Friday

[ksmith]

Given that I've heard that writing production starts decreasing by age 60, and realizing that other writers who are younger than I am have already surpassed me in number of books written, I found the following Yahoo movie blurb reassuring:

E. Annie Proulx (rhymes with "true"), who wrote the story 'Brokeback Mountain' that the screenplay closely follows, didn't become a novelist until the age of 50. Eight years later, she won the Pulitzer Prize for her book 'The Shipping News.'

Comments

[galeni.livejournal.com]

Oh, good. I'm 50 (51 in 8 days) and I haven't started my writing career yet. So there's hope!

[kristine-smith.livejournal.com]

I confess I'm starting to worry about the decline of writing/production with age thing. I'm 47 now. I'd like to retire at 50, but anywhere in the 50-55 range is a possibility.

[galeni.livejournal.com]

Perhaps it's not age, it's years in service? Maybe the majority of people write themselves out after 30 years of it and have said most everything they wanted to say. So if you start at 47, you have until 77 with no worries, but the Young Turks who write starting in the early 20s are running down around 50. Mostly.

I'm a late bloomer

[kristine-smith.livejournal.com]

I'm hoping that my tendency to get to things later than everyone else helps me out here. Didn't learn to ride a bike until I was 8. Learned to swim at 11, and didn't learn to drive until I was 21. I didn't start writing until my early 30s.

Gotta keep pushing out that finish line...

[moon-happy.livejournal.com]

That's a good bit of news. So, despite my lower productivity since retiring from the 9-5 job, I can be hopeful that the work will be of high quality (that quality is NOT falling off with productivity!)

[barbarienne.livejournal.com]

"...didn't become a novelist until the age of 50."

-->Does that mean she wasn't published until she was 50? Or that she didn't start writing novels until she was 50? Or didn't become serious about it until she was 50?

[kristine-smith.livejournal.com]

According to http://www.answers.com/topic/annie-proulx, Proulx made a living as a non-fiction writer before turning to fiction in her 50s.

So she knew the drill. But she really switched gears.

I still tend to think it's reassuring.