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Monday, July 27, 2015

IT'S TOO LATE FOR ME


Really?


Laura Ingalls Wilder

First published in her mid-sixties, Wilder is probably best known for her "Little House" series. 

There are museums dedicated to her, schools named after her, and even a TV show based on her books. 

So why did Wilder start so late? 

It took years of hardship and struggle before she came to a place in her life 

that allowed her to focus meaningfully on her stories, with help and encouragement from her daughter.

 When experience and creativity combine, stunning stories of depth and love result.



Raymond Chandler
 
In 1932, at age forty-four, Chandler decided to become a detective fiction writer 
 
after losing his job as an oil company executive during the Great Depression.
 
Chandler published seven novels during his lifetime (an eighth in progress at his death was completed by Robert B. Parker) -- all of which have been made into movies.

 "The Big Sleep," his first novel, launched a successful and popular career. 
 
He is best known for his mystery novels about hard-boiled detective Philip Marlowe. 
 
During his career, he won the Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America and wrote scripts for such films as "Double Indemnity" and "The Blue Dahlia."
 
 
 {Photo courtesy of Andrew Reeves-Hall}
 
Richard Adams
 
This English author made a career in the British Civil Service, 
 
and he did not publish his first book, "Watership Down," until his early fifties.
 
 Like the famed "The Wind in the Willows," "Watership Down" began as a story he told his children. 
 
 He spent two years writing the manuscript and was turned down by multiple publishers before finding Rex Collings. 
 
The book has sold over 50 million copies worldwide.
 
Mr. Adams gives me hope that one day THE BEAR WITH TWO SHADOWS will become popular.


James A. Michener
 
In his youth, this author traveled around the country by boxcar, worked in carnival shows, and visited all but three of the states before he was twenty. 
 
He then went on to a career in academia and textbook editing. He could have stopped there, but he didn't. 
 
Michener's first book wasn't published until he was forty, 
 
which makes him a young whippersnapper compared to the other authors on this list! 
 
"Tales of the South Pacific" won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction and was later re-imagined as a Broadway musical by Rodgers and Hammerstein. 
 
 Michener worked on over forty books during his career, writing vigorously until he died at age ninety.

17 comments:

  1. I didn't know Laura Ingalls Wilder was first published so late in her life. This post is a good reminder for me that you never know what's going to happen in life. Thanks!

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    1. And thank you for commenting. I don't feel quite so alone when my friends stay to chat. :-)

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  2. Mary Wesley, one of my favourite authors, was also not published until late.
    Good things are worth waiting for...

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    1. The same goes for C S Lewis (except for his scholarly texts). May your new week be healing. :-)

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  3. This is very encouraging! You never know what can happen!

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    1. Yes, who would have bet on David on the sidelines of that famous fight, right?

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  4. My husband and I have visited some of the places she lived as a child. I did a piece on her for a quarterly, after gathering a lot of information on Laura I Wilder.
    It's heartening that if these people you've mentioned got published well in later years, many of us shouldn't think it's "too late". You should do what you love, despite what others think or say.

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    1. I feel, Lorelei, that if you do not try to live your dream, you will always wonder "What If?" Mrs. Wilder was quite an admirable person in her perception and strength of will.:-)

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  5. I wasn't published until my mid-forties, so I guess I fit the trend. Now if my stories can just outlast me...

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    1. Only time will tell, but I feel as long as readers want action and adventure in space, you will have an audience! :-)

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  6. I got the urge to write in my mid-fifties. I am nowhere near having anything of merit to publish and I am pushing the big six oh, oh my. Maybe there is time. More importantly, maybe what I write has merit.

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    1. All of us who live and love for decades have stories written on our heart, burning to get out. I wish you great sales when you do publish! :-)

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  7. Laura Ingalls Wilder was my favorite writer when I was a child. I have visited her house in Missouri twice. She wrote quite a bit before the Little House books, but most of it was magazine pieces and a regular column about being a farm wife. Then she wrote Pioneer Girl, which was gradually shaped into the series with a great deal of editing by her daughter. I read the Little House books to my children. They loved them, too.

    Love,
    Janie

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    1. Laura Ingalls Wilder was a wonder. Her insight was born of a life of struggle and pain. She was very lucky to have such a caring, intelligent daughter, wasn't she?

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    2. Yes and no. Her daughter helped her make a fortune, but Rose Wilder Lane wrote in her diary that she hated her mother. I guess most of us hate our mothers at one time or another, but Rose really hated her mother long term.

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  8. This list gives me hope! I really didn't know anything about Wilder, so her late-in-life start is really inspiring. I'd love to know if Raymond Chandler turned to writing because he had lost his job and was financially desperate, or because he'd always wanted to write and being unemployed meant there was nothing to stop him.

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    1. It gives me hope as well. :-)

      Raymond Chandler lost his job from excessive drinking (a vice that would follow him all his life.) He was indeed financially desperate and thought to make money by writing for the pulps he saw on all the news stands -- but being a poet at heart, he created a new breed of detective story -- one with insight and depth. :-)

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