You’re Never Too Young or Too Old to Write a Novel
If you’re a young writer, you have an opportunity to write from the heart or from a perspective to which most readers may be unaccustomed. If you’re advanced in years, you may have enormous life experience and maybe even some wisdom to bring to your work.
Some of the best novels combine the two. There are plenty of very young and very old authors who prove that readers are not prejudiced against the age of the writer.
Don’t want to take our word for it? How about taking the words of these well-known authors who started writing and publishing in their youth?
Ida Pollock – best known for her many romance and erotic novels, written under multiple pseudonyms, Pollock completed her first thriller, “The Hills of Raven’s Haunt,” at the age of 14.
Christopher Paolini – You may have heard of the “Inheritance Cycle,” the fantasy series comprising the books: “Eragon,” “Eldest,” “Brisingr,” and “Inheritance,” but did you know that he wrote these after graduating from high school?
A best-selling author at the age of 19, Paolini even designed the cover art and maps for the first edition of “Eragon.”
Françoise Sagan – This French novelist (and playwright and screenwriter) was best-known for her first novel, “Bonjour Tristesse” (1954), written when she was a teenager.
Anne Frank – Almost everyone knows the tragic story of this remarkable young woman. She began writing in her diary on her 13th birthday. She journaled her time in hiding during the war, she wrote short stories, and aspired to be a journalist and famous writer.
Though she and her family were transported to concentration camps, where they died months later, her diary lives on. It is one of the world’s most widely-known books. “The Diary of a Young Girl” was published in 1952 and has been translated into more than 60 languages.
Mary Shelley – Some people are shocked to discover that 1818’s Gothic novel “Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus” was written by a woman. If you manage to elicit this reaction during conversation, pause, then drop in the fact that she wrote the novel at just 20 years old.
At the other end of the age spectrum:
Marquis de Sade – Before “50 Shades of Gray,” there was Marquis de Sade. Best-known for his novel “Justine,” he was imprisoned for real-life sexual excesses. In prison, he wrote sexually graphic plays and novels to cope with his anger and boredom.
He wrote an early version of “Justine” in 1787, in his late forties.
William S. Burroughs – An influence to Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac, Burroughs admits that he wouldn’t have become a writer if it wasn’t for the tragic death of his wife, by his hand, in a drunken game of William Tell. “Naked Lunch” was published in 1959 when Burroughs was in his mid-40s.
Helen Hooven Santmyer – She worked as a writer, educator, and librarian, but is best-known for her best-selling “…And Ladies of the Club,” published when she was in her 80s.
Ida Pollock – When it comes to staying power, we return to Ida Pollock. She was the world’s oldest novelist when she died at 105 in 2013. Although she was unable to sit at her typewriter, she was dictating novels to her daughter beyond her 100th birthday.
It’s never too soon to start writing your novel. And it’s never too late.
One thing connects all of the writers in this post: once they started writing, not one of them gave up.