10 Reasons Why Your 50s Might Be the Best Time to Write (and Publish) Your First Book
Author Lucie Frost drops 10 reasons for why your 50s might be the best time to write and publish your first book.
I could never have written a book in my 10s. All I cared about in my 10s were horses and Tiger Beat idols, and writing about those wouldn’t have made them materialize. Besides, I liked to end words with z’s instead of s’s, which was cute and all, but would have made for bad bookz.
I could have written a book in my 20s, but I stayed out too late every night, and besides, it was bottomless mimosa day. Let’s be real—it was never going to happen.
My 30s might have been a good time to write my first book. My brain was whirring with ideas, feeling its most creative. But first, I had to fish my daughter’s LEGO from the toilet, chase down yet another “I need it for tomorrow” poster board for my son, all while pumping milk for the baby. The book would have to wait.
The glorious 40s! The kids all dressed themselves, I had long since figured out how to work the office copier, and my marriage (I thought) was on autopilot. It was the perfect time to write a book! The hitch? I had absolutely nothing to say, and the only book title I could come up with was, Just Say No to Anything Anyone Asks of You.
And so it was my 50s when I wrote my first book, and it’s the very best time for you to write your first book too. Here’s why:
- Stuff has happened to you. Earlier in your life, you had a loss here or a joy there to borrow from. But by the time you hit 50, you have over 18,000 days of stories, in all their complexity. Whether you plan to write about your life or someone else’s, you have experiences you can mold into narrative.
- You’ve made sense of all that stuff that has happened to you. When you thought about one of those experiences in your 40s, it may have gone like this: “He traipsed around the country with that homewrecker, while I stayed home spinning plates of kids and work.” But five decades in, your views are more nuanced, and you now know there’s no such thing as a homewrecker. In your 50s, you can see the story’s plot, but also the story’s lesson. Now, your version may go like this, “Maybe I could have turned off Grey’s Anatomy every once in a while and just listened. More manual control, less autopilot.”
- You finally have some time to yourself. Yes, you would have loved to have written a book sooner, but who had the time? Now that you’re less concerned about your career path and your kids have flown the nest, your brain has space to be creative. Let it run free!
- You’re more brave. Writing a book is scary. Some people won’t like it. Most agents you pitch will reply (if they reply at all) with form rejections. But you’ve survived teenagers. You can handle anything.
- You know your voice. You’re not writing to sound like Ernest Hemingway, Toni Morrison, or Joan Didion. You’re comfortable sounding like you.
- You’ve built up endurance muscles. Remember that road trip to the Grand Canyon full of "are-we-there-yets?" That triathlon that kept having “just one more” loop
s? That long-promised promotion you feared would never come to be? You’ve learned how to slog through tedium. Book edits may not be fun, but now, they feel doable. - You know how to be edited. You have been edited by no fewer than 86 bosses and bosses’ bosses. Want something fixed? Sure! No offense taken.
- You’re realistic. Is your book going to be a runaway hit like Lessons in Chemistry? That would be great, but unlikely. Who cares, though. You’re not writing to get discovered, just to tell the story you can’t get out of your head.
- You don’t care what people think anymore. It would have been hard to write spicy romance in your 30s because the neighbors might think you’re into being tied up. But now? Who gives a damn! Let them think you’re scandalous!
- You no longer pretend to be the smartest person in the room. You know you’re not. Hell, you don’t really know why the sky is blue (something about light rays?), what the capital of Vermont is (not Burlington, but what was it again?), or what the Byrd Act is all about (some political something but…). Since you’re not out to prove your genius, you can write with honesty. Readers respond to stories told from truth.
So go ahead. Be brave. Bring your very truest self to the page and see what happens. Don’t worry about whether your writing is good or bad. Don’t fret that you haven’t yet figured out the perfect ending for the story or the perfect anything. Don’t concern yourself with the need for more research, because you don’t need to know everything. Just sit down in that office chair you never use anymore and get to writing. You’re a mid-lifer, you’ve got things to say, and we’re listening.
Check out Lucie Frost's How the Hell Did I Not Know That? here:
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