never sending my work out. Okay, maybe I’m exaggerating. Once in a while I did, but they were short-lived bursts. All it took was one rejection letter to send me diving under the covers with fresh avowals to quit writing forever. And I meant it. But then I’d find myself getting excited about some new idea which would set me writing all over again.
When my youngest started kindergarten, I began writing short stories. Then one morning I decided it was time to stop putting it off. It was time to try writing a novel. I guess the moral of the story is never give up.
All that might explain why you are not the typical age for a first-time novelist.
I suppose I'm not and thank goodness for that. Middle age is a nice central place to be. Here’s some positive spin, but it’s true: I never could have written a character like Daisy in my twenties, or even my thirties. This is something I’ve come to appreciate through all the long years of my writing-- as you get older you have a bigger spectrum of characters from which to choose.
