Publishing at 40
I never imagined myself publishing a book--any book--when I turned forty. But, here I am.
My first acceptance letter came the other day--in a small, unassuming email that almost got buried in a mountain of ads for gardening tools and pet insurance. After inspecting it with a magnifying glass, sure it must be amother scam email, I noted the familiar publisher's name and did a happy dance. I cried. I dashed off a quick, professional email accepting the acceptance. Then I got drunk, like any self-respecting forty-year-old.
The next day, still hung over from my single shot glass of craft mead, I began to panic. All the things that could possibly go wrong started spinning through my head. What if I didn't like the contract? What if they buy the rights and then let the book sit on their shelf, gathering dust indefinitely?
What if they don't... and other people actually read my story? Will they give me the side-eye forever after?
Whatever the outcome, publishing my novel is set to be my next great adventure. When I think about how long I've been writing these stories and shelving them, it blows my mind. I'm forty. I've been writing since I was a kid. That makes at least three decades' worth of material that's never seen the light of day. At least until now.
The Age of Adventure, and its coming-of
Forty has always felt like a nice, round number to me. A sort of "hill" to climb over--as opposed to living under one, I suppose.
Bilbo Baggins, at fifty, suddenly has adventures and even writes books about them. (credit: J.R.R. Tolkien)
When I think of climbing over the hill, I'm reminded of some of my favorite characters by J. R. R. Tolkien. Boring, stodgy people who did their thing up until the age of fifty... or thirty-three, or a hundred fifty, whatever the going rate was. And then they went mad and dashed off on an adventure, without their hat or even a pocket handkerchief. (Gasp!)
Forty is the new fifty, I suppose, in translating Hobbit to human years.
Not that I haven't been around for a while. I've been writing since I can remember. My first crack at a real work of fiction was in the seventh grade. I remember reading A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, by Mark Twain. After slogging through hundreds of pages of antique writing trying to distill out a very charming story, I felt cheated by the ending. None of the plot or character arcs I'd become so invested in felt fulfilled! I challenged myself to write a better ending. Though my version wasn't well executed, the protagonist did end up living a happy life in Camelot.
For the first time, I felt in control of the Story, a story that had come to mean something to me. Hank, the modern spectator in Camelot, and his princess bride, "Sandy," were real people to me. They deserved their happily-ever-after. As a writer, that was something I had the power to give them.
Stories that Matter
There are stories... and then there are Stories; just like there are adventures, and then there are Adventures. Stories--with a capital S--do something more than dance by you on the page, entertaining for a fleeting moment. They stick around, dance with you, and burrow into your psyche. In a sense, good Stories, like Adventures we have, become a part of us. They shape us almost the same way our real experiences do.
When my dad first read Lord of the Rings aloud to my sisters and me, I felt instinctively it was one of those Stories. In fact, when he closed the book after the last page, I cried almost as much as the Hobbits at the Grey Havens. In a way, I had crossed the sea of no return. I would never find a story quite like Tolkien's.
And honestly, I never did. Despite the resurgence of fantasy literature that followed the Peter Jackson films, I never really got into it. I believe the world Tolkien created truly expanded beyond the written pages he shared. It was a real place, lovingly crafted, with real people whose loves and lives extended beyond the page into stories all their own.
These are the stories that shape us. Not formulaic books where you can figure out the end of every book in the series by Book 32--although those have their place, much like the familiar arches of quick-and-easy burger joints. I've concocted my share of worlds and characters over the years, simmered slowly with attention to nuance and detail. And I can imagine how Tolkien must have felt about letting those special stories loose in the world.
As a wise man said, they are "precious" to me.
Coming Out
Letting your precious stories loose on the world can be a precarious, vulnerable feeling. Most of my characters would prefer to live comfortably at home in my mind. Nobody to judge them. Nobody to review them in the gossip papers or write about my characters' eccentricities and failings on social media.
But these are the stories that matter. The stories that shape us--the people that shape us--deserve to live real lives out in the open world. They deserve to ride white horses, and go on adventures, and fight dragons if they darn well please.
At forty, it's finally time for my characters to step out onto the road. I'm excited to see where that road may take them, and where they'll end up, and whose lives they may end up shaping in the future.
If you'd like to join me in my adventure, please hit the Subscribe button. You can also like my page on Facebook, where I'll be sharing updates as my debut novel comes to production.
Comments