Conversations from the Archive
April 2015
BinderCon Los Angeles
While the Gods Were Sleeping, Elizabeth Enslin
Armor, Amour, Amy Pence
Veiled Intentions, Eileen Rendahl
Don’t Move: A Novella, Nikki Stern
Landfalls, Naomi Williams
Excerpts:
Naomi Williams: I was already well past my three score and ten, and I had fuck-all to show for it. We’re not role models for writing gracefully into our dotage.
Elizabeth Enslin: [While the Gods Were Sleeping] took between seven and twenty years to write [because I was a single parent]. The passing years gave me so much perspective. It would have been a very different story if I’d written it when I was younger. Aging helped me learn how to forgive a bit. I could add more dimensions, layers, the nuances in between.
The passing years helped me move to tentative insight. I learned to be a better writer to achieve the complexity I wanted to tell with each passing year. The story is more complex.
Writing at a later age is still a lot of work.
Nikki Stern: I came out of the womb trying to say something and not sure how I was going to say it. I was always trying to communicate.
I became a reluctant voice of the 9/11 tragedy when my husband died that day. He was killed a dozen years after we got married. Then I started writing and speaking. I was self-conscious about being the 9/11 spokesperson because I was already older then. People don’t take you seriously when you’re of retirement age.
When editors look at you as a person past retirement, they think, “It won’t be so bad if we don’t take her on.”
My first book was published when I was sixty one, my second when I was sixty three. So, you kids . . .
[I went on to] self-publish a novella. At ninety-nine cents, it’s doing pretty well. I wouldn’t do it again.
You disappear between sixty and eighty. You come back when you’re eighty because some of us are still standing, and they say, “Oh, she wrote a book! How cute!”
Writing has given me purpose and focus like nothing has. I hopefully will write until the day I drop dead. I need writing. I hope writing needs me.
Eileen Rendahl: I came to writing a little later because it took me a long time to figure out what on earth I wanted to say—and to put it into perspective, but I’m as neurotic now as I was in my twenties. I’m stuck with that, but I am more focused. I’m less moody than I was. My family would be shocked to hear this.
You need some sharp elbows. There are enough barriers out there. You don’t need to make more for yourself.
I do think there is a slight preference toward younger writers and YA. It’s easier to market.
Don’t let age affect being a student of your craft.
Amy Pence: Finding my midlife voice has been a process of letting go. At forty nine, my first book of poems was published. When young, I was isolated. There was no internet then. I didn’t have a way to find a community.
I also listened to too many voices as a young person. I was often told my work was too obscure. Now I’ve made it much clearer.
[Carl Jung said,] “In midlife, we individuate all over again.” We get rid of illusions.
Time gave me a distance to really see.
I love the revising part more now. I used to hate to revise.
Rendahl: It’s easier to hear criticism when you’re older. Your book is not your baby. [Although,] if there’s something wrong with your baby, you want to fix your baby.
Enslin: I go through life being a late bloomer. I’m comfortable with late blooming. I still envision myself as a young person.
Williams: A few years ago, I stopped getting my hair colored. [I thought,] “I do not want to keep up with my author photo. I will be chasing that image for the next ten years if I use the photo of the pretty, colored hair.”
I didn’t get my MFA until I was forty three. It’s really hard to be the oldest person. I had to take two years off my life. I was lucky I had a spouse with an income and benefits.
I didn’t get an agent until seven years after [finishing my MFA. Getting an MFA] had nothing to do with it.
Rendahl: Don’t isolate yourself from younger writers.
Williams: The young MFA students in my program are now getting older. We have more in common.
Enslin: There’s no substitute, no way around revising. Hone your craft. Open yourself up to younger writers. It’s good to have intergenerational interaction.
Stern: Market four to five days a week. Just do it. I spend two hours a day on marketing. I hate PR, but I’m good at it. The appearance becomes reality.