> The other answer given is that she wasn’t, in fact, such a late starter. Critics point to her childhood stories, anonymous reviews for the Times Literary Supplement, her probable contributions to Desmond’s history of the Irish Guards, and the literary magazine she and Desmond ran together when the children were little. There were also four short stories she wrote earlier in life: two as a young child, two in the 1950s when she was a mother. (Fitzgerald wrote very few short stories overall.)
I would guess that were I to die today, there would be very little evidence that I wrote anything before 2014.
I’d would say that’s very little writing before your first novel.
"Before you can write the book, you have to be the book."
I've met a few gems amongst a cavalcade of colorful characters who perhaps could be captured fairly between pen and paper to record an echo of human splendor that should live beyond time.
- A paranoid but happy and cynical gentleman with long, scraggly hair like a wizard from the Appalachias who was a military aircraft electrician and an Apple rework tech. Stories spanning every feeling with hilarious exaggerations for emphasis.
- A former writer at big name NY newspaper, ex-hippie, and crab fisherman who had quite the life of drugs, women, and was part of it. Body might be shot, but a mind sharper than people who are 30 now without hyperbole. Knows where, when, and who of the cool spots of then and now.
- You'd swear he was dangerous or black Santa Claus. Nope, sweetest and coolest guy in the world. Picking cotton, keeping out of trouble during times that were turbulent, elevator repair, and teaching.
And a bit more apropos of the article, I’d add that to a large extent, I think that the 45 years of life leading up to my first publication were a big part of what made me able to write something worth publishing.