I’ll confess something that’s been nagging at me lately: I sometimes catch myself thinking I’ve missed the boat. That if I was going to make a real go of resurrecting my writing career–I mean really pursue it, not just dabble–I should have started decades ago when I was younger and hungrier and didn’t need reading glasses to see my keyboard. Then I started thinking about famous authors who started writing after 60…
… and recalled Laura Ingalls Wilder.
She was 65 years old when she published her first book, Little House in the Big Woods. Sixty-five. An age when conventional wisdom says you should be winding down, not firing up a literary career that would produce eight beloved books and influence generations of readers. She didn’t let age stop her, and thank goodness for that, because the world would be poorer without her stories.
Wilder isn’t alone, either. Turns out there’s a whole constellation of authors who prove that great writing careers can begin well into what we politely call “the golden years.” Their stories are worth telling, not just because they’re inspiring (though they absolutely are), but because they reveal something important about writing, aging, and the advantages that come with living long enough to have something worth saying.
The Late Bloomers Who Made It Big
Let me tell you about Bonnie Garmus, because her story is almost absurdly encouraging. She published her first novel, Lessons in Chemistry, when she was 64 years old. But here’s the kicker: that book was rejected 98 times before it found a publisher.
Ninety-eight rejections.
Most aspiring writers would have given up after a dozen. Maybe two dozen if they’re particularly stubborn. But Garmus kept going, and that persistence paid off spectacularly. Lessons in Chemistry became a massive bestseller and was adapted into a Netflix series. In an interview, Garmus said something that stuck with me: “Age will never matter when you’re a writer, because no one ever sees you…no one really cares how old you are.”
Her advice for older aspiring writers? Stop telling yourself it’s too late and instead say to yourself, “It’s time.”
It’s time. Not “it’s too late.” What a shift in perspective that is. Especially for authors who started writing after 60.
Then there’s Harriet Doerr, who published her first novel, Stones of Ibarra, when she was 74 years old. Seventy-four! The book went on to win a National Book Award. She’d spent the first several decades of her life in California, then moved to Mexico with her husband Albert to restore a family copper mine. After Albert’s death, she returned to California in her sixties, finished her education, and began writing.
Those years in Mexico, those decades of living and observing and experiencing, they became the raw material for her fiction. She couldn’t have written Stones of Ibarra at 30 because she hadn’t lived it yet. The book required all those accumulated years.
Raymond Chandler took a different path to writing. He was an oil company executive who lost his job during the Great Depression, three years into that economic catastrophe, at age 44. His response? He decided to write detective fiction. His first short story was published a year later, and his first novel, The Big Sleep, came out when he was 51. He would go on to become one of the most celebrated crime writers in literary history.
Only Raymond Chandler would respond to unemployment during the Depression by launching a literary career. But it worked, didn’t it?
The Advantages Nobody Talks About
Here’s what I’ve been pondering: Why do some writers actually get better as they get older? What is it about age that, despite all the things we lose (fast typing speed, the ability to stay up until 3 a.m. on a deadline, our tolerance for rejection), might actually make us better storytellers?
Experience, obviously. By the time you hit 60 or 70, you’ve lived through things. Marriages and divorces, births and deaths, successes and failures, moments of grace and periods of grinding difficulty. You’ve watched the world change, witnessed history unfold, accumulated decades of observations about how people actually behave when life gets complicated.
That lived experience translates into depth on the page. Your characters feel real because you’ve known real people, hundreds of them, thousands of them, and your conflicts ring true because you’ve navigated actual conflicts. Your insights about human nature come from decades of watching humans be… well, human.
But there’s more to it than just having lived a long time. There’s something about the perspective that comes with age, a kind of wisdom that younger writers, no matter how talented, simply can’t access yet.
You know what I mean. When you’re 25, everything feels urgent and absolute. Every heartbreak is the end of the world. Every triumph is proof of your exceptional destiny. There’s a intensity to that experience, sure, but there’s also a narrowness.
By 60 or 70, you’ve gained perspective. You understand that most catastrophes pass, that people contain multitudes, that life is complicated and contradictory and rarely fits into neat narratives. This nuanced view of human experience makes for richer, more complex storytelling.
The Freedom That Comes With Not Needing to Prove Anything
Speaking of perspective, let me tell you what might be the greatest advantage of starting a writing career late in life: you don’t need this to work out.
Sounds counterintuitive, right? But think about it. When you’re 22 and trying to launch a writing career, the stakes feel enormous. You need to make a living and you want to prove to your parents (and yourself) that your English degree wasn’t a waste. You need success to validate your choices, your talent, your worth.
That desperation, that need for external validation, can warp your writing. You start chasing trends instead of following your own voice and perhaps you make compromises that chip away at what makes your work distinctive. You measure success in all the wrong ways.
But when you start writing seriously at 65? You’ve already had a career; you’ve already proven yourself in other arenas. You’ve (hopefully) made peace with who you are and what you’ve accomplished. You don’t need writing to save you or validate you or pay your mortgage.
This freedom, the freedom to write exactly what you want, exactly how you want to write it, is incredibly valuable. It allows for authenticity that younger, hungrier writers often can’t afford.
Plus, let’s be honest, you’ve got less time to waste on things that don’t matter. You’re not going to spend five years writing a novel that doesn’t excite you just because you think it might be commercially viable. You’re not going to tolerate feedback that doesn’t ring true or editors who don’t respect your vision. You’ve earned the right to be selective about where you invest your diminishing supply of days.
This clarity of purpose shows up in the work itself.
The Practical Advantages (Yes, There Are Some)
Beyond the psychological and creative benefits, there are some genuinely practical advantages to pursuing writing in retirement.
For one thing, you’ve got time. Not infinite time–none of us have that–but more discretionary time than you had during your working years. No commute, no mandatory meetings, no performance reviews. You can structure your days around your writing instead of squeezing writing into the margins of an exhausting work schedule.
Many older writers also have more financial stability than they did earlier in life. Maybe you’ve got a pension, or Social Security, or retirement savings that cover your basic needs. This means you can afford to take creative risks, to write the weird experimental novel or the deeply personal memoir without worrying about whether it’ll pay the bills.
And here’s something of utmost importance: older writers often have accumulated a lifetime of stories and relationships that younger writers simply don’t have access to. You remember a world that doesn’t exist anymore. You’ve witnessed cultural shifts and technological revolutions. You know what life was like before the internet, before cable TV, before the world became this hyperconnected, always-on madness.
That historical perspective is valuable, not just for writing historical fiction or memoir, but for understanding how people and societies change over time. It gives your work texture and depth.
The Mindset Shift That Makes It Possible
I’ve been reading interviews with writers who started late in life, and there’s a common thread that runs through their stories: at some point, they stopped asking for permission and just started.
They stopped waiting for the perfect time (there isn’t one). And they stopped worrying about whether they had enough talent (you’ll never know unless you try). They stopped letting age be an excuse (it’s actually an advantage). They just… began.
One writer put it beautifully: “When you hear the call to write, no matter where you are in life, it is worth answering.”
The call to write. I like that framing. It suggests that writing chooses us as much as we choose it, and that the appropriate response to that calling isn’t to ask whether we’re qualified or young enough or talented enough. The appropriate response is simply to answer.
What “Success” Actually Means
Here’s the thing about starting a writing career after 60: you get to define success on your own terms.
Maybe success means getting traditionally published, seeing your book in bookstores, winning awards. That’s certainly possible–Wilder, Doerr, Garmus, and countless others prove it.
But maybe success means something different. Maybe it’s finishing that memoir your grandchildren will cherish. Perhaps it’s publishing a handful of essays that resonate with readers going through similar life experiences. Maybe it’s simply the satisfaction of creating something meaningful, of wrestling language into shape, of saying what you came here to say.
The beautiful thing about being older is that you’re less susceptible to other people’s definitions of success. You’ve seen enough of life to know that external validation is fleeting and that the real satisfaction comes from doing work that matters to you.
Not everyone will write a bestseller. Not everyone will get published at all. But everyone who commits to the craft, who shows up regularly and does the work, will discover something valuable about themselves and the world. That’s not a consolation prize, that’s actually the point.
So What’s Stopping You?
If you’re reading this and you’re north of 60 and you’ve been thinking about writing seriously but telling yourself it’s too late, I want you to consider something: What if it’s not too late? What if all those years you think you’ve “wasted” not writing were actually necessary preparation? What if the stories you’re ready to tell now could only be told by someone who’s lived as long as you have?
Bonnie Garmus was rejected 98 times before her success at 64. Laura Ingalls Wilder started at 65. Harriet Doerr published her first novel at 74. These aren’t anomalies or flukes, they’re proof that great writing can emerge at any age, and sometimes the best writing comes from people who’ve lived long enough to have something profound to say.
You have stories that only you can tell. Experiences that shaped you, observations that matter, wisdom that took decades to accumulate. The world might not be clamoring for those stories (yet), but that doesn’t mean they’re not worth writing.
Your age isn’t a liability–it’s your competitive advantage. Use it.
I started this blog post admitting that I sometimes think I’ve missed the boat. But the more I learn about writers who started late and succeeded, the more I realize that boat metaphor is all wrong.
Writing isn’t a boat that leaves the harbor at a specific time, stranding everyone who didn’t board early enough. It’s more like the ocean itself: vast, available, waiting for anyone brave enough to dive in, regardless of when they arrive at the shore.
So if you’ve been standing on that shore, wondering if it’s too late, let me tell you what Laura Ingalls Wilder and Bonnie Garmus and Harriet Doerr and Raymond Chandler and countless other late-blooming writers would tell you:
It’s not too late. It’s time.
The water’s fine. Come on in.
Hey, I’m 77 and I’ve Got Stories…
Stories about what it’s like to navigate life at this age (spoiler: it’s weird, wonderful, and occasionally terrifying). And stories about collaborating with AI to write books in ways that would have seemed like science fiction when I started putting words on paper. Stories about the daily realities, unexpected surprises, and hard-won wisdom that comes from three-quarters of a century on this planet. If you’re curious about authentic aging, writing innovation, or just enjoy good storytelling from someone who’s been around the block, subscribe to my weekly newsletter “Old Man Still Got Stories.” I promise to make it worth your time.