This week, I am appearing on a panel with another author. It is being hosted by a rather prestigious book fair in Detroit.
In the “before times,” I would be getting on a plane today and flying to Detroit. I am very disappointed that the wonderful nine-city book tour I was scheduled to go on this year and next has been replaced by Zoom events. And while flying around the country on someone else’s dime, being put up in nice hotels, and being wined and dined certainly is exciting, I just looked up the weather in Detroit. It is 35 degrees with a mixture of freezing rain and snow projected. Maybe not flying to Detroit this week is OK, after all.
What I wanted to share is that I am appearing on the panel with the writer Bess Kalb.
Bess is in her early 30s. She is adorable and funny — a comedy writer for "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" She wrote a very witty and poignant book, called “Nobody Will Tell You This But Me,” about a remarkable relationship she had with her grandmother. Did I mention that she is in her early 30s?
Last year, at almost exactly this time, I published my first novel. I am in my early 70s.
I was not an overnight success at age 72. No, I started this journey 25 years ago. A professor and voracious reader and sometime journalist, my one, true passion was fiction. I wanted to write novels, to create long stories spanning years and generations. I had a million stories bouncing around in my head, and I wanted to tell them. Some stories were historical, some romantic, some about friendship, some about kids and parents.
With my late husband’s support, I cut down on my university teaching hours, stopped accepting every community volunteer job I was asked to do, and took some creative writing classes at Stanford, near our home in Northern California. Teachers there gave me just enough encouragement to make me put my tush in the writer’s chair and write whenever my job or children weren’t clamoring for my attention.
I constantly submitted my work, almost from the beginning. I got some short stories published, was awarded a few heavenly writer’s residencies in beautiful locations, but kept at my constant goal: to publish a novel.
And so, I spent several years writing my first novel. I submitted this novel in the way I’d been taught at Stanford. However, I stopped at around 15 submissions.
The rejections, although nice and even encouraging, were increasingly painful to read. But I never got bitter. I was determined to get better, to get so good at my craft that publishers could not turn me down.
Now, 15 rejections is nothing for a debut novelist. It’s said J.K. Rowling, of "Harry Potter" fame, received over 75 before her book saw the light of day. But, I couldn’t take all the rejections, nice as they were — it felt like one of my children was being rejected.
So, I’d start a new novel. And that is why I had four unpublished novels in my desk and on my hard drive as I approached old age.
My dear husband, like my late husband, was similarly encouraging. However, he badgered me to work harder at publication — even challenging me by asking if I wanted to die with those four novels still in my desk or on my hard drive.
And, to my delight, finally, last year, "Love is a Rebellious Bird" was published. Many wonderful things have happened since then. I’ve won several prizes, and even for short periods, was a best seller on Southern California’s Independent Book Seller’s list and on Amazon.
My book is now available as an audiobook, with a great narrator. I’ve got this book tour, albeit virtual, bringing me to readers all across the country. And, I’ve had the great pleasure of speaking to book groups near and far — something that would have been more difficult before the age of Zoom.
But, still. Next week I’m on a panel with a young, attractive author who writes for "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" Did I mention that she’s in her early 30s?
What I think about is how many authors I love who have produced some of their most exceptional work in their 70s. I think of Philip Roth and Isabel Allende, to name a few. I think of storytellers who even produced their “debut” novel in their 70s: Harriet Doer and Tillie Olsen.
And I know that the world welcomes a good story, no matter the age of the storyteller. Somehow, a life of loving, raising children, facing unbearable loss, heartbreak and unexpected joy must contain valuable material.
A famous writer once said that he could have wallpapered a room with his rejection letters. I could have done the same, but now the desk I am sitting at has on it a copy, between lovely cover art, of my published novel.
I am hard at work on another. And, the thing I most pass on to those passionate about creating — whether it be art, music, invention or software — is that persistence is the most valuable commodity we have.