Writers Who Have Succeeded In Older Age

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It is never too late to become a successful writer, painter, entrepreneur, or other. Starting it late is better than giving up your dreams and living an unhappy life.

There are a few examples that might convince you in the universal truth of this expression:

•Charles Flint was 61 when he had launched his successful IBM

•Tomas Edison has launched General Electrics at 45

•Gary Burrell had started Starbucks when he was 51

•Yoshisuke Aikawa has succeeded with Nissan Motor at 53

•Porsche has been launched by Ferdinand Porsche at the age of 56

There are painters who start after 70, bodybuilders, who start after 60, and Fauja Singh, a marathon runner, who have started at 89. Writing career after 50 sounds not only reasonable but also successful. People with life experience have much more to share with a younger generation.

#1 Sherwood Anderson

American writer who has been writing between World War I and II. Like many other writers, he was trying to make his living with literature, but the attempts were not successful until his mature book Winesburg, Ohio (1919). At this time Anderson was 43 years old. During his life, he was experimenting a lot and looking for the way to become an independent writer without any secondary jobs. He was working as a house painter, race tracker helper, and a newsboy. His work at Chicago as an advertising writer was his main support and helped him to earn his living. Six years of his life he has devoted to the attempts of becoming a paint manufacturer. The one thing was always there - he never stopped writing fiction during his life.

#2 Marquis de Sade

This French writer is a real discovery. Due to his name, the work sadist and sadism have appeared. 32 years of his life he had spent in prisons and psychiatric hospital or an insane asylum, as it was called at the end of the XVIII beginning of the XIX century. He had written most of his literary works there. These were novels, short stories, plays, politic tracts, where he had described the importance of sexuality. There were elements of pornography combined with philosophy. He often propagated the freedom from politics, religion or morality. Sadist had appeared because Marquis had also described the please of inflicting pain. He only obtained freedom and an opportunity to publish his works after the French revolution, when he was 50 years old.

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#3 Helen DeWitt

She is known for her novel The Last Samurai which she only managed to finish when she was 39. To invest her proclivity for literature, she had to work on many different jobs starting with laundry service worker and up to legal secretary. Well educated at Cambridge University and having Doctor Philosophy from Brasenose College, she grew up mostly in Latin America, in Mexico, Columbia, Ecuador, and Brazil. She believed that fiction writing is very fragile and a slight smirk can damage it. She experienced financial difficulties, but her novel is successful and popular.

#4 Bram Stoker

The author of Dracula has a tough life as well. If you are a literature student searching for someone to write my thesis statements, consider this author to be a part of your research. Little Bram couldn’t walk or stand until he was seven. It didn’t prevent him from becoming one of the best soccer players at Trinity College in Dublin. After gaining a degree in Mathematics, he was working as an unpaid drama critic for Evening Mail while earning his living through his civil service at Dublin Castle. Bram’s idol was Sir Henry Irving. He had hired Stoker as a personal manager who led him to write The Duties of Clerks of Petty Sessions in Ireland. Dracula was published in 1897 when Bram Stoker was 50. Other novels have reached nor the quality neither the popularity of Dracula.

#5 George Eliot

A great representative of the XIX century English Victorian literature. Not only she was a famous and successful author, but also an inventor of a modern fiction psychological analysis characteristic. In her childhood, she was a bright student and visited baptists church regularly. After a while, she has changed her religious views drastically which led to disagreements with her father. She had published her first novel, Adam Bede when she was 40 years old. It had become the most popular and one of the best pastoral novels, that described her father’s early years.

#6 Charles Bukowski

Polish-German writer based in Los Angeles was a stranger most of his life. After he received refuse from the National army due to being “asocial”, he started to travel the country having various jobs and writing poems. He often contacted poor people and had plenty of spontaneous sexual experiences. He considered those people to be closer to the truth of life than any other. He was a fan of alcohol as well. His first novel Post Office he had finished at the age of 50 is far from beginner writer. He invested twenty nights, twenty pints of whiskey, eighty cigarets, and thirty-five sixes of beer.

#7 Richard Adams

Richard had a nice and slow paced life together with his wife and two children. He gained a degree at The College of Wooster. During his study, he also did military service in Palestine, Europe, and the Far East, but never fought against Germans or japans. His first novel Watership Down was published in 1972 when Adams was 52. During the next few years, they had sold more than a million copies. After that, the author had written 20 more novels, the last one, Gentle Footprints, in 2010. He had passed away in 2016 at the age of 96.

There are writers from various countries, nationalities, centuries, views, and destinies. Some of them were wealthy, others were poor. Most of them have written the most successful works of their lives after 45 or 50. Writer reaches his or her success in career together with the wisdom of human life that he or she has successfully obtained during a lifetime. On the other hand, all of them were connected to literature in any way. It is never too late to succeed in writing a novel.

Nicole Lewis is a professional analyst and freelance journalist. He believes that any person can become a writer is to develop writing skills continuously. Nicole supports young journalists and writers with advisory sessions and materials.