It's never too late! by Jenn McKinlay

BIG NEWS: Jungle Red Writers has been nominated for an Anthony Award for Best Online Content!!! The winner will be announced at Bouchercon later this year. Needless to say we are just thrilled and thank you, dear readers and visiting authors, for helping us make this blog such a smashing success!

Jenn McKinlay: We live in a society that is geared to the young. I have no idea why because, quite frankly, when I was young I was a colossal idiot. I hadn’t accumulated the life experience, self awareness, or the empathy for the struggles of others to even be an interesting person never mind be the writer I dreamed of becoming.

We hear the stories about the young guns, the successful novelists, singers, actors, artists, and business moguls who explode into the world in their twenties, and we forget that most people haven’t even figured out who they are until they’re forty and then they have to learn to scrape off the opinions of others, which occurs at about age fifty. So, why do we think a person has to succeed at their passion by the age of thirty or perish? Or is that just me?

Well, it was me. I promised myself that if I wasn’t published by the time I turned thirty I would quit writing. Naturally, the universe with its perverse sense of humor allowed me win a writing contest put on by Harlequin for a five-hundred word humorous essay where I received a cool $1,000.00 and a nod in a novel by JoAnn Ross when I was twenty-nine. It was just enough bait to hook me and keep me on the line. Mercifully, I did sell my first book when I was thirty-three so I wasn’t too far off the mark, but still while I was trying to be published, I became obsessed with knowing the age of first publication of every big author out there. Why? I don’t know, maybe so I would be inspired to keep going or perhaps be convinced to quit. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Jenn in lecture mode: Subtitled "Will Work for Food".

I gave a lecture the other day at a seniors’ group. It was fabulous. The attendees were charming and kind, and they all had so many stories to tell. There were a few in the crowd who dreamed of being authors but they had let the dream go as they aged because they said, “Oh, I’m too old to do that now.” That made me sad. One woman in particular had what I thought was the makings of a novel in her, so I said, “You know, if you wrote just one page a day, you’d have a book in less than a year. I mean, you're going to turn a year older anyway, but this way you'll be a year older and have a book." Her eyes went wide. Yes, it really is that simple when you break it down.

So, here is my short list of late blooming authors (whose books I love, love, love) to inspire and admire because…it’s never too late!

Richard Adams wrote Watership Down when he was 54.

Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote Little House in the Big Woods when she 65.

Raymond Chandler wrote The Big Sleep when he was 51.

Toni Morrison wrote The Bluest Eye when she was 40.

Bram Stoker wrote Dracula when he was 50.

Anna Sewell finished writing Black Beauty when she was 57.

How about you, Reds? Did you ever obsess about getting published? How long would it take? How old would you be? And if any of you readers have a late blooming artist story, do share!