Fiction Friday: Writers Of A Certain Age

Here’s another thing to consider. If you always wanted to write, and now you are
A Certain Age, and you never got around to it, and you think it’s too late…do
please think again. I watched Julia Glass win the National Book Award for her
first novel, “The Three Junes”, which she began writing in her late 30’s. I
listened to her give her moving acceptance speech, in which she told how she
used to lie awake at night, tormented as she worked on her book, asking herself,
“Who do you think you are, trying to write a first novel at your age?” But she
wrote it. And as she held up her National Book Award, she said, “This is for all
the late-bloomers in the world.” Writing is not like dancing or modeling; it’s
not something where – if you missed it by age 19 – you’re finished. It’s never
too late. Your writing will only get better as you get older and wiser. If you
write something beautiful and important, and the right person somehow discovers
it, they will clear room for you on the bookshelves of the world – at any age.
At least try.

(Quote from this article: http://www.elizabethgilbert.com/writing.htm)

I read this quote and this article on the same day. Both resonated with me, the thought that it really is never too late to try your hand at your artistic passion-- whether it's singing, writing, painting, sculpting... whatever. I believe when we create we are doing what we were created to do. We were made in the image of the Creator, after all. If we bear His image, it stands to reason that we would also, then, be compelled to create.

Age shouldn't matter when we're doing what we were called to do, and striving to take hold of what God has promised. Reading this passage from the Bible about Caleb-- who had to wait til he was 85 to see his calling come to fruition-- was encouraging to me. Perhaps it will be inspiring to those of you who are writers of a certain age.

Joshua 14:10-14
10 “Now then, just as the LORD promised, he has kept me alive for forty-five years since the time he said this to Moses, while Israel moved about in the wilderness. So here I am today, eighty-five years old! 11 I am still as strong today as the day Moses sent me out; I’m just as vigorous to go out to battle now as I was then. 12 Now give me this hill country that the LORD promised me that day. You yourself heard then that the Anakites were there and their cities were large and fortified, but, the LORD helping me, I will drive them out just as he said.” 13 Then Joshua blessed Caleb son of Jephunneh and gave him Hebron as his inheritance.