Too Old To Write?

More often than not, my blog posts are not planned but come about through some trigger,  usually from something I saw or read. Today’s is no exception. The inspiration comes from this interesting article in the New York Times by Edward Kelsey Moore, ” At 52, Not Too Old for  a Debut Novel.” I believe this is a very well-written article in which the author speaks candidly of the things that motivated him to write. I particularly liked his speaking of his past experiences which fashioned his writing.

I was 59 when my debut novel, “It Can’t Be You” was published a few years ago. This was a psychological thriller built around my two big interest areas,  the military and psychology. I still remember the unmatched  thrill I felt at the book launch. It felt great to know that I had achieved a long cherished dream, which perhaps remained unstated for most of my adult life. As a kid, I had dreams of becoming a journalist. I used to write many articles for our school magazine and hoped this would lead to more writing and a career built around writing. However, in my family in the India of the ’60s when I grew up, journalism was not considered to be a hot, or even safe choice, as a career. Perhaps my family associated journalism with hard-drinking Press men of that era or they considered it a not very viable career option. In the end, I became a Human Resources practitioner and worked in this field for more than 35 years, without writing much fiction.

It was only towards the fag-end of my “professional” career, that I did NaNoWriMo in 2009. And the rest, as the cliche goes, is history. I am today at 61, a full-time writer, doing what I enjoy more than anything else. My second book, again a thriller like my first was published in December 2012. It’s good to see, “Lucky For Some, 13″ being appreciated by its readers.

For more delightful reading on the subject of first novels, you might like this blog post by John Scalzi, appropriately titled, ” Why New Novelists Are Kinda Old..”.