Silver Linings: Benefits and Challenges of Writing at Midlife and Beyond

Conversations from the Archive
April 2015
BinderCon Los Angeles

While the Gods Were Sleeping, Elizabeth Enslin
Armor, Amour, Amy Pence
Veiled Intentions, Eileen Rendahl
Don’t Move: A Novella, Nikki Stern
Landfalls, Naomi Williams

Excerpts:

Naomi Williams: I was already well past my three score and ten, and I had fuck-all to show for it. We’re not role models for writing gracefully into our dotage.

Elizabeth Enslin: [While the Gods Were Sleeping] took between seven and twenty years to write [because I was a single parent]. The passing years gave me so much perspective. It would have been a very different story if I’d written it when I was younger. Aging helped me learn how to forgive a bit. I could add more dimensions, layers, the nuances in between.

The passing years helped me move to tentative insight. I learned to be a better writer to achieve the complexity I wanted to tell with each passing year. The story is more complex.

Writing at a later age is still a lot of work.

Nikki Stern: I came out of the womb trying to say something and not sure how I was going to say it. I was always trying to communicate.

I became a reluctant voice of the 9/11 tragedy when my husband died that day. He was killed a dozen years after we got married. Then I started writing and speaking. I was self-conscious about being the 9/11 spokesperson because I was already older then. People don’t take you seriously when you’re of retirement age.

When editors look at you as a person past retirement, they think, “It won’t be so bad if we don’t take her on.”

My first book was published when I was sixty one, my second when I was sixty three. So, you kids . . .

[I went on to] self-publish a novella. At ninety-nine cents, it’s doing pretty well. I wouldn’t do it again.

You disappear between sixty and eighty. You come back when you’re eighty because some of us are still standing, and they say, “Oh, she wrote a book! How cute!”

Writing has given me purpose and focus like nothing has. I hopefully will write until the day I drop dead. I need writing. I hope writing needs me.

Eileen Rendahl: I came to writing a little later because it took me a long time to figure out what on earth I wanted to say—and to put it into perspective, but I’m as neurotic now as I was in my twenties. I’m stuck with that, but I am more focused. I’m less moody than I was. My family would be shocked to hear this.

You need some sharp elbows. There are enough barriers out there. You don’t need to make more for yourself.

I do think there is a slight preference toward younger writers and YA. It’s easier to market.

Don’t let age affect being a student of your craft.

Amy Pence: Finding my midlife voice has been a process of letting go. At forty nine, my first book of poems was published. When young, I was isolated. There was no internet then. I didn’t have a way to find a community.

I also listened to too many voices as a young person. I was often told my work was too obscure. Now I’ve made it much clearer.

[Carl Jung said,] “In midlife, we individuate all over again.” We get rid of illusions.

Time gave me a distance to really see.

I love the revising part more now. I used to hate to revise.

Rendahl: It’s easier to hear criticism when you’re older. Your book is not your baby. [Although,] if there’s something wrong with your baby, you want to fix your baby.

Enslin: I go through life being a late bloomer. I’m comfortable with late blooming. I still envision myself as a young person.

Williams: A few years ago, I stopped getting my hair colored. [I thought,] “I do not want to keep up with my author photo. I will be chasing that image for the next ten years if I use the photo of the pretty, colored hair.”

I didn’t get my MFA until I was forty three. It’s really hard to be the oldest person. I had to take two years off my life. I was lucky I had a spouse with an income and benefits.

I didn’t get an agent until seven years after [finishing my MFA. Getting an MFA] had nothing to do with it.

Rendahl: Don’t isolate yourself from younger writers.

Williams: The young MFA students in my program are now getting older. We have more in common.

Enslin: There’s no substitute, no way around revising. Hone your craft. Open yourself up to younger writers. It’s good to have intergenerational interaction.

Stern: Market four to five days a week. Just do it. I spend two hours a day on marketing. I hate PR, but I’m good at it. The appearance becomes reality.