Writing in the sunset of your life... (Moved from Novels)

I'm about your age but don't have quite the same outlook as you. I've seen so many younger people go before me, is perhaps the reason why, and they had huge dreams, too. I'm sure many of them thought they had 20-30 or more years ahead in which to achieve their dreams, whether they were artistic ones or merely to bike across North America for a charity they loved.

I seldom think about my age; it's not an important part of who I am. I have never been tempted to quit. (My family would seriously wonder at my sanity if I ever even said as much.) I write and have had some (small) success, but writing is just a part of me. I'll write as long as I can and continue to have my stories and work published (or try to have them published), also, for as long as I can.

'As long as I can' might be a week, a year or forty years, but that's how I plan to spend the rest of the time that I am here.

Dark River said:

How do you
handle this?

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denial, mostly

I write because I'm old, not in spite of it. I like writing because people shut up and let the old man talk for a while if you do it right.

I have a lot to say after all these years, and I write memoir, and my books have spoken to people in ways I never considered.

A woman told me the other day that her daughter read my book, and told her that it helped her understand her better

This morning a survivor's mother told me how much better she understood what happened to her daughter

I still have something to contribute to the world. That keeps me going

ETA: I thought this was roundtable, sorry. My answer stands for the age thing

Dark River said:

Okay, maybe not the sunset. Not yet, anyway.
Maybe just early to mid twilight. My question is aimed at writers over fifty who still work toward and dream of success. What gives you the courage to keep going? What do you do when you are tempted to quit?

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Success to me would mean getting my books picked up by a publisher. First I have to finish my WIP. Whip it into shape. That is what I concentrate on. Thinking beyond that throws me into anxiety or depression.

I got a very late start. Quit? Not at all tempted.

Dark River said:

(One of the perks of getting old is that I am suppossed to have all this inate wisdom and crap. I really don't but nobody has to know...)

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Yep. I hear that. With age I've gotten cynical and snarky. Call it wisdom.

Dark River said:

I've only been seeking publication for the past few years, because it's taken me that long to figure out that I may have some good stories to tell. And the few partials and queries I've sent out so far were typewritten. *shudder at what an embarressing hot mess that was!*

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At least you sent something out. Typewriter, huh?

Dark River said:

So here I am, subbing one and working on one on the computer, and planning several others and it's a good place to be.
I do think of quitting sometimes and I always tell my old man that if I become a vegetable and can't write anymore, just put me down. He has graciously agreed.

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My greatest fear is dementia or Alzheimers. I've said the same thing to my husband and my son.

Dark River said:

So where are you with all this, you writers that also sight the winter of your life rushing toward you at breakneck speed? How do you
handle this?

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I act as if I have time.

Layla Nahar said:

denial, mostly

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YES! This exactly! And, One day at a time.

I'm a little bit younger (45), but the way I see it, this is my time. I still have young kids (The youngest are 4-year-old twins.), but every year I seem to find just a little more time to write. When they no longer need me so intensly (physically), I will still have my writing and I will immerse myself in it. My career can grow with my kids and continue to florish long after they have established themselves elsewhere. It's really a pretty cool way to age.

Well, I'm 53 (and a half, mustn't forget that), and sometimes I feel like life is rushing by at breakneck speed, and it can be very scary.

I wonder how long I have left, sometimes, and if I'll keep my mind even if my body falls apart. My father is 81, works full time, and still mentally sharp, as are his older sisters, and my mother (at 72) and her sisters that are in their late 70s to 80s are the same -- so I hope I got those good genes!

I write because I have always done it, and I love it. I try not to think about it, but I do regret not having the courage or self-confidence to send out my work years ago.

I tell my kids to keep up with what I write, because some day they may make a lot of money off it!

sheilas_world said:

Well, I'm 53 (and a half, mustn't forget that), and sometimes I feel like life is rushing by at breakneck speed, and it can be very scary.

I wonder how long I have left, sometimes, and if I'll keep my mind even if my body falls apart. My father is 81, works full time, and still mentally sharp, as are his older sisters, and my mother (at 72) and her sisters that are in their late 70s to 80s are the same -- so I hope I got those good genes!

I write because I have always done it, and I love it. I try not to think about it, but I do regret not having the courage or self-confidence to send out my work years ago.

I tell my kids to keep up with what I write, because some day they may make a lot of money off it!

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Twins!! And I'm much too old to stop writing now

I didn't start writing fiction until I was around 50.

Age shouldn't be a barrier to accepting intellectual challenges. Nor should it be a barrier to achievement. It's still all about motivation and self-discipline. Of course, the energy level may drop a bit, and it takes time to keep chasing the damn kids off my lawn...

I've been writing and submitting since I was 15. I'm now 54. I still write and submit, although now the rejections seem more meaningful. It's like I haven't learned a thing. After nearly 40 years doing this, you think I'd have honed my craft enough where I understand what editors want. Enough so that I know what makes a good story and what makes a bad story. But I don't. I make the same mistakes, get the same rejections. And I see people younger than me just arriving at AW and seeming to have immediate success. And to be honest, I find it all very frustrating to the point that a day doesn't go by where I don't think about just quitting. It's obvious I just don't have what it takes, the talent, or that certain something that makes successful writers successful. I certainly haven't learned to improve. And yet, through the depths of frustration and depression and self-pity, I find that I just can't NOT write. Doesn't matter how badly it sucks, how corny and unoriginal the story is or how simplistic the sentence structure might be. I.just.can't.stop.

And that I find really frustrating. What is the freaking point in having the desire to do something if you don't have the ability to learn how to succeed?

I'm 50. I decided to write seriously in 1976, but allowed myself to be sidetracked by various obstacles. Thirty years later, I made a new start. The past two years, I've taken advantage of an unwanted period of unemployment to write every day. Just starting to, possibly, get somewhere (a few sales, and now my first regular paying gig, a fiction column for an online newspaper).

Much as I regret all the years away from writing, I'm glad to be doing it now. I could have already had a career -- but at least now I have the excitement of trying to start one. There are more ideas in my head than I'll ever be able to properly develop. I'll just keep working at the craft and hope to achieve something while my brain still works.

I try to concentrate on what I can do and not worry about what I can't.

I think the days where 50 was approaching the sunset are long gone. My grandmother lived to be over 100, almost everyone else in my family at least got close to 90. Isn't it said that we need around 40 years to approach our own full mental capacity?

Dark River said:

So where are you with all this, you writers that also sight the winter of your life rushing toward you at breakneck speed? How do you handle this?

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Winter of my life? Hey what? I'm 68, and my sun is still three hands above the horizon. I'll stop writing when they pry my keyboard from my cold, dead hands.

When time's wing'ed chariot comes by, I'll just tell the driver, 'No thanks, I'll wait for the next one.'

Dark River said:

*tipping my hat and making a toast* Here's to us!

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I'm sorry, sir. I'll need to see proof of age before I can serve alcohol.

Edward Upward was still writing when he passed away two years ago. He was considered England's oldest living writer - he was the last remaining of the group of writers in the 1930s which included Auden, Isherwood and Spender. Edward Upward lived to 105.

They're not writers, but Manoel de Oliveira is still directing films and Elliott Carter is still composing music, and they were born on the same day in December 1908.

As long as you have all your faculties, what stops you from writing at any age?

(Eyeblink, a mere 46)

Yep, I've hit the 50 year mark but I'm keepin' on, keepin' on. I still make mistakes in my writing career and I'm still learning. I get acceptances and even more rejections. But the ride is fun and I have no wish to stop it. Kind of like a roller coaster with the low points and high points, and not knowing what's around the corner. Could be lousy but could be the greatest thing ever.

For me it'll always be high noon.

Well, children, having turned 79 this past June , I have one historical novel in-house that will be published later this year or early next year, I completed my latest WIP today another historical set in the 9th century, and I have several projects to consider for the next novel.

I still write because I breathe.

Happy Belated Birthday!

I look at it this way: Now that I have a few years (61) under mah belt, I have more material to work with.

Issac Asimov was once asked what he would do if he found out he only had six minutes to live. His answer? "I'd type faster."

Never surrender - never give up. How much time do we have? TODAY! So just write, just write, just write.

Carlene

Dark River said:

So where are you with all this, you writers that also sight the winter of your life rushing toward you at breakneck speed? How do you
handle this?

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Winter? It's not coming; it's here. Paraphrasing Phil Conners in Groundhog Day, "It's gonna be cold, it's gonna be gray, and it's gonna last for the few days you have left."

Yet the days I don't write or swap lines with my much younger critique partners are infinitely colder and deeper shades of gray.

I will turn 50 this october, had my first book published when I was 48- the fifth was just released this past June and I have contracts out for two more- and several more that I need to either finish writing or editing and then they get sent off as well- As someone else said my age doesn't define me- it never did and it never did. If I thought twice about how old I was (or wasn't)_ I wouldn't be testing for my 2nd degree brown belt in martial arts in two weeks.

it's just a number- it doesn't get to tell me what I can and can't do-

I don't write because I am some age counted in a human construct. I write because there is a message inside of me that has to get out. When I was in my 40's I wrote humor stuff that made people laugh. In my thirties, I wrote screenplays about crime and suffering. In my twenties, I wrote poems to forget the horrid things Uncle Sam taught me to do to people in my youth.

Now that I am in my 50's, I write to keep the peace with the gremlins that reside in my brain. If I reach 64, I'll ask my wife if she still needs me and write about the beautiful woman who shared my life.

Or I'll order peanuts and sit in the park and write lyrical stories of the brave men of old who fought the drug wars.

Tell them what you see, feel and hear in that special place in your mind stories come from. The rest is the craft of the story. Age is irrelevant.

just a thought or two.

I just read a short story I wrote in my mid-20s.
Thank God I didn't get serious about fiction until now!
I mean, yuck.
That's about all I can say.

A good article on this exact subject is in last week's New Yorker magazine, August 8, 'The Answer Man', page 28.

Bear with the early historical bit about Lucretius.

Montaigne "once saw a man die...who complained bitterly in his last moments that destiny was preventing him from finishing the book he was writing. The absurdity of the regret, in Montaigne's view, is best conveyed by lines from Lucretius: 'But this they fail to add: that after you expire/ not one of all these things will fill you with desire.'"