August 10, 2004
Today is my twenty-eighth birthday, which reminds me of a conversation I had a couple years back with a friend of mine who is an aspiring fiction writer. I was talking about how I had been doing some writing of my own, and he told me that I couldn't be a writer, because to be a writer you have to have your first novel published by the time you're twenty-eight. So, as of today, I guess it's too late for me! But, that's probably for the best. We'll leave the real writing to the professionals...
Happy birthday! Don't sweat the age. Toni Morrison was published first when she was 39, and her first novel was a commercial failure. Robert Stone was 30, Eudora Welty 32.
And Gauguin didn't even start his career until he was 33 after being a successful stock-broker.
Of course Ralph Ellison waited until he was 38 to publish Invisible Man and didn't publish another until he was dead...
Happy (now belated) Birthday, Paul. 28 is a perfect number - really. (See http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/HistTopics/Perfect_numbers.html). The bad news is that the next one is 496. By that time, you will be almost as old as I am.
Birthday cheers.
Yep, happy Birthday!
And, if you are so inclined, write it anyway.
thanks everyone for the birthday wishes. I guess I was being a little facetious... don't worry, I'm not deterred by age limitations in terms of writing. The way I see it, I write very happily here, and there's always opera to work on...
Happy 28th, Paul. That makes you about 2 1/2 months older than me. I was re-watching some of the documentaries on the Lord of the Rings DVDs recently, and if I'm remembering right, Tolkien didn't publish his first novel (which I'm pretty sure was The Hobbit) until he was in his 40s.
Happy birthday!
I wish I were still in my twenties. Being 31 ain't no fun.
day late and a dollar short -- but happy birthday anyway! and pay no mind to comments pig-headed aspiring writer-friends might (or might not) have made...
the apples are waiting - and there's no stipulation about getting it published, or even readability. also, i just met someone who can do the knights-tour (the oulipo stipulation for la vie mode d'emploi) on an 8 by 8 board and begin and end on any two specified squares. penultimately, william h. gass, one of the two greatest prose stylists in the enlish language didn't publish his first novel until he was 42, and it took him 30 years to write the next one. finally, how old is this writer friend of yours, and where might i pick of a copy of his latest work?
Happy day after...friends don't let friends get old and say things like "you will never get your book published cause you are old"
I just turend 30, ok, not JUST it was last Dec...but that is what lit the fuel of my fire! Here's to better more inspirational days and years of writing! : )
Happy birthday, Paul.
Feliz Cumpleaños, Paul!
Adding to the other examples cited above, Anthony Burgess was 39 when his first book was published. Joseph Conrad was 38.
The friend who told you that to be a writer, you need to publish your first novel by 28, was blowing smoke.
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