018: You’re Too Young To Be A Good Writer
Or, let’s make a 30 over 30 list
Hi friends,
Someday I would like to be the kind of person who publishes these when they say they’re going to. Unfortunately, that’s not who I have been in 2020 (even before the pandemic), and I don’t see that changing by the end of the year. I’m doing my best though! Maybe in the new year these will reliably start going out every Sunday.
I don’t know about you, but I’ve been really staring at that January 1 date coming up soon. It seems like these last few days of the year are dragging their feet, but I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. I know that the turning of a new year doesn’t like… actually change anything except the date, but it’ll be nice to at least feel like we’ve got a clean slate, right?
We’ve all been going through it this year. And while today’s writing isn’t exactly about that, it isn’t not about going through it. Maybe we should just get into it?
Another 30 Best Writers Under 30 list circulated recently. I mean, they circulate pretty reliably at least once a year, from any publication who wants to take the time to do the research to write one. I never read them, and I actually pretty aggressively hate this practice.
Because here’s the thing about 30 Under 30 lists: They're just made to make you feel bad about your level of success relative to your age. They usually ignore the privilege the people on the list had, the steps further up the ladder that they were born standing on. Sure, those people could have not worked hard, could have not climbed higher. But it's disingenuous at best to assume that we all started at the ground level.
More importantly, to me at least, is the absolute uselessness of such a measure. Because before 30 you likely haven't lived enough life to be good a great writer.
“30 Under 30,” in any subject, is an offshoot of our obsession with youth in general. And it stems from our fear that there is any such thing as being "too old" to be successful. (Probably because our definition of success is all tied up in what we consider beautiful as well, and our obsession with beauty is defined entirely by youthfulness.) And, well, maybe in some fields there is such a thing as "too old.” After all, is it possible to start an NFL career at 50? Probably not. I don't know about you, but I don't have the physical stamina to withstand being tackled and I'm only 30. (I mean, I never did, but I probably could have gotten up a lot better at 22 than I could now.)
But writing is the exact opposite, it depends on life experience, on making it through things. You can't just sit at a computer for a couple of hours a day a few times a week and become a great writer. It requires both practicing writing and a ton of reading. The best thing any writer can do to get better is read more, and read widely. For my money, reading a lot is the best to learn the beats of a story--better than any writing class, better than any structure diagram. Because reading makes you learn the beats that make up a good story by heart. You don't just know them, you feel them. But that takes time. It takes so. much. time. Good writing requires so much time invested up front, before you ever even put a pen to paper.
Truly excellent writing requires experience. It requires a life lived. It doesn't mean that youngsters can't be good writers. I was a decent writer at 16, if I may say so myself, but the words I wrote then don't have the same weight behind them. They ring hollow. I was writing about heartbreak and love and adventure before I'd really had any of those things. And sure, I had experienced them by 23, or 25, or 28. But they hadn't percolated through my body and settled into my bones yet. Maybe this sounds like an insane statement, but I feel like I can always tell who has gotten comfortable with their own life story by the way they move, by if their existence seems to fit them like a long-loved coat, rather than a stiff pair of boots.
To really write about life, to write candidly and with meaning, I think your own experience needs to fit you like a long-loved coat, like something you shrug into every day and you know works for you. When it still hurts to walk in, when it still gives you blisters if you stand too long... You're not ready. Experience hasn't settled into your body yet in a way that will be easily reproducible on the page. You don't know the ins and outs of it yet. You don't know where the seams are delicate, which buttons always come loose. Until you do, until your life experience has settled on you that way, your writing will always echo a little hollow.
So fuck a 30 under 30 list. They might be exceptional people (and sure, they might have written an exceptional book), but they are the exception. They’re far from the rule.
There is no timeline for becoming a good writer. Ignore shitty lists that make you feel like there is (or was) a deadline for success. There is no deadline for writing anything. Start tomorrow. Start in a decade. Start when you turn 80. Who the fuck cares? 30 under 30 is nonsense.
Instead of a list of links of things I read this week, here are some authors I love who published their first books after the age of 30:
Toni Morrison
Bram Stoker
Anthony Burgess
George Eliot
Anna Sewell
Find your next favorite through Book Riot’s “30 Writers Who Found Success After 30.”
Thanks for reading, as always. If you want to respond, just hit reply. Your response will get to me (and only me).
Stay safe out there. Wear a mask, don’t let the internet scare you or make you think you’re a failure.
(What a weird sign off my grandmother never would have had to write at my age, huh?)
xx,
Valorie