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…)

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…)

A Guest Post by Tayari Jones

(Randy Susan Meyers’ note: the following post,originally published on Ms. Jones blog in August, was the inspiration for my post “ReadingAcross the Racial Divide.)

In the last few years, black writers have been speaking out about double standards in the world of publishing. Among these are Martha Southgate’s NYT essay, “Writers Like Me” and more recently, Bernice’s MacFadden’s Black Writers in A Ghetto of the Publishing Industry’s Making. In these articles, both writers (who also are novelists) put into a public conversation the issues that black writers have been complaining about for years– like why is that stories about black folks that are written by white folks get so much traction. (The Help, The Secret Lives of Bees, Little Bee, etc.) How come books about us by us are not thought to be “universal”? Why are black faces on the cover of a book thought to be so alienating? At this point in the gripe session, I break out my favorite oh-no-he-didn’t moment– when someone asked me what percentage of my work is “black” and what percentage is “human.”

I have no quarrel with Southgate’s and MacFadden’s insightful observations and strident calls to action. These issues are very important and must be discussed. What I am starting to wonder is whether or not this is a battle that (more…)

I read a post on author Tayari Jones’ blog earlier this month, that hasn’t left my mind. She asks why books by black writers aren’t considered universal, starting her post with these words:

“In the last few years, black writers have been speaking out about double standards in the world of publishing. Among these are Martha Southgate’s NYT essay, “Writers Like Me” and more recently, Bernice’s MacFadden’s Black Writers in A Ghetto of the Publishing Industry’s Making. In these articles, both writers (who also are novelists) put into a public conversation the issues that black writers have been complaining about for years– like why is that stories about black folks that are written by white folks get so much traction. (The Help, The Secret Lives of Bees, Little Bee, etc.) How come books about us by us are not thought to be “universal”? Why are black faces on the cover of a book thought to be so alienating? At this point in the gripe session, I break out my favorite oh-no-he-didn’t moment– when someone asked me what percentage of my work is “black” and what percentage is “human.””

It’s not only a great post, it’s an important question for all readers and writers. For readers: you/we are missing a vast store of great books by staying within one’s cultural boundaries. We’re missing great reads, and as (more…)

Guest Post by J.E. Taylor

Welcome to learn from my mistakes.

My name is Jane E. Taylor and I’ve got two books coming out in July — both from small e-publishers. Why did I this route versus the more traditional agent/publisher route?

I made mistakes, burned bridges by being a babe in the publishing woods, and ran through my most wanted agents list before I was ready. In trying to make some use of my naïveté, I’m hoping that sharing my experiences will spare those standing in the starting gate from making the same mistakes.

First and most important lesson I learned:  Make sure you truly know what a query letter is supposed to be, before agent-shopping.

I look at my early letters and I want to hide under a blanket in the corner in shame. My first attempt at the query-go-round was a business letter that introduced me and then went on to say I had four complete manuscripts with (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…)

Tricks and Tactics

Hard writing makes easy reading. Wallace Stegner

I’m in the final gasps of revising a manuscript and, once again, I’m grateful that a friend’s fresh eyes gave me a proverbial kick in the manuscript. Whether I’m drowning in delight at my own cutesy-wootsy phrase, or persisting in beating the reader over the head with how important the d r a m a of the situation is, well for those times, I gotta have friends. Honest friends. Honest friends with eye for the ick.

Whether you’re ruthlessly judging your own work or a friend’s, you should look out for the problems we all tend towards:

1) Shrugging, grinning, and grimacing: Are your tics showing? All of us have writing tics—repetitive descriptors we repeat. Discover yours or have someone point them out (If I let them, all my characters will lean toward the other characters during times of stress) and remove them.

2) Let the reader rest after you jazz them up: Have you balanced scenes and sequels? Can you feel a good rhythm of active scenes vs. reflective sequels? (Scene: Maria snuck the diamonds from the dresser as Mama slept. Sequel: Maria researched the legality of taking her mother’s jewelry, anxious to see if she’d do time.

3) Don’t make the reader insane! It’s really not artsy to make the reader guess where the characters are in time and place. Are your Transitions clear and smooth? Are you moving the reader through time? Sliding effortlessly into flashback? Showing that settings have changed? Showing changes in mood, tone, emotion, weather, and POV?

Have your transitional sentences do double duty: The following day, rain kept Elliot from getting in his daily run. The enforced laziness made him nastier than usual—making it a good time for Maria to hide out.

Thus, in two sentences we learned: Elliot has a temper, he runs, Maria is scared of him, and it’s raining.

Practical strategies I use

1) The first read: After the first draft cools off (the longer, the better) read it from front to back like a book. Printed out.  I put it (double-sided) into a three-hole punched binder—so I can sit back and turn the pages, trying to fool myself that I am actually reading a ‘book.’ One smart writer I know actually prints out one paperback copy through Lulu.

Read your work before you re-read collected critique from your writer’s group, before doing computer tricks, before micro-changes. Don’t revise as you read, just mark it as you go, writing  down thoughts such as: Make Maria older. Maria’s hair changes color in Chapter 4, 8 and 9! Chapter 3 is boring.

I write TK for ‘to come’ in large red letters next to the clumsy stuff that bothers me, as a way to say:  rewrite this junk. I can’t remember where I picked up “TK” (Editors mark?) but it lets me read through the junk without feeling that I have to stop and fix. I scribble MEGO (my eyes glaze over) every time my work doesn’t even hold my interest.  Trust me, if you’re darlings bore you’re your reader will fall asleep.

2) Post Draft Outlining helps you see what you have, which is probably different from what you planned. Taking the time to do this helps you envision the larger picture.

After finishing each draft, update your outline chapter-by-chapter outline. I use a spreadsheet to show POV, setting and main conflicts of each chapter. This serves not only to orient me, but helps me avoid repetition (like realizing I’ve set half my scenes in Maria’s kitchen.)

I enter chapters and main events into an actual calendar for a visual at-a-glance method of orientation. (You can print ones from Word and other programs.)

3) Search and Replace and Highlighting: MS Word’s Control F action (command F in Mac) helps me more than any other. I use it for universal changes (oops, I should have named the maid Zita instead of Jane.) I use it to find tics (wow, the word ‘lean’ comes up 2300 times!) I use it to locate weak writing (for instance by highlighting passive words.)

As example, the offending word “was” is insidious. I just looked at an early document vs. a more recent iteration and saw the number of “was” went from 1678 to 971. Highlighting all the ‘was’ in your manuscript will force you to re-work dull or weak sentences:

Original Sentence: I was making a mess as I was baking the blueberry pie

Revised Sentence: I made a mess when I baked the blueberry pie.

Better: After baking the pie, greasy flour and sugar covered the kitchen counter.

Removing Tics: Find and highlight your ‘tic’ words. I searched and highlighted ‘sigh,’ ‘sighed’ and ‘sighing’ in my last revision. (When I went from Revision 1 to my most recent, I only reduced ‘sighs’ from 29 to 15. Sigh.)

Overused words: Swearing in small doses, in fiction as in life, can be effective. Overuse waters down the impact and spoils the read. Find, highlight, and fix.

4) Reading aloud: I hate doing it—but I find it invaluable. Read the entire manuscript aloud. The bad parts, the clumsy parts, the rotten dialog, the typos, the unrealistic and over-blown, the underwritten, the lazy—it will jump out when read aloud. DO THIS!

I have moved from self-reading to using a text-to-voice reading program. I use two computers—while one reads out loud, I fix text on the other screen—pausing the program as needed (oh, and it is needed plenty.) For me, Natural Readers has been the best of the text-to voice programs. I found the version I paid for in Natural Readers superior to the free program.

5) Gut check. Sadly, often what we think is great isn’t necessarily so. What we think is groan-worthy in our own writing, generally is. Therefore, if you think it’s broke, fix it. In addition, if there is a line you love so much you’re willing to keep entire shaky or unneeded scenes to support it—kill that line!

6) Orphanage: Uncertain about a cut? Sad? Afraid you may need it later, but don’t want to search through entire manuscripts? Make a computer file labeled orphanage or excised scenes and put in your cuttings. I find it reassuring.

7) Websites I’ve used:

1. http://www.cliches.biz/clichecleaner/ the free download alone is worth the trip.

2. http://www.refdesk.com/ Dictionary, thesaurus, medical, government, statistics

3. http://www.ssa.gov/OACT/babynames/ Find the top 500 names for any year

4. http://www.infoplease.com/index.html Atlas, dictionary, thesaurus, encyclopedia, etc

5. http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/errors.html#l Common English errors

7. http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/Writing/index.html Guide to grammar and style

8. http://www.askoxford.com/?view=uk Grammar view from Great Britain

9. http://scholar.google.com/ Research friendly

10. http://answers.google.com/answers/ Ask and answer questions

11. http://thesaurus.reference.com/ Thesaurus/dic-medical and legal dictionary, translates

12. http://www.foodsubs.com/ Cooking terms

13. http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/

14. http://www.getty.edu/research/conducting_research/vocabularies/ Art, architecture, geography

15. http://www.fao.org/aims/ag_intro.htm multilingual vocabulary/ terminology of agriculture, forestry, fisheries, food, and related domains (e.g. environment).

16. http://www.howstuffworks.com/ What doesn’t it tell you?

7) Recommended Reading for Revision

Between the Lines: master the subtle elements of fiction writingby Jessica Page Morrell

The Modern Library Writer’s Workshop by Stephen Koch

Writing Fiction: A Guide to Narrative Craft by Janet Burroway

On Writing by Stephen King

Self-editing for Fiction Writers by Renni Browne and Dave King

Roget’s International Unabridged Thesaurus (The old fashioned harder to use kind—nothing matches it.)

“The discipline of the writer is to learn to be still and listen to what his subject has to tell him/her.” Rachel Carson

“To write simply is as difficult as to be good.”

Somerset Maugham

Micro-revision // First Steps

After the macro revision and after deconstructing your premise, themes, etc put your manuscript away. Let it cool down. As written so brilliantly by Kathy Crowley in Beyond The Margins, what happens in the drawer is a bit of magic. Refrigerate your book between each revision. Fresh eyes are a writer’s best, if most cynical, friend. When you are madly in love with your product is the time to resist. Resist sending it out to agents, resist giving it to everyone in your family (no matter how hard they beg) and resist reading and re-reading your over-loved words until you’ve memorized it.

You need to look at your book with eyes as critical as the ones judging how your ex’s have fared.

A Checklist for technical concerns:

Issues & Questions to ask yourself after every draft.

1) Showing or telling? How much narrative summary do you have? Does enough happen in scene? Is your prose as active as possible? Do you have he was angry or he shattered the window?

“Don’t say the old lady screamed. Bring her on and let her scream.” Mark Twain

2) Characterization? Avoid thumbnails sketches and let characters unfold before the reader. Don’t define everything the moment they come on stage, start with a bit of looks, and let character’s personality unfold before reader. Watch out for ‘looking in the mirror’ descriptions. Have your characters (more…)