I'm getting old, and you?

SpookyWriter · Jul 24, 2007

I'm getting so old that I remanded my thoughts on this subject to archive. So how old before our aged brains can't recall the last great scene?

Do you feel age as a writer is impotent?

veinglory · Jul 24, 2007

impotent? I's not touching that one.

I just had a birthday and I had to sit down and do the math to work out which one. That was odd.

blacbird · Jul 24, 2007

"Ahhh, but I was so much older then,
I'm younger than that now."

-- Bob Dylan

caw

Ziljon · Jul 24, 2007

Age may be impotent...

...but I certainly am not.

Mandy-Jane · Jul 24, 2007

Sometimes you need to be older to be a good writer, so you can have experienced the things you're writing about. I remember once reading a book about novel-writing that said you should be 40 at least, before you write your first novel. At the time, I was about 19, so I was devastated to think I'd have to wait that long. Now I'm 40, and I still don't think there's a novel in me! Oh well.

reenkam · Jul 24, 2007

Mandy-Jane said:
Sometimes you need to be older to be a good writer, so you can have experienced the things you're writing about. I remember once reading a book about novel-writing that said you should be 40 at least, before you write your first novel. At the time, I was about 19, so I was devastated to think I'd have to wait that long. Now I'm 40, and I still don't think there's a novel in me! Oh well.

Wow, what book was that?

I don't like it. Not one little bit.

Shady Lane · Jul 24, 2007

Hmm...I'm getting better as I get older. I think that's more practice, though--I'm on my seventh novel, at this point--than anything I'm gaining from age.

Mandy-Jane · Jul 24, 2007

reenkam said:
Wow, what book was that?

I don't like it. Not one little bit.

I think it was called "Writing a Novel" or some such equally imaginative title. It was an old book, even back then. It was from the library, so I can't really remember much more.

SpookyWriter · Jul 24, 2007

veinglory said:
impotent? I's not touching that one.

I just had a birthday and I had to sit down and do the math to work out which one. That was odd.

Obviously, miss, you don't live in the south. You northerners say "important", I quite understand.

blacbird · Jul 24, 2007

"I been to Hollywood,
I been to Redwood,
I crossed the ocean
for a heart of gold.
I been in my mind,
it's such a fine line
that keeps me searching
for a heart of gold.

and I'm gettin' old."

-- Neil Young

SpookyWriter · Jul 24, 2007

I bean to Tokyo,
I bean to Glaslow,
I crossed the ocean,
on a DEA boat,
for a heart of panama gold.

reenkam · Jul 24, 2007

SpookyWriter said:
Obviously, miss, you don't live in the south. You northerners say "important", I quite understand.

Wow, is that what that was? Hm....

I did forget to answer the question, though. I agree with Shady. I think age is a help, but practice and experience can be just as good.

Azraelsbane · Jul 24, 2007

Pff, I don't think you need to be old to write.

By age 13 I'd been set on fire, shot, gone to the Olympics, and traveled to 12 countries. After that my life got significantly less interesting. But I guess...now that I've slowed down just a tad, that does give me time to write. But I'm only 24

I'm hoping I have about 50 years of writing left in me.

Birol · Jul 24, 2007

What I hear you saying Azraels is that is not how long you've lived but how much you've lived that matters?

Azraelsbane · Jul 24, 2007

Birol said:
What I hear you saying Azraels is that is not how long you've lived but how much you've lived that matters?

Yup

That's about it. Experience trumps age any day of the week.

seun · Jul 25, 2007

I'm 30 in a couple of months. That makes me almost as old as Nichola.

mum23 · Jul 25, 2007

And I'm 43 in november. Still haven't found my vocation in life. Being a housewife and mother can't be my lot. Can it?

Birol · Jul 25, 2007

There's nothing wrong with being a homemaker. Homemakers have my fullest respect. It's a career I couldn't do and keep my sanity.

I've heard, but have no corroborating data that most novelists have their first book published when they're in their mid-30's. Now, this doesn't mean they didn't have other publishing credits before this. How many think, believe, feel, etc., that age could be accurate?

ap123 · Jul 25, 2007

I feel like such a cliche

I'm over forty, an at-home mom, and I wish I would have started pursuing this earlier. I think it would have been easier to deal with rejections and the slow turn around time when I was younger. Not because of attitude, but because I feel a pressure now, time isn't on my side and all that.

MidnightMuse · Jul 25, 2007

I realized last week that for the past 3 months I've been under the false impression I was a year younger than I actually am.

That can't bode well.

heyjude · Jul 25, 2007

Birol said:
There's nothing wrong with being a homemaker. Homemakers have my fullest respect. It's a career I couldn't do and keep my sanity.

Bless you for that. I found I couldn't keep my sanity either. I still do it, I'm just not sane anymore.

rugcat · Jul 25, 2007

Birol said:
I've heard, but have no corroborating data that most novelists have their first book published when they're in their mid-30's. Now, this doesn't mean they didn't have other publishing credits before this. How many think, believe, feel, etc., that age could be accurate?

That would not surprise me. Even talented young people mostly don't have the life experience to successfully understand, much less portray, the intricacies of human interaction. (There are exceptions, of course. I’ve read wonderful books by twentysomethings and thought, how is it possible someone so young could have written this?)

I wanted to be a writer since I was in high school and wrote constantly. I quit writing a few years later when I realized I had no real life experiences and nothing to say. I picked it up again later in life, when I did.

zahra · Jul 25, 2007

Some writers I have read were published in the 'young writer' frenzy that has gripped the UK in the past decade or so. Most have been too callow for publication as yet. Not everybody is Zadie Smith.

As for me, age shall not wither me. Gin, maybe...

Namatu · Jul 25, 2007

blacbird said:
"Ahhh, but I was so much older then,
I'm younger than that now."

-- Bob Dylan

caw

Agree. As I get older, I get younger. Although last time my birthday came around, I got my own age wrong. Oh well. I only remember the important stuff.

KAP · Jul 25, 2007

Older? Me? Wait...

What was the question?

I'm getting old, and you?

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