breck 3y ago> I think that the 45 years of life leading up to my first publication were a big part of what made me able to write something worth publishing. "Before you can write the book, you have to be the book."
- hi-v-rocknroll 3y agoThe greatest concentration of interesting folks are the elderly on the fringes of society. If a writer ever wanted to find an ideal biography subject if they weren't the book, there is a demographic of sane, elderly, rough sleepers on each coast of America who have experienced more than the average person can possibly imagine.
- defrost 3y agoThe lead actor of Charlie's Country has an extensive biography that goes broader and deeper than many might expect. Just the Dennis Hopper stories alone make a tale worth telling.
- hi-v-rocknroll 3y agoNice. I think I've heard of that title. I've met a few gems amongst a cavalcade of colorful characters who perhaps could be captured fairly between pen and paper to record an echo of human splendor that should live beyond time. - A paranoid but happy and cynical gentleman with long, scraggly hair like a wizard from the Appalachias who was a military aircraft electrician and an Apple rework tech. Stories spanning every feeling with hilarious exaggerations for emphasis. - A former writer at big name NY newspaper, ex-hippie, and crab fisherman who had quite the life of drugs, women, and was part of it. Body might be shot, but a mind sharper than people who are 30 now without hyperbole. Knows where, when, and who of the cool spots of then and now. - You'd swear he was dangerous or black Santa Claus. Nope, sweetest and coolest guy in the world. Picking cotton, keeping out of trouble during times that were turbulent, elevator repair, and teaching.
- defrost 3y ago
- soperj 3y agoWhat did you do before fiction? Is it worth it monetarily? or did you have to change a lot of things to pursue the dream?