The Upside of Writing Fiction After 50

Ron and I meet many 50+ novelists when we teach at writers’ conferences. Writing fiction later in life is clearly a popular pursuit. One important reason why is the upside to being a late-blooming writer.

For starters, we have more stuff to write about than young novelists. Perhaps even more important, we’ve had the opportunity to read a lot more — which (if we’re lucky) translates into a more polished voice.

Older writers may have many more hours available to write each day — because kids are no longer little and family issues have become simpler to deal with. We’re also likely to have more resources, for example:

• Writing space at home
• Time and money to attend writers’ conferences — and to travel to locales used in our novels.

There’s even the possibility that 50+ people are wiser than 30-something writers.

Consequently, I don’t think it’s an accident that so many of us decide to write fiction later in life. The tumblers line up, click into place, and we decide we’re finally ready and able to begin novelizing — a decision we’d never have made years earlier.

Janet

Hello Novelists!

Writing novels late in life is a fine, old tradition.

Agatha Christie wrote into her 70s. Tony Hillerman turned out best-sellers when he was in his 80s. So did James Michener.

Helen Hooven Santmyer set some kind of record when her epic novel And Ladies of the Club became a best-seller when she was 88 years old. She said that it took her 50 years to write the novel.

Raymond Chandler (the creator of Philip Marlowe) sold his first mystery novel at age 51. A few years back, an informal survey of a mystery writers “loop” found that more than a third had published their first book 50+ years old.

Janet and I didn’t know any of this when we decided — back more than 15 years ago — to write our first novel. I’d been a non-fiction writer for much of my life, but despite nearly 40 years behind typewriters and keyboards, it took Janet and me more than seven years to figure out how to write publishable fiction.

If we had to do it over again, we’d have attended more writers’ conferences … exchanged more useful how-tos with other writers … and tried to find the kind of practical advice we plan to publish on Fiction After 50.

For example, some of the posts we plan during the coming weeks include:

• Where does age fit in to the publishing equation? (Is “graylisting”real?)
• Understanding the odds: What’s possible to achieve and what’s unlikely?
• Why the “New Publishing Paradigm” is great news for 50+ novelists
• How not to waste “golden arrows” (contacts and referrals)
• Understanding the odds: what’s possible and what’s unlikely
• Bonehead mistakes that older novelists make
• How not to waste “golden arrows” (contacts and referrals)
• Why 50+ novelists should produce lots of “product”

We want Fiction After 50 to turbocharge novelizing for writers over a certain age. So tell us the kind of content you’d like to see. And please share the proven approaches you use.

Cordially,

Ron & Janet