You're Never Too Old To Be A Successful Writer
6 Writers who made it after retirement + my 5 Substack recommendations.
Welcome to a fortnightly newsletter for those who aim to remain positive and optimistic in the face of the challenges ageing brings. Let’s explore the ideas and experiences related to living in the second half of life. I’ve spent the last 30 years following the science of living healthily, mentally and physically, and putting it into practice. I continue to learn and share this knowledge in posts, podcasts and sometimes, videos. Subscribe to my newsletter for access to them.
You’re Never Too Old To Be A Successful Writer
Once you reach your forties or fifties, you might be tempted to think, that’s it now. It’s too late for me; you need to be young to succeed. But history tells us that’s not true. It’s heartening to know there are many instances of writers who have published later in life and been bestsellers.
People celebrate youth for its limitless energy and innovative ideas, but many writers have created their most successful work after they retire. Their lives have given them the material and experience to use in their literary creations, and the end of their professional journey gives them time to begin a new creative chapter.
I have no patience with people who grow old at sixty…. Sixty should be the time to start something new, not put your feet up.
This quote is from Mary Wesley (1912-2002) the English writer who published her first novel, Jumping The Queue, at 71 then went on to write ten more bestsellers in the last twenty years of her life.
She appears to have been a feisty and eccentric woman. There were many lovers in her long life, and she married three times. It was on the death of her third husband that she took up writing to help restore her finances. She designed her own coffin and had it finished in red Chinese lacquer. It was kept in her sitting room as a coffee table. The magazine Country Living was invited to photograph her sitting next to it. They declined.
Controversial Memoir
With more time to reflect and write, authors like Frank McCourt (1930-2009), who retired from teaching, found the free time of retirement a fertile ground for writing. He was an Irish-American teacher and writer. In 1996, he published his first book, Angela’s Ashes, a memoir of the misery and squalor of his childhood. It was a critical and commercial success and won the Pulitzer Prize in 1997 for Biography or Memoir.
The book created some controversy when he was accused of exaggerating his family’s poverty and had named and shamed several people from the town of Limerick where the book was set. McCourt’s mother, Angela, stood up during a show where her sons were telling stories of the past, and called the stories out as lies, saying “It didn’t happen that way!”(*) Nevertheless, the book made McCourt a rich celebrity.
Another writer who became successful after being freed from full-time employment was Raymond Chandler (1888-1959). He was a British-American novelist and screenwriter, born in America and moved to England when his parents divorced, becoming a naturalised British citizen.
He began writing what became known as hard-boiled crime fiction when he was forty-four after losing his job as an oil company executive during the Great Depression of the 1930s. His first novel, The Big Sleep, which featured the detective Philip Marlowe, was published in 1939.
Literary writers and critics much admired Chandler’s books, and his work is held in high regard today. However, it was not without criticism in his day, his plots being accused by one reviewer in the Washington Post as “rambling at best and incoherent at worst.” Yet his novels are considered important literary works and some are popular as films.
Overnight Success
Helen Hoover Santmyer (1895-1986) published her first successful book, Ohio Town aged 67, and she was 88 when she published her bestseller And Ladies of the Club. Born in Cincinnati and raised in Xenia, she graduated from Oxford University in England in 1927. She was a suffragette and worked for a while at Scribners’ Magazine. The last six years of her non-writing career were spent as a librarian in Dayton, then in 1959 without the distraction of a career she completed and published Ohio Town.
Over the next five to ten years, she worked on the 1300-page epic And Ladies of the Club, the story of four generations of ordinary life in a rural Ohio town. On the book’s publication, she became an overnight success. Her lifelong dream of becoming a writer had been accomplished by the time she died in 1986. Her final novel was published posthumously and aptly titled Farewell Summer.
In a way, looking back, it seemed a long, long time since she had been eighteen, but in another way her memories were so clear and vivid that it seemed like yesterday. Time was an accordian, all the air squeezed out of it as you grew old. And how strange that in your mind you did not feel any older. You were the same person, but where had all the years gone? Helen Hoover Santmyer And Ladies of the Club
Harriet Doerr (1910-2002) was a late bloomer in more ways than one. She graduated from Stanford University with a Batchelors in European History at age 69 and published her first novel, Stones for Ibarra, at 74. It went on to win the American Book Award for First Fiction in 1984.
The novel comprised a series of linked stories about expatriate life in Mexico, where the writer spent much time with her husband, who owned a mining company there. She also wrote Tiger in The Grass, a book of short stories and Consider This, Senora, both of which had similar themes to her first book. She died aged 92.
You Don’t Lose The Spark of Creativity in Older Age
With a long career as a screenwriter behind him, Millard Kaufman (1917-2009) wrote and published his first novel Bowl of Cherries at age 90 in 2007. He was a co-creator of Mr Magoo and was twice nominated for screenwriting Oscars, in 1954 for Take the High Ground and in 1956 for Bad Day at Black Rock. So he’d already had a successful writing career, but I’ve included him here for the great age at which he wrote and published his first novel, which shows you don’t lose the spark of creativity in older age.
Success then is often associated with youth, but many writers have defied the stereotype to beat the odds, some well after retirement. Their stories remind us it’s never too late to start a new, potentially successful chapter. Several authors I mention here drew on their life experiences for their successful books. Being older gave them the material they were building up as younger writers.
If you’re a writer in the second half of life, take heart from these examples and keep hold of your dream; it may be you being written about as a successful author one day.
(*) The Irish Post, Rachael O’Connor 6/8/2019.
Wikipedia and several other sources.
5 Substack Reads I Recommend
My first recommended read is by Lisa Barrett of My Midlife Chapter. Lisa became my 250th subscriber recently. This post is about the truisms she found in midlife and it resonated with me, even though she is the same age as my daughter! Those truisms still hold twenty years later.
What I Know For Sure Now I'm a Midlifer
Janice Walton of Aging Well Newsletter wrote a heartfelt post on grief from personal experience, with a recommendation of a book to read further on the subject:
Pamela Leavey, who gives us daily positive affirmations on Notes, wrote about the wildflowers in her backyard and added a short guided meditation on gratitude by Deepak Chopra in this enjoyable post:
Photo Essay: Wildflowers in My Yard
William H Bestermann Jr MD’s post is a timely reminder to start looking after our heart health as early as we can.
The Link Between Cardiovascular Disease and Alzheimer’s Disease
Annie Ridout has written a list of her thoughts inspired by forgetting the rules when you start a Substack newsletter. So many good points to remember:
Comments:
Have you got intentions to publish a book one day?
Or have you published a successful book?
What do you think about still writing at 90?
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Lots of inspiration here.
As an over 65 curmudgeon your article has given me hope and inspiration. Thank you Patricia xxxx