Late Bloomers – why age is no barrier to becoming a published author

Earlier this year I read an article in the Huffington Post about famous authors who began their writing career quite late in life. These writers are now household names around the world.

As yet, I have not reached the status of published author, and nudging the top end of middle age, I find it inspiring to see that writing is not something we need retire from as we get older. Quite clearly, it seems that a lifetime of working and raising families can only temporarily hinder the creativity and stifle the urges of a writer. Once the gift of more time is bestowed upon us, many writers find that their creative juices flow, unchecked, from the rich tapestry of a life well lived. Life, love, travel, trials and tribulations all provide fertile fodder for wonderful stories.

The writers mentioned by the Huffington Post include such illustrious names as Laura Ingalls Wilder and Frank McCourt, both first published in their sixties. Even better, Mary Wesley and Harriet Doerr were well into their seventies!  ‘Watership Down’ author, Richard Adams, was in his mid-fifties, and the ‘babies’ of the group, Raymond Chandler and James A. Michener, were in their forties. 

I decided to do some research to see if any Australian authors were also ‘Late Bloomers’, and came up with some surprising finds.

Elizabeth Stead published her first novel, ‘The Fishcastle’ when she was in her late sixties. Now in her eighties, she has just recently had her fifth novel, ‘The Sparrows of Edward Street’ published.

One of Australia’s most acclaimed writers, Elizabeth Jolley, was fifty-three when her first novel was published.  She was a prolific writer and went on to have fifteen novels published, plus a swag of short stories and non-fiction books. Through her teaching of creative writing to students in Western Australia, (including Tim Winton), Elizabeth Jolley left behind a legacy of successful publications, all receiving significant critical acclaim.

Shirley Painter’s first book was published at the ripe old age of eighty-three! Her memoir, ‘The Bean Patch’ took a lifetime to get written, and tells of her violent and shocking childhood. I can only wonder of the amount of pain Shirley Painter must have endured, and am glad that the therapeutic act of writing her story may go on to help others similarly treated.

Christina Stead, an often controversial but very successful writer, was thirty-two when her first book, ‘Seven poor men of Sydney’ was published.  Christina Stead was listed in Time magazine’s ‘Best 100 novels 1923 – 2005’.

Polish immigrant to Australia, and survivor of the Holocaust, Jacob Rosenberg was first published at the age of seventy-two. His published works covered collections of poems and short stories, plus memoirs.

Glenda Guest, another mature-age first novelist, has won many awards and much acclaim for her novel ‘Siddon Rock’. In her bio on the Australian Literature Management web site, Glenda Guest says “Although I started to write late in my life I always knew that I would become a novelist. I am stunned to be receiving this attention which is a huge boost to my confidence and will help me to press on with writing my next novel. This shows that it’s never too late to start a new endeavour”. Ref: http://www.austlit.com/a-list-f-k.html

So, it is with much excitement and hope that I too now throw my hat into the ring. As I approach the end of the process of writing my novel, ‘Stone of Heaven and Earth’, I realise that age does not dim the prospect of becoming published.

Vale Davy Jones - 30th December 1945 – 1st March 2012

On 18^th February, I happened to include Davy Jones and the Monkees in a blog I was writing, and even included a link to Davy singing ‘Daydream Believer’ on You Tube.

Only a week and a half later, Davy Jones died.

I have only fond memories of my love affair with Davy back in the sixties.  He was cute, could sing, and was a true showman.

Rest in peace, Davy Jones.  It was nice knowing you.

Come on baby, light my Kindle

I finally succumbed to the desire to own a Kindle. I have been maintaining that I will never buy an eReader because I love real, paper books, which I do. I treasure them, in fact. I still have books that were my favourites back in the 1960s. Back then I read them, and re-read them, over and over, and can still read them and enjoy them today.

I believe that proper, REAL, books, will never be obsolete. People love them. But I can remember many changes in my long life.

As a child, I can remember my father giving us all a crystal set. A tiny little thing with some wires attached and an ear plug. We could then lie in bed at night and listen to the wireless (radio – ha ha, told you I was old).

In the lounge room, we had a big polished wooden cabinet which was our AWA Wireless.

My Dad used to always listen to the conservative ABC Radio, and at 8pm every night, the whole house had to be quiet while he listened to the national news. He was a news-a-holic, and even had a Bakelite radio on the table next to his bed, which he used to listen to all night

On Friday nights, we used to tune in to a radio serial called The Argonauts Club. I was the youngest in the family, but my brother and sister got to join and become actual Argonauts.  I remember my sister was called Pleaides66.  I was so envious!  After the Argonauts Club, we used to listen to Keith Smith’s Widdle Woundup.  Well, that is what I used to call it.  I was VERY young, you understand.  It was actually Riddle Roundup, and I can still remember a riddle that I heard way back then on our old wireless set.

Q. How do you spell Wattle bark in three letters?

A. Dog.

Ha ha.  I laughed myself sick with that one.  Keith Smith eventually ended up on television when it finally came to Australia.  Although, in fairness, the rest of Australia got TV well before we did. We didn’t get television until well into the 1960s as Mum and Dad were really poor.  It started out as Mum hiring a TV for us during the school holidays, then she would send it back, with us crying and begging her not to.  Poor Mum.  :-/

Our grandmother lived with us. She and Mum were addicted to a lunch time serial called “Blue Hills” which won some records for the longest running radio play in the world or something.  I can still remember the music as it started up. As soon as that would come on, my Mum and Nana would down their mops and buckets, ironing boards and mending, to have their lunch and listen to Gwen Meredith and the others. Looking back, Blue Hills was probably the catalyst for daytime soaps like The Bold and the Beautiful, or Days of our Dreary Bloody Lives, as my Dad used to call it.

But on Saturday nights, my sisters, brother and I would all lie on the carpet in front of the wireless in absolute fanatical expectancy, waiting for …  The Beatle Hour!  We would have to make sure that we had Dad in a good mood so that he wouldn’t crack up and make us listen to some awful classical music on the ABC, or maybe a dodgy old radio play.  

The ‘Fab Four’ were everybody’s favourites.  Everybody under 21 years old, that is. My mother and father thought that their ‘mop top’ hairdos and tight pants were just sinful. Dad preferred Frank Ifield, or the Platters. Mum still preferred Bing Crosby.  But we kids LOVED the Beatles.  John Lennon was always my favourite, and our bedroom walls would be absolutely covered in big colour posters of John, George, Ringo and Paul.  Oh, they were so handsome!  So anyway, every week on The Beatle Hour, we could listen to their songs, and sometimes to interviews with them. It was heaven.

Eventually, our old wireless got moved to Mum and Dad’s bedroom and got covered in Dad’s clothes as that is where he hung them when he got home from work, and a new black and white television took over our lounge room, and our lives.

When I eventually became a teenager, I was way behind everyone else at school who had singles, records.  I was mad keen on the Monkees in Year 8 and one day a girl at school sold me her single of ‘Last Train to Clarksville’ for 50 cents. (They were $1 new).  What a bargain!  My first ever vinyl record! My collection had begun! It seemed everyone else at school had a father who had a job and earned good money to be able to buy their kids records.  I didn’t.  In Year 8 my Dad was admitted to hospital with Tuberculosis and never worked again. We were poor.  I didn’t realise at the time just how poor.  Being the youngest of four children, it was just normal for me to never have anything new.  I always wore hand me down shoes, uniforms, everything.  Oh, how I yearned for everything the other kids had.  When the Monkees flew into Australia in 1968, other girls in my class went to the concert.  I remember the day their plane flew over our house. It was a Sunday, and together with my next door neighbour, Glenda, who also loved the Monkees, stood out in our back yard and waved to the Goddam plane!  OMG, I am almost ashamed to tell you all that.  But as I don’t have that many readers of my blog anyway, I guess I can make a dill out of myself.  “Davy, Davy, I love you!” I called with tears streaming down my face.  I still believe to this very day that it WAS their plane that flew over my house. :-/

Anyway, I eventually left school and got a job in a finance company as an “office girl”.  I had reached the ripe old age of 14 years and 10 months.  Out into the wide, wild world I went.  A shy, scared, unworldly, quiet little thing. I remember that I bought my very first brand new dress (extremely short) for $6 and wore it to our work Christmas party. I had just turned 15. My wage was $17.60 a week.  True.  Single records cost $1 each and albums cost $5.95 (we went decimal here in 1966, no more Pounds, Shillings, Pence. We had dollars and cents now).

And so, my record collection grew. And grew.  And so did I, and eventually there were rumours that vinyl records would soon be history.  “NO,” I cried.  “OVER MY DEAD BODY!”

An army of horrid little cassette tapes filled the record stores. Everyone had to by a Cassette Player to listen to the things.  Sony brought out a Walkman so that you could listen to your favourite music on the go. Many people, obviously with more money than me, replaced their old vinyls with miniature versions, cassettes.  But what about the great books and artwork that we got with vinyl. I loved that artwork.  Double albums had spectacular big posters. My copy of ‘Concert for Bangladesh’ was BOXED, for heaven’s sake, AND included a book!

And so, I held off buying a cassette tape player because I loved my vinyls.  I grew up even more, got married, bought a car with an 8 Track Cartridge player in it and it came with one cartridge – Electric Light Orchestra.  
Then, just at the time when my marriage was imploding, along came the Compact Disc CD.  I was one of the last people I know to own one. No way, I said, was I going to buy one of those stupid things. Nothing sounded as good as vinyl.

Well, today, my CD collection numbers in its thousands, and that is not a lie. But guess what? Can I show you my record collection?  My son recently said I should sell them, that some people collect them because they are antiques and could be valuable. I said, hey, I collect them!  I still love them, I never play them, but I do look at their fabulous art work.

Oh, hang on.  I tell a lie.  I did get rid of one of my vinyls last year. I saw an interview on TV with a famous 70s rock singer from Brisbane, Carol Lloyd. She was talking about how her album, ‘A Matter of Time’, which is a classic and hit number one here in Brisbane and other parts of Australia, had been digitised (sounds painful doesn’t it), and put onto CD. The interviewer asked if she still had one of the old vinyl versions because apparently they are like hen’s teeth.  Carol said no.  So….. I got in touch with the great Carol Lloyd (lead singer of Railroad Gin and Carol Lloyd Band), and I said I would give her my copy.  She was ecstatic!  We met one day in the city. I handed over the precious vinyl. She, so kindly, gave me an autographed copy of the CD.  What a wonderful woman!

So, where was I?  Oh yes.  I bought myself a Kindle the other day. I don’t need one. I just craved one.  Just to make sure I don’t get left behind technology and all the latest trends. But I can assure all my legion of blog fans that I have not given up reading good old paper books. I will NEVER get rid of ‘Alison’s Island Adventure’ and ‘Secret of the Blue Grotto’, but I will enjoy reading books on my kindle and thanking the heavens that I am still alive to see this wonderful technology.

So, don’t put eBooks and eReaders down. They are
just another form of the things we love.

Technology must advance and we can go with it and enjoy it, or be stubborn and miss out on all the wonders that are there for the taking.

The ultra-cute Davy Jones and the Monkees:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nU615FaODCg

Australia's first lady of true rock, Carol Lloyd

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2G9UUIgCQqQ

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What do I keep, what do I throw away?

The haunting song by Melanie Safka, What do I keep, what do I throw away, has been playing on continuous repeat setting through my mind over the last couple of weeks.

It has been a harrowing time, having to go through all of my elderly mother’s belongings, dividing them up between my siblings and myself, working out who gave her that little green vase, which one of us gave her the little silver letter opener that she used every day of her life.   

The time had come for my little Mum to move out of her humble, yet well-loved home. To move away from her garden which she lovingly tended every day. It was more than just a hobby, she loved feeling the red earth with her fingers, cosseting her plants into bounteous beauty. Every month, she would win a prize at the Garden Club where she was a life member, for a bloom that just knocked everyone’s socks off. She didn’t try to beat everyone else with her flowers, she just liked to take them along to show everyone how beautiful they were.

It was my job to clean out her book case.  I found her set of diaries going back to 1975, the year she moved into this house. I got a shock to find that she had kept every birthday, Christmas card and mother’s day card she was ever given, all bundled neatly together and tied with ribbons that had once been wrapped around a gift. The bundles were neatly marked – Christmas 2001, my 85^th birthday, my 90^th birthday. She had kept every single one.

But now, like the grim reaper, I had the sad job of throwing them out. In a matter of hours, her house which had contained the remnants and souvenirs of her whole life, had been either divided up, given to charity, or thrown out. I went there just yesterday, and it was like walking into a stranger’s place. The home which had once been warm, inviting, a safe haven, a place to laugh, play and relax, was just a house. Four walls and a roof. The beating heart, my Mum, was gone from 72 Island Street. Gone, never to return, never to sit on the top step waiting for us to arrive. Never to put the kettle on to make a cuppa, to get her biscuits out for a bit of morning tea.

Mum has a new life now.She is in a lovely, fresh room with a view over a garden. She has people who can give her the round the clock care that she needs. She has company, no more long, lonely days. She will have people to cook for her, and no more washing up. The hostel where she now lives is her new home. I hope she learns to love it and be happy there.

Melanie Safka, your song is sad and harrowing. I wonder, did you write it for people like me, who have to make the most of a situation that comes to everyone sooner or later. It is a rite of passage for us all. We live, we move on. For some it is old age that causes this change. For some death, and for others the end of a relationship. We live, we move on.  But what do we keep, and what do we throw away?

The name that I have doesn't belong to me
And there's only a circle where his ring used to be
I'd like to go back to what I was once before
But I'm nobody's little girl any more

What do I keep, what do I throw away
How am I different, what was I yesterday
What can I be tomorrow, when I can't even think of today
How can I ever end my sorrow
When the night doesn't end with the day

When I look around everything seems so strange
And I don't need a mirror to tell me how much I've changed
The things I never thought I could do I have done,
But I'm too weak to stop
And much too frightened to run

What do I keep, what do I throw away
How am I different, what was I yesterday
What can I be tomorrow, when I can't even think of today
How can I ever end my sorrow
When the night doesn't end with the day

The only version of the song I could find is here

One Perfect Day

I have one day left to achieve so many things.  One day left of my annual holidays, that precious few weeks off work in which I try accomplish so many things – dentist, vet, doctor, hairdresser appointments that I just don’t get time to do in my normal workaday life.  I also try to use this time to de-stress from my high pressure job that entails a two and a half hour commute every day. 

So what has happened to my other days?

Well, there was Christmas of course, and that whole week was filled with laughter, fun, family, friends, and eating.

Then there was New Year’s Eve which I spent in the company of my nearest and dearest.  There was the usual retrospective glance back over the shoulder to the year just fading, an analysis of what I should have done, could have done, and would have done if I had had the time.  There was also the mental checklist of what I will do in 2012, what I will achieve for myself and for my family, how I will live, how I will look after my health.

Then there was a blissful week where two days were spent in the peace and tranquillity of a writer’s retreat way up in the mountains.  Bliss.

Then back to earth with a thud.  My poor little Mum who is almost 94 needed me.  She has become extremely frail and virtually unable to care for herself.  So I have spent almost every day until this, my last day of holidays before I go back to work, with her.  Precious time.  It is hard to be seeing this once vital, energetic and extremely sharp little woman unable to do the basics for herself, even little simple things that we all take for granted, like getting up out of bed in the morning.  I feel so sad for her. She is tired, so very tired. She still worries about me and my siblings, all middle aged (or more) adults who are able to take care of themselves.

Mum has a small part in my book, ‘Stone of Heaven and Earth’.  She is just a little girl in it, but in writing the book, I can see where she got her strength of character from. She had a very difficult and sad childhood, not from abuse or anything like that, but from circumstances that most would think could only happen in a book.  She often talks about her father, Oliver, although she doesn’t remember him as he died when she was a tad under two years old.

Mum and her Dad, Oliver, just weeks before he died

When my Mum says to me, “I’m so tired”, I know that she means she is ready to go.  Ready to go and meet her Dad, sit on his knee and hug him. Tell him how much she has missed him.  She will also get to see her beloved mother, Darl, and her brother and sister.  They are all up there.  She will have a ball when she is finally taken up there to join the party.

I will miss her terribly.  She has been the one constant in my whole life.  My friend, my mentor, my Mum.  She hasn’t gone yet and perhaps I am being premature in thinking along these lines, but I don’t think so.  But for now, I just want to make her life as happy, pain free, and peaceful as I can. That’s why I have treasured the days and nights I have spent with my Mum over my annual holiday break. They have been good.

Mum and Karob

So, what am I going to do on this one, last, precious day of my annual leave?  Paperwork, housework, preparation for a busy year ahead.  But I will also pop over and visit my Mum, make her a cup of tea, and chat.  It will end up being one perfect day.

One Perfect Day - Little Heroes.  This clip by Sarah Storer.

Writing Retreat - Mt Tamborine

Imagine a blissfully quiet and peaceful location, perched on the very edge of a deep, deep valley. Imagine being surrounded by rainforest, birds and clear, crisp mountain air and only one hour from hot and humid Brisbane in the middle of summer.

Well, imagine no more. The reality is that Woodleigh Retreat is a comfortable and therapeutic getaway for anyone wanting to get stuck into their writing.
Fellow Brisbane author, Matt T. Dillon, and I spent three days at Woodleigh Retreat atop beautiful Mount Tamborine. The views from Woodleigh Retreat are magnificent and very inspirational. They call this area in the Gold Coast hinterland the ‘green behind the gold'. Looking east, we could see directly down to Surfers Paradise on the Gold Coast, then south to Mt Warning and the border ranges, then west up the valley to Springbrook. The views were breathtaking.

We catered for ourselves, although a bacon, eggs and toast breakfast is provided (cook yourself in the well-equipped kitchenette). If you get sick of writing, go for a short drive and visit the many wineries, antique stores, art galleries, artisan shops, plant nurseries, chocolatier, and coffee farm. For the active writers out there, go for some of the many rainforest walks to get your head around the plots and characters of your book.

Locals will know that it can get quite cold up in the mountains in winter, and Woodleigh has a log fire in each cabin, plus a spa bath big enough for two. In the summer months, there is a lovely swimming pool, barbecue area and acres of lovely lush green lawn and gorgeous gums to relax under.
Matt and I each achieved the writing goals we set ourselves, plus got to look around at the many interesting shops and galleries.

I can recommend this type of therapy for any writers who are short of time and unable to find the tranquillity and inspiration at home. Check it out at http://www.woodleigh.com/ or see what kind of a good deal you can get at Wotif.com.