I don’t shy from revealing my age: I’m 62 in 2019. Having said that, I feel as though I’m really behind the game as an author because I don’t have the time to make things happen, i.e., get an agent or publisher. I’m more impatient than I should be as a result.
What Does Starting Out Late Mean?
Now just because someone starts out late in a creative field, doesn’t mean they can’t get something done. Sixty and Me offers six tips to unlocking creativity at any age that have given me things to think about. Writing is something I was attracted to from an early age. In high school, I wrote about fictional detectives in London, patterning them after Sherlock Holmes. I mean, who doesn’t do that? My English teacher told me I should focus instead on a detective with the Philadelphia Police Department, and I balked, and didn’t write anything until right after college. My first creative work them was a children’s book entitled The Almost Magic Coin. It was about a shy boy who had moved to a new house, and was afraid to meet other kids in the neighborhood. His mother gave him a magic coin so he’d become more confident. I followed that with a novel about a college-aged detective which both my father and a few friends thought was decent. During the intervening years, I produced three or so more short stories before writing Twin Worlds. So while I started late in the novel game, the writing bug was always there.
It Will Come
One of my concerns or failings as person or writer is my impatience. That applies to everything: I tend to talk fast, walk fast and get annoyed when people in front of me are walking slowly. Note: that’s if they aren’t paying attention–if they have a disability, I’m good. It’s no surprise, therefore, to see that I’m no less impatient with my writing career. I’d like “something” to happen before I die. Now, I should probably include in “something” the 2019 award for fiction from the Gulf Coast Writers Association, or being a finalist in the Next Generation Indie Book Awards for Take Hart, but as a classic Type-A person, that wasn’t enough. This is because as a Type-A person, I move the goal posts higher and higher once they achieve something. Winning the Gulf Coast contest means I should have been winning the other contests I entered or having my work accepted for publication in journals. That didn’t happen last year, unless you count being included in the Maryland Writers Association Anthology in 2019 (which I should be counting!)
Conquering Haste
I read a book entitled Zen and the Martial Arts by Joe Hyams years ago. One chapter in that book is entitled “conquering haste.” It’s very much the opposite of what a young child does on Christmas Day. Conquering haste would mean that instead of opening the present quickly, you open them slowly or wait a few hours before opening them. Conquering haste has helped me in the past, and as I reflect on my writing “career” of literally the last three and half years, I think placing as a finalist in a national contest, winning another and having my work included in an anthology is what many people do in the beginning. Sure, I started late, but I started: not everyone can say that.
