I once talked to someone in her early 20s who said, without a hint of irony, that she would consider herself a failure if she'd not found success by the age of 25.
"Define 'success," I said to her.
"You know, 'success,'" she said. "Everybody knows who I am, or I've made a lot of money."
Unsurprisingly, the pressure of such a deadline weighed on this poor kid. In my imagination, she has a calendar in her room counting down to her 26th birthday. Every day she crosses out another little square, grows a little more desperate. What will happen when the clock tolls her birth hour in her 26th year? I have no idea. I'm not sure she does either.
In our society (and a lot of others), there is this apotheosis of the child prodigy. And, certainly, there are some incredibly talented young folks. But as many people have noted, youth alone usually isn't enough. One needs the things that make a creative life feasible: financial stability, supportive family members, etc. You might be an absolute genius, but if you need to work three part-time jobs to make ends meet or if you're raising young children, chances are you're not doing a lot of creating.
The truth is, there are only a few professions in which youth is actually beneficial, which is not to say that there aren't successful older individuals in these fields. Athletes and dancers, for obvious reasons. Mathematicians and theoretical physicists, for less obvious reasons: processing speed (and brute processing power overall)) tends to start decreasing in our late 20s and 30s. In fact, the Fields medal, the equivalent of a Nobel in mathematics, is capped at age 40. The idea, though I don't necessarily agree with it, is that if you haven't done anything of note by the time you're 40, it's highly unlikely you will.
Ouch. In my imagination, every mathematician has a calendar counting down to their 40th birthday.
But here's the good news. Our "crystallized intelligence," i.e., our knowledge of words and facts, tends to grow well into our 40s and 50s. And crystallized intelligence is exactly what a writer needs.
So why all this attention on young authors? I will admit to being slightly salty here, as I just turned 40. Like an erstwhile Field-medal hopeful, I am now locked out of all the "Under 40" lists. Some days I get a little angry at myself. For more than a decade I worked as a psychologist, a job that provided financial stability but was incredibly emotionally draining. By the end of the work day, the last thing I wanted to do was write. The fact is, I probably could've stopped working a little earlier, or at least cut down on my hours, but part of growing up in an immigrant family that was working class for a while is never feeling like you have enough of a financial cushion, so I told myself, just one more year, and before I knew it I was in my late thirties.
But would my writing have been at its current level back then? That's a tougher question to answer. Perhaps, if I'd had more time to write, my writing would have improved faster and I would have produced a book I was proud of before age 40, but who knows? Alternatively, I just needed more life experience, and that's something no amount of practice can provide. What I do know is that I couldn't have produced *this particular book* any earlier than I did. Whatever its good and bad points, this book represents who I am as an author right now. I'm proud of how far I've come, and I'm curious to see where I will go.
So if you're an older writer and you feel like there's a clock ticking down, I hope this makes you feel less alone. We can always throw an "Over 40" party on our own.
AWP!
I'm very excited to be presenting a panel at AWP this year with Vanessa Hua (Forbidden City, A River of Stars), A.H. Kim (A Good Family, Finding Amelia), Dominic Lim (All the Right Notes), and Preeti Vangani (Mother Tongue Apologize). Our panel is on Thursday, March 9th at 1:45 PM, and we'd love to see you there!
Anyone want a free pin?
I had these pins made in advance of AWP. If you want one, let me know and I'll send it along! I'd be especially grateful if you wore it out and about!
