I turn sixty-five in two weeks. I like to write the number in Roman alphabet instead of numerically because, well, in letter form it doesn’t look like a number. Kid America, my first young adult novel, will be released November 3. Yes, I’ll be publishing my first novel at age sixty-five and a few months.
Sixty-five is old for a debut novelist. Some might question, though, whether I can call myself a first-time author. I have buried in my past and probably in a few people’s academics stacks the literacy ethnography, Just Playing the Part, a good read if you’re interested in sociolinguistics, critical literacy, and literacy development outside of school. Good luck finding a new copy of it, however, because it’s out of print.
For this blog, let’s go with the fact I’m sixty-five and publishing my first young adult novel.
Laura Ingalls Wilder was 65 when she published, Little House in the Big Woods. That’s impressive if only because, when she was writing, 65 was older than it is today. That was 1932. People didn’t live, on average, past 63 back then, so says my friend A.I. Askame. Still, I can say age-wise I’ve tied Wilder for the oldest debut YA author.
There are a few other notable first-time authors who were eligible for senior discounts when their novels released. Billie Letts published Where the Heart Is at age 57. That’s not old, at least not these days, but still impressive and worth mentioning only because she spent her life, like me, as an academic before knocking out that first novel. I imagine she, like me, spent years saying, “One day I’m going to be done with the teaching, research, and service grind and publish something someone will want to read.” I’m still an academic and say this every day.
G. Neri published her debut graphic novel, Yummy: The Last Days of a Southside Shorty, at 43. Seriously, no one will say that’s old, except people under 20. I like the title though, and the novel takes place in Chicago.
And then there’s S.E. Hinton of The Outsiders fame. She published her first novel as 17, already writing like a bona fide old person. I only mention her because 17 is so far from 65 it makes 65 look even older.
I like to think Guinness World Records will be knocking on my door November 4 to give me a plaque inscribed with the record for oldest debut YA author: “The World’s Oldest Debut YA Novelist.” I know, Wilder was 65, too, but she didn’t think of contacting Guinness with the news.
As I write this, I wouldn’t be surprised if somewhere out there someone 65 or over has published a debut YA novel. I didn’t find the person even after an extensive forty minute Google search. Having not found it, I will claim the record until proven otherwise.
To clarify, though, there are debut authors older than me, some in their nineties, one even in the early hundreds (that shows how extensive my search was). These people, though, are not young adult novelists or writing about adolescents. Mainly, they’ve written memoirs (the true old person genre) or thrillers. Most remain unknown. There are two novels, though that stand out as exceptions because of their success. Bonnie Garmus published Lessons in Chemistrywhen she was 64 (still not 65). Harriet Doerr published Stones of Ibarraat 74. I mention them because both novels are award-winning.
On a more serious note, although I’ve repeatedly used the terms debut novelist and first-time author, I take issue with the idea that anyone who publishes a book for the first time is a new author. I get that debut means first appearance, but the connotation glosses over everything that came before that appearance. Regardless of age, it takes years to hone one’s writing abilities and, in many cases, years to get published. A person can be newly published but never be a new writer (unless you’re S.E. Hinton or Mary Shelley).
I dare someone to call Garmus a first-time author when she got 98 rejections for Lessons in Chemistry. It had to take years just to get that many rejections. I had no rejections for Kid America, but I have some other older novel drafts (all written after I turned fifty-five) that have gone through the rejection mill for three or four years. At least one or two of these manuscripts are potentially better than Kid America. As a writer, it is hard to feel new or debuted after having been beaten up for years by rejection.
But there are benefits to living a long time before publishing a first novel. Here are two of them. First, being an old writer has made me less concerned about outcome and more attuned to process. Writing is hard. Writing novels is harder than writing academic articles (sorry, academic colleagues). Being older hasn’t made it any easier, but it has made the process more meaningful and enjoyable. I like to write and rewrite.
Second, writing while old has redefined success. With age comes the realization that in the end whatever happens doesn’t matter (mostly) and no one is going to remember anyway. That knowledge is a strong sedative for self-doubt and fear of failure. Basically, I’m entertaining myself at this point in my life. Anything else is icing on the cake.
Don’t get me wrong, I want to sell books. I want my novels to matter to others. I want people to say I’m a good writer. Thirty years ago these weren’t wants. They were needs—imperatives really. They were enough to inhibit my effort because the voices in my head were loud and the safest course of action was no action.
Old-Person Writer Chet Day says this about older author success: “…there’s more to it than just having lived a long time. There’s something about the perspective that comes with age, a kind of wisdom that younger writers, no matter how talented, simply can’t access yet.” He goes on to say that, with age, feelings of urgency, absolutism, and even heartbreak are diminished. We’ve lived through these things and survived. Mainly, though, he says—and I love this—as older writers, we don’t need things to work out. That’s it in a nutshell. In the end, it really doesn’t matter what the outcome is, unless it’s holding the record for being the oldest debut YA novelist.
Don’t get me wrong, I still want to sell books—lots of books. And you can help with that starting July 30 when presale begins. Even if you don’t like Kid America, it will be a win-win for both of us. I sold a book, and you have a first edition of the oldest debut YA novelist ever. Laura Ingalls Wilder be damned.