"Breaking in" as an Older Writer

(Adam's Version)

My son, years ago, as Mark Twain

What does “breaking in” mean? I’ve published a short story and a few other things (poems, articles) here and there. I finally landed an agent about a month ago and I’m currently on submission with my debut novel manuscript. I’ve earned a couple Illinois artist grants. None of these really count as “breaking in” as an author to me, though I feel like I’m on my way. Nearly 100% of my income still comes via Tech Writing. I don’t have a book on a shelf. However, since it took me two decades to even reach the point of landing an agent--who I connected with, improbably, via the “slush” (unsolicited email)--I feel like my writing career is finally poised to go where I want it to go. But there’s always another beginning awaiting; another door needing to be kicked open. I’d be remiss if I didn’t acknowledge two decades of sweat, tears, sacrifices, doubts, rejections, setbacks, and anxieties I weathered to reach this next chapter of my life’s story. And I'm filled with gratitude for family and friends who never stopped believing in me. Here’s the thing: if you want to become a writer, rejection is the very air you breathe. Celebrate your wins; they’re rare and precious and oxygen. Keep grinding.

I can’t discuss the topic of “breaking in as an older writer,” without admitting I’d always assumed I’d break in as a younger writer. Little could I know once minor things started happening with my creative writing, I would be long since ineligible for those flashy “30 Under 30” or “40 Under 40” lists. Why isn’t there a “50 Under 50” list? Don’t know, but it wouldn’t matter even if there was, because I wouldn’t have been eligible for it, either! Does the fact I don’t feel 50, count for anything? Shakespeare died at age 52, but he didn’t write a word past the age of 49. Let that sink in for a moment. My favorite writer of all time—the GOAT—stopped writing before the age I published my first short story.

None of the Bronte sisters lived to age 40. Neither did Flannery O’Connor, Pushkin, Plath, Rimbaud, Lorraine Hansberry, Byron, Nathaniel West, Robert Burns, John Kennedy Toole, Dylan Thomas, J.M. Synge. Some: Percy Shelley, Keats, Marlowe, Stephen Crane, for starters—never made it to 30. Anne Frank was 15. Gogol died at 42, Guy de Maupassant was 42, Jane Austen 41, Brendan Behan 41, Jack London 40, Kafka 40, Poe 40. Chekhov, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Robert Louis Stevenson, D.H. Lawrence, Thoreau--none of these novelists, poets, playwrights, essayists I’ve named ever saw 45-years-old, let alone lived to experience their 50s. If we expand this to include writers who died at age 46, we can add the likes of Orwell, David Foster Wallace, Lovecraft, Oscar Wilde, Camus. And there are many more--I can’t possibly cite them all (please don’t berate me for omitting a name ala The Oscars’ In Memoriam).

Anyway…depressed yet?

I was born and grew up in Omaha, Nebraska, the oldest of five children. I don’t remember a time I wasn’t besotted with stories and the sounds of words. I spent countless hours at my local library. The library was a squat, gray, unsightly building like a lump of oatmeal flattened by a fork but uneaten. The inside aesthetics weren’t much better. I can still recall the poor air circulation, bad lighting, my allergic reactions from the tickle in my throat to sneezing amongst the dust. The filmy presence of mildew on books and shelves. The musty stale air mixed with a subtle floral or earthy undertone—the fragrance of book degradation. But I loved the place, even its “old book smell,” caused by a compound found in all wood-based paper called "lignin," which causes paper to yellow when exposed to air and light because of its acidity. It’s not altogether unpleasant—a distant cousin to the scent of vanilla—the slight sweetness of almonds or marzipan. The library was my portal to Narnia, Wonderland, Oz. I always checked out the maximum number of books allowed. Books of every stripe and genre. I read them all. A writer is always a reader, first and foremost. I wrote stories and poetry all the time. I wrote bloody awful stories and bloody awful poetry. I tried not writing and found myself incapable. I had this vague notion I would be a writer. But nobody I knew was a writer. Making a living as a writer seemed as plausible as making a living as a pirate.

My parents were great about reading to me as a kid, and I carried on that tradition with my kids. But I didn’t come from a genetic stock of readers. My mom’s tastes differed from mine, and I never witnessed my dad open a book for himself to read. Growing up, my grandparents’ house on my dad’s side had hardly any books, and those were somberly religious. My grandparents’ house on my mom’s side had a shelf of Reader’s Digest Condensed Books. Were condensed books like condensed soup, just water them down to make them digestible? Why were they "condensed?" What was wrong with full novels? What did they cut? Who decided? Who did the cutting? Squirreled away in the basement were my grandma’s stacks of dog-eared romance paperbacks.

I was in college before I made a friend who shared my love of books. I don’t think I’d ever met a writer, until I started going to author readings in college. I loved being around people discussing books. I still attend author readings regularly. I never got an MFA in writing. I’ve never taken a writing class in my life. I had zero connections to the literary world—and I mean zero—for the first decade or so of trying to write. I wrote in a vacuum. (I’m incredibly grateful to my wife and everyone who believed in me and encouraged me, but for the most part, writing remains a lonely, solipsistic endeavor).

I finally started working on a novel in my late 20s. I made EVERY MISTAKE a first-time novelist can make. My manuscript was too semi-autobiographical, too navel-gazing, and packed with exposition. I fell too in love with beautiful sentences. I fell too in love with my characters to make them face conflicts. My story lacked narrative cohesion and propulsion, and I underbaked character relationships. Name your amateur writing pet peeve, and I likely succumbed to it. I heard someone describe amateur stories as “complex plots about simple characters” while professional stories are “simple plots about complex characters.” Though I think this is too binary to be overly useful, there’s something to it. My novel was all flesh and no bones. I didn’t consider audience when I wrote, probably because, in retrospect, I couldn’t fathom myself, a kid from Nebraska, ever deserving permission to merit an audience. Daydreaming about it felt dangerous enough. That Imposter Syndrome is forever my shadow. I didn’t tell any of my friends I was a writer. It was as if to speak it aloud would bring public shame when I inevitably failed. For years I didn’t even tell my kids it was something I did. But one day I thought, what better way to demonstrate how difficult yet rewarding it is to chase your dreams than by being transparent with my kids, even at the risk of failing in front of them?

What was my Great American Novel about? Ha--hell if I knew! All I knew is I’d spent nearly a decade writing it (half of that time before my wife and I had our first child, a son). Not understanding what your novel is about is a large problem. I would classify it as the largest problem. I can tell you how long it was. Take a guess. Ready? I can’t believe I’m revealing this publicly—as my teenage daughter might say with an eyeroll, it’s so completely embarrassing. Readers, that manuscript was over 331,000 words. OMG. LOL. WTF? It shall never see the light of day, for the betterment of the world.

If nothing else, I like to think I met the requisite Gladwellian 10,000+ hours necessary to achieve a discipline at the craft, perhaps even developing some chops. I always carved out writing time without interfering with family time (my son and daughter turn 19 and 15 this April, respectively). I commuted via train for over a decade (roughly an hour each way, so I could at least work/write during it when I got a seat). Worse, for a 6-year span (though it felt like eternity), I drove 90 min each way for a pair of hellish jobs I despised. I don’t miss the days of getting my late-model capitalism max allotment of 1-1.5 hours an evening to spend with my (then) younger kids before they went to bed, I went to bed, and I rinsed/repeated the next day. Since Covid, I’ve been fortunate enough to work from home, but finding time to write is always challenging.

I never wanted to work in corporate America, and I never wanted to be a Tech Writer. They don’t write folk songs about Tech Writers. But I’ve worked as a Tech Writer in the corporate world for over 20 years. Why? The primary reason is because in America—unlike every other civilized country in the world--health insurance is tied to employment. Chasing one’s dreams for any writer here is a side hustle. These days, rent has been replaced by a mortgage. Daycare replaced by college costs. I’ve never had the luxury of any kind of family financial safety net. I promised myself early on I would provide for my family and not make them suffer for my writing dreams/ambitions. This doesn’t make me a Hero; it makes me a Husband and a Dad.

My next project wanted to be a screenplay, so I spent the better part of the next decade all-in on screenplays. Screenwriting improved my writing in terms of structure, economy, narrative momentum, and crafting the elements of a scene. I learned to build a spine for my stories from which to hang the other elements upon. Though I’m more of a natural prose writer than screenwriter—at first returning to prose felt clumsy and painful—weirdly challenging for muscled I’d let atrophy. I had to tune out “screenwriter’s mind” and remember I could deploy such literary devices as “interiority” again.

I’ve won many amateur awards as a screenwriter, but I’m still unrepped in this space and have nothing on a screen to show for it. I can’t count the number of times I’ve been promised some kind of forward movement on a screenplay that ultimately fell through or how many times I’ve been ghosted by someone supposedly interested in one of my projects. The rejection is real and it’s relentless.

My current novel project started out as a screenplay. I began writing the novel about 7-8 years ago, but it’s difficult to quantify how long it took to write because I’d already done much of the project’s research at the screenplay stage. I used the script as a basic outline, at first, until it was clear the novel wanted to become its own beast. I started querying my novel manuscript, which was terrible timing for three reasons: 1) It was a month after Covid hit. No one knew how bad the pandemic would get or how long it would last. Agents had more important things to think about at that time then digging through their slush. Meanwhile, my wife and I were brought to tears trying to navigate the new normal, as two working parents coping with two struggling e-learning kids. 2) By the time agents started responded to queries and/or full manuscript requests, everyone and their cousin had written a “Covid novel.” Timeframes changed, the publishing industry changed, and “ghosting” became agents’ preferred method of (avoiding) communication. The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference. I learned to treasure rejections (personalized rejection was a slice of fried gold!). I won’t tell you how many agents ghosted/rejected me, but it was nearly enough to sing a “99 Bottles of Beer” parody. 3) I committed the cardinal mistake, despite my honest good-faith effort not to do this: I queried my novel too soon. I’d thought I’d finished it. I’d done several (10?) revisions. I’d used “beta readers” (mostly generous friends who were readers, not writers). But in retrospect, the manuscript wasn’t ready, and mass rejections worsened my imposter syndrome, which lowered my motivation to write more—a vicious cycle. It didn’t help that my disjointed writing process seemed to result in a disjointed novel.

I let the manuscript sit for months while I worked on other projects. America’s right-turn to MAGA and descent into fascism had further sapped my motivation, energy, belief, and time. In fact, my entire novel was written during two Trump regimes (and with Trump’s shadow looming large over the intervening Biden years). I fretted then, as I do now, over the dark, anti-democratic direction our country had taken, and my kids’ futures. MAGA demanded my energy and attention to combat it. My novel is a humanist project, and while it’s certainly not overtly political, it’s anti-fascist to its core.

Eventually I returned reinvigorated with the possibilities of my manuscript. I undertook an epic 18-month revision. Agents “loved it,” but “sorry had to pass.” An agent “knew it belonged on a bookshelf, but just didn’t know which one.” I practically reworked the story from scratch into a different genre, only later to abandon this version and revert to its original genre/tone. I lost faith, I lost sleep, my “sunken costs” into the novel at this point seemed to include not only years of my life, but also my soul. I worked and I doubted; I doubted and I worked. I hated everything I wrote, immediately. I persisted.

Finally feeling “finished” (I’m a relentless tinkerer, but I’d reached the stage in which the mere thought of revisiting just one sentence made me want to throw up. Speaking of wanting to puke, I started querying again in early November of ’24. Eventually an agent—a major agent—responded to my “slush” (unsolicited email)! Based on comparable stats from QueryTracker software, I would put my odds of this agent responding to my slush query at about 1 in 500. I queried on a Thursday. He requested the full manuscript the next day. I sent it within the hour. He read it over the weekend. On Monday, he asked to set up “the call” and a week later he was my agent. “Overnight success,” right (sarcasm intended)? It’s true it only takes one Agent believing in you.

Now I’ve on been “on submission” for a few weeks, a time in which the agent starts reaching out to editors at houses/imprints to sell the novel manuscript. Some writers refer to this period as the single most difficult phase of a writing career. As a writer, I have absolutely no control over this part of the process. All I can do work on my next project to distract myself from the anxieties of waiting, which is easier said than done.

Writers like me without industry connections, without coming from the safety net of family money, from flyover country—we battle to gut it out. We're not gonna be overnight success stories, but our writing will be better for it. It's a struggle to balance family, work, and responsibilities, while carving out every precious minute you can to chase your writing dream—and it never gets easier for me, and I never feel any less like an imposter. But my advice is don’t use your age or your lack of writing time as an excuse—that’s fear—and fear is the enemy of great art. Nothing can ever happen if you never start. I had to give up things I loved but intruded on my “spare time.” I quit poker, though at one point long ago I was good enough to consider turning pro at it. I don’t watch sports or go out to the bars much, unlike in my 20s. My social life is non-existent. I’m much more likely to be driving my daughter somewhere than to have made any plans myself. No doubt my writing devotion has cost me nurturing a few friendships.

One thing I wish I could go back and tell my younger self? Don’t be so anxious about the journey (my anxiety disorder makes this difficult for me). You’re doing everything you can do. Much of this is outside your control. Be patient. Concentrate on being the best partner, the best dad, the best human you can be. Keep grinding, yes, but BE PRESENT. Enjoy your life without worrying if your writing career will ever “happen.” Define what success means to you (for example, there’s nothing wrong with writing for yourself, not for publication). Count your blessings—you have so many.

One of my favorite quotes is attributed to Michaelangelo: “Ancora Imparo,” which translates to “I am still learning.” Out of context, this quote doesn’t seem particularly revelatory. But Michaelangelo was 87 and working on St. Peter’s Basilica when he spoke these words. It demonstrates his humility to his craft and his commitment to curiosity, despite his mastery in art. I’m still learning. Dude had sculpted the Pieta and David before age 30. He’d already created two of the most influential frescoes in the history of Western art: the scenes from Genesis on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, and The Last Judgment on its altar wall. But he still felt like a novice. That’s both beautiful and true--Keats himself would be proud.

As writers we create empathy, to push for a deeper understanding of our humanity. I’ve never been more convinced of writing’s essential task than now. We’re living in a dark time, but what connects us is our search for a little light. We all mill around that campfire, anticipating the next story that might change us forever.

While sudden successes do happen, the reality for most writers is a path to publication may take years, even decades. I write when I can, and work like a Dickensian chimney sweep on my craft. I don’t know all the obstacles you might face in your writing journey, and I can’t answer all your questions. But I know these things to be true: How will you know what you can accomplish if you never start? Quality writing is quality writing, no matter your age. A shitty rough draft beats the most brilliant story ever conceived if that story remains unrealized in your head. A story must exist in some form before you can improve it. You need the raw materials before you can attend to the sculpting and chiseling and revising. Don’t strive to become a writer of any kind for money or fame or validation—if these are your goals, there are FAR EASIER ways to achieve them. Write because something inside you wants and needs to do it; because you feel like less than yourself when you don’t try.

The world needs your stories. Trust me. It just doesn’t know it yet.