I tried to resist writing this—especially after my plea against categorizing authors.  Plus, so many of us hide our age in this world of never-get-old, unearthing this information, even in our Googlized world, was difficult.

But, recently, along with the plethora of lists of writers under 40, I was faced with the declaration that, as headlined in a Guardian UK article about writers, ‘Let’s Face It, After 40 You’re Past It.”

Then I read Sam Tanenhaus opine in the New York Times that there was “an essential truth about fiction writers: They often compose their best and most lasting work when they are young. “There’s something very misleading about the literary culture that looks at writers in their 30s and calls them ‘budding’ or ‘promising,’ when in fact they’re peaking.”

Thus, in the interest not of division, but of keeping up the flagging spirits of those who don’t want to be pushed out on the ice floe until after publishing all those words jangling in their head, I present 40 0ver 40:

Paul Harding, author of Tinkers, won the 2010 Pulitzer Prize with his debut novel, published when he was 42. Robin Black, author of If I Loved You I Would Tell you this, was 48 when she debuted this year. Holly LeCraw published her debut novel The Swimming Pool at 43. Julia Glass was in her early 40s when she published Three Junes. Charles Bukowski’s first novel, Post Office, was published at 49.  James Michner’s first book, Tales of the South Pacific was published when he was forty—he went on to publish over 40 titles. Sherwood Anderson, author of Winesburg, Ohio published his first novel at the age of 40. Amy Mackinnon debuted Tethered in her 4o’s.

Henry Miller’s first published book, Tropic of Capricorn, was released when he was over forty. Tillie Olsen published Tell Me A Riddle just shy of 50. Edward P Jones was 41 when his first book Lost In The City came out. Claire Cook published her first novel at age 45. Chris Abouzied published his first novel Anatopsis at 46. Kyle Ladd was 41 when her debut, After The Fall, was published.

Lynne Griffin published her first novel, Life Without Summer at 49. Elizabeth Strout’s first novel Amy & Isabel debuted when she was 42.  MJ Rose first novel came out when she was in her mid forties. Melanie Benjamin was 42 when she debuted. Therese Fowler was forty exactly when Souvenir debuted.

Margaret Walker wrote Jubilee, her only novel at 51. Raymond Chandler debuted at 51 with The Big Sleep. Belva Plain published her first novel, Evergreen, at 50. Alex Haley published his debut novel Roots when he was 55. (His first book, the nonfiction The Autobiography of Malcolm X was published when he was in his mid-forties.) Jon Clinch debuted with Finn at age 52. In 2010 his wife Wendy Clinch published Double Black.

Also in 2010 Iris Gomez published Try To Remember in her fifties, as did Joseph Wallace with Diamond Ruby, and I published The Murderer’s Daughters at 57. Sue Monk Kidd was 54 when she debuted The Secret Life of Bees. Annie Proulx’s first novel, Postcards, was published when she was 57. Jeanne Ray published debut, Julie and Romeo in her fifties.

George Elliot’s first novel, Adam Bede, debuted when Elliot turned 50.  Isak Dineson’s first, Seven Gothic Tales came out when she turned 50.  Hallie Ephron author of Never Tell A Lie began publishing fiction after fifty. Jackie Mitchard was past 50 when The Deep End of the Ocean debuted. Richard Adams debuted with Watership Down at 52.

Laura Ingalls Wilder published her first novel (beginning the Little House series) at 65. Harriet Doerr won the National Book Award, for Stones for Ibarra, written when she was 74. Katherine Anne Porter published her only novel, Ship of Fools, at age 72. EJ Knapp just debuted Stealing The Marbles, saying “I’m so far past forty I can’t remember it anymore.” Norman McLean wrote A River Runs Through It at age 74.

When compiling this list, Ellen Meeropol asked: “Do I count? My first novel, House Arrest, will come out in February, two months before my 65th birthday.” Karen LaFreya Simpson will be 55 when her first novel Act of Grace debuts next year and Nichole Bernier will be over 44 when The Unfinished Live of Elizabeth D is published in 2012. Yes, that’s my answer, Ellen. We all count.

This is only a list of first novels. Compiling lists of bestselling, Pulitzer Prize winning, Orange Prize winning, etc. books written after the age of 40—that will take several essays.

About when I turned ten I began crafting my library checkouts, hoping I’d look smart. I’d balance my Nancy Drew with a biography of Abraham Lincoln so the librarian thought well of me. (It seems my self-esteem problem enacted early.)

Jodi Picoult, following the NYT doubled coverage of Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom, recently weighed in on the Times overwhelming coverage of white male authors. Men telling domestic stories are writing art, while women covering similar ground are crafting women’s fiction. Jennifer Weiner agreed and twitterized the issue with the hashtag #franzenfreude.

Weiner’s directness started a new frenzy, and the issue veered from Picoult’s premise to the age-old battle of literary fiction being weighed against (more…)

Writers talk much and write much (including me) about the difficulty of finding that perfect first line. Sometimes I want to create entire books because a great first line popped into my head. Tougher, can be that last line. Tougher because it’s culminating an entire world.

The last line is a writer’s goodbye to her characters and her readers. It must wrap up all a writer’s thoughts, without staying too long at the party, and it must leave the reader with a lingering taste of the characters—enough to let the reader feel that the men, women, and children with whom they’ve just spent hours, will continue on their journey.

And we want to believe that. When we love a book, we need to think that we may someday meet the characters again.

Last lines should have impact—but not shout. Are any of these below familiar (more…)

Book promotion  is hard: how does one move from furrowed brow-sweat pants-butt-in-chair to gracious and engaging?

Writing a book takes a certain set of skills: intense concentration, imagination, the ability to read the same 400 + pages time after time, and the fortitude to take criticism (excuse me, ahem, critique) without weeping.  You must learn to shut out all noise at a given moment and you must love (more…)

“At work, you think of the children you have left at home. At home, you think of the work you’ve left unfinished. Such a struggle is unleashed within yourself. Your heart is rent.” – Golda Meir

I suspect that it’s easier to find authentic novels about the difficulty of being a daughter or son than down-and-dirty tales about being a mother.  Great books about being the child of bad parents, evil parents, and crazy parents abound. Rarer are books about the authentic experience of being a mother that don’t explain away negative thoughts moments after putting them on paper. er

I understand this. We writer/mothers fear judgement. What in this world is less revered than a bad mother (and thus the shelves of novels and memoirs devoted to recovering from them.) But how soothing it can be to learn that one is not alone in experiencing the ambivalence of mothering—and that feeling does not mean doing. Inside thoughts that pop up even as one murmurs soothing words to a screeching

(more…)

“But it really happened.”

I was in an adult-ed writer’s group when I first heard this. I’d watched the woman speaking become tenser and grimmer as members of the group—gently and with compassion—suggested that the gruesome events on the page could be presented in a manner more conducive to engaging the reader.

She listened for only a few moments—sadly, this group did not have a ‘be silent while being critiqued’ policy—before unleashing, accusing the group of everything from indifference about sexual assault on children, to ignorance about how children really thought (this in response to our collective idea that 4-year-olds did not speak like 30-year-olds.) She shook as she lectured us on the horror of incest.

True that. Everything she said about her pain and suffering was true—but it still didn’t work on the page. My social services hat went on and I reacted to (more…)

By Chris Abouzied

A friend of mine recently said she hoped readers would view her latest novel as literary, not “plotty.”  By that, I think she meant she hoped no one would discount the artistry in her work just because it served up a sexy story.

Hearing plot being pitted against artistry always rubs me the wrong way, but I had to admit she had a point.  No one was going to say, “The son sleeps with his dead father’s mistress?!  A literary star is born!”  Plot, for whatever reason, seems to be on a par with skeletons in the physiology of literature— (more…)

Ten favorite posts and articles that grabbed me this week and last:

Undercooking a Novel by Nathan Bransford, in which agent Bransford expounds on why novels are not pasta, but indeed stews. No al dente please.

Is 30 Rock Racist? Journalist Zeeshan Aleem asks the question on the Huffington Post and gets buried in comments. Aleem asks “If there is a forceful difference between past pernicious representations of a race and the contemporary one. In other words, does Tracy’s embodiment of age-old stereotypes of the black community look meaningfully different from what Americans saw in antebellum minstrel shows or in Amos n’ Andy in the 1950s?”  Very interesting.

The Author Background Check A kind of scary but should-be-read post on how publishers check out authors before signing the. Luckily, Alan Rinzler gives tips on how to watch out for yourself. (Hint: don’t lie.)

What if you had a very strict (French!) teacher leading your writer’s workshop? How would she translate comments like “When you hear: Your (more…)

“I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day in January of 1960; and then again, as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan, in August of 1974.” Opening to Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides

I read that sentence and I immediately want to re-read Middlesex.

Sometimes I think I can write an entire  book in the time it takes me to revise the first paragraphs of a novel. At the very least, I can write 3 chapters in that time. Lately, as I’ve been lost in the world of revision, when I read, I find myself studying the first paragraph.

What do I want from that introduction? Set up. Intrigue. A gotta-keep-going.

“After my brother went missing, my parents let me use their car whenever I wanted, even though I only have a learner’s permit. The didn’t enforce my curfew. I didn’t have to be excused from the dinner table. The dinner table, in fact, had all but disappeared, covered with posters of Danny, a box of the yellow ribbons that our whole neighborhood had tied around trees and mailboxes and car antennas, and piles of the letters we’d gotten from people praying for Danny’s safe return or who thought they saw him hitchhiking along a highway a couple states away. I didn’t have to do any more chores.” Opening to The Local News by Miriam Gershow.

It’s impossible for me not to continue reading a book with that beginning.

Each time I try convincing myself that I don’t have to spend hours, weeks, days on the opening, I remember my own book buying habits:

Go to bookstore. Pick book up (based on some inexplicable reaction to the title, recognizing the author’s name, or perhaps the color of the jacket?)  Open book. Read first paragraph.

Read book flap. Glance at blurbs. Briefly. Neither of those will make or break a purchase for me, but the next step will. I open the book and read the first (more…)