So how relevant is age to writing anyway?
JA
October 06
Justine Larbalestier has done a great post in answer to the question ‘why are so many people obsessed with how old people are when they make art?’ over on her blog.
Age is something that we constantly see talked up, mostly in media or on blurbs or in excited press releases – something along the lines of ‘so-and-so is a fifteen-year-old author from Brazil who wrote her first novel at the age of twelve’ or suchlike. I remember this article from the Telegraph about Manuel Alguacil, a nine-year-old boy from Spain who was granted a publishing deal for his book about a vain dragon earlier this year (apparently, he’d devoured Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings by the time he was six). This article by Malcolm Gladwell from the New Yorker manages to sum it all up rather well:
Genius, in the popular conception, is inextricably tied up with precocity—doing something truly creative, we’re inclined to think, requires the freshness and exuberance and energy of youth. Orson Welles made his masterpiece, Citizen Kane at twenty-five. Herman Melville wrote a book a year through his late twenties, culminating, at age thirty-two, with Moby-Dick. Mozart wrote his breakthrough Piano Concerto No. 9 in E-Flat-Major at the age of twenty-one. In some creative forms, like lyric poetry, the importance of precocity has hardened into an iron law. How old was T. S. Eliot when he wrote ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’ (‘I grow old . . . I grow old’)? Twenty-three.
So how relevant is age to writing anyway? According to Larbalestier, who doesn’t buy into the idea of genius, it’s inconsequential: ‘Either the art is good or it isn’t. Who care[s] how old the person was… Doesn’t make it any better’. She does, however, see why producing a great work of art when young is enviable and even coveted. The reason being that if an author, say, manages to write a brilliant book at age 20, then there’s a good chance that they will produce more great work over the rest of their lifetime:
…Georgette Heyer’s first novel was published when she was a teenager. By the time she was fifty years old she’d published close to 40 novels… I do envy writers like [Diana] Wynne Jones and Heyer. I’ve published five novels, but my odds of writing another thirty-five before I turn fifty are, well, forget about it.
Good writing has never really been anchored to age. Authors can begin to find their voice at any decade – Charles Bukowski and Raymond Chandler were 49 and 51 respectively when their first novels were published, and Elizabeth Jolley was 53. Tim Winton, in contrast, is example of a writer who was first published when he was 21 with An Open Swimmer and still produces brilliant work today; Sonya Hartnett was published when she was just fifteen.
Of course, it’s difficult not to feel jealous of those who find success at a young age (I certainly have been), but it seems that no matter how old an author is, chances are there is always someone younger waiting just around the corner, ready to take away the crown. Writing a good novel, whether you’re a teenager or an adult, involves a lot of blood and sweat, and should be admired precisely because of that effort. As Larbalestier points out, 'Is Buffy the Vampire Slayer amazing because Joss Whedon was only in his early thirties when he started working on it or is it amazing because it’s amazing? I say it’s simply amazing and Whedon’s age is irrelevant.'
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Comments
06 Oct 09 at 10:26
On the flip side, a writer's age is often "talked down" as
well.
If a writer is in their 40s or 50s when they first get published,
they are invariably described as "late". I find that so curious. To
say an event is late implies there is an appropriate time for it.
Getting published is not like puberty or menopause, there is no
"right" time for it. I think you get published when an editor
thinks your writing is good enough, when the timing is right, when
a bit of luck is on your side. I put this pre-occupation with a
writer's age in the same basket as writers who would get set on
fire or choked unconscious just so they can be more "authentic" in
their writing. All good for water-cooler conversation, but
irrelevant to the quality of the writing.
06 Oct 09 at 23:33
One issue, though, is the time it takes to write a novel and get it published. (Am I pessimistic in thinking four years?) If you're not young (I'm decidedly not!) you realise it's unlikely a publisher would be interested, because you my not have the years in hand to write two more.
...07 Oct 09 at 8:33
You're not pessimistic in thinking 4 years, Catherine - both my
first two took that. The third will take more like six.