I have a bus pass, ten pairs of spectacles in my sock drawer, and—at age 65—the crotchety disposition that arrives only when you overhear your neighbor describe you as “that funny old fellow next door.” Yes, I am old. But too old to write a bestseller?
I’ve just read the autobiography of Susan Hill, a novelist of my own vintage who wrote the bestseller The Woman in Black in 1983. She blithely tells how she was Arnold Wesker’s babysitter and published her first novel before she left school. Soon after, she was the confidante of every literary genius in England. How could she fail to write a classic? She’d been groomed for it since childhood.
I didn’t meet my first “name” author till I was 63. Yes, I am too old. Then I went along to a literary festival and lunched in a group with the veteran author P. D. James. She was 91 and just finishing her 21st novel. I asked her a fumbling question. “Speak up, young man,” she barked. “I’m not as young as you are.” Bliss! No, I am not too old to write a bestseller.
But do I want to? And plow the lonely field of a debut novelist at an age when my most strenuous activity should be insulting my neighbor?
It’s not that I’m new to writing.
I’ve been a commercial author all my life, in public relations and journalism, and was even a newspaper editor in the days when text was stuck to backing boards with rubber glue. (“Hold the front page. A caption’s fallen off.”) But fiction is a tougher discipline, like learning to paint portraits after you’ve been a graffiti artist.
What’s more, I heard Joanne Harris tell us at that same conference it had taken her 15 years to be an “overnight success” with Chocolat, the novel that became a film success. She’d had to throw away five novels in that time, unpublished. Do I have such patience?
I lapsed into sour grapes mode. Even midlist novelists earn only $30,000 a year from their fiction, on average, I told myself. That’s why they’re all at conferences, speaking for $300 plus a free lunch. Is it worth it?
I reviewed my options.
One good novel might take me twelve months to finish and then a further year to trek it around copyeditors, agents and—finally—a psychiatrist’s office as the mounting rejection slips drove me into clinical despair. On an hourly basis, I could earn more working at McDonald’s, and with less stress.
In a pique, I took a Ph.D. in creative writing instead. That was easy. I was writing nonfiction, my accustomed genre (although I still made it up as I went along). At last, I knew how to write fiction. Didn’t I? I just had to write it.
While I mulled that over, I launched my own online writing course—the Writers’ Village Academy, now in its second year. To my astonishment, it did remarkably well. And my students won story awards and published their novels, following my advice. They sent me nice testimonials. I did know how to do it!
But I still had to do it myself.
So this year, I drafted a novel and sent the first chapter to one of England’s top literary agents. (I’d carefully spilled wine on him at the literary festival, to initiate a conversation.) The wretched man loves my first 5000 words. Now he wants to see the rest of the novel. Bliss and damnation. The problem is, I haven’t finished the novel. What do you write after Chapter One?
I shall consult my own writing course. It has answers for everything. (I’m sure of that, because I wrote them.) And when I sign his contract later this year (oh, I will!), I shall mail myself a rapturous testimonial. I’ve earned it. In five years I’ve come all the way from “Can I do it?” to “What shall I tell the audience at that literary conference next year when I return as its star speaker?”
Of course, I know the answer now. “You’re never too old to write a bestseller!” I’ll say. “But please speak up. I’m not as young as you are.”
