Presenting the inaugural presentation of The Second Act Author, my video series dedicated to helping writers in their “second act” — fifty, sixty, seventy, eighty years or older — bring their writing to fruition, to market, and to an audience. Watch the video or, if you prefer, read the article adapted from the video content.
So, you’re on the other side of 50 years old. Maybe quite a ways from 50. Maybe you’re 60-plus, 70-plus, maybe you’re even 80 years or older. And you’re finally at that point in your life where you think maybe it’s time to write that book. To tell those stories you’ve been waiting decades to tell.
There are many reasons, perhaps, that caused you to keep putting that off… and there are just as many reasons why now is a better time to write than ever before.
Here’s a big one:
You have something of a superpower. A secret weapon, if you will. Something that writers younger than you, by and large, simply do not have.
This might not be that much of a secret if you’re 50, 60, 70, 80 years or older, because, after all, you’ve been on the planet for… 50, 60, 70, 80 years or more.
Your secret weapon is your experience. Your wisdom. You have, very likely, simply… experienced… more than anyone younger than you.
Why is that a superpower when it comes to writing, especially writing fiction?
Readers feel a tremendous affinity for the fictional characters in the stories they read… at least, we hope they do. That’s sort of the idea. You want people to think of your characters as if they were real people., to empathize with what those characters do, and say, and think. Especially if they’re the good guys.
And if they’re the bad guys, you at least want to be able to understand, as a reader, why that character would be driven to do the bad things they do.
That’s empathy: The ability to put oneself in another’s shoes; to feel what another person feels.
As an author with a broad range of experiences, you have what I like to call “soul coal” for your creative engine. You have the experience… and the experiences… to fuel your depiction of these characters.
You’ve lived.
You’ve had triumphs, and you’ve experienced defeats, and joy, and tragedy, and epiphanies, and grief to a degree that, again, by and large, younger people simply have not, because they just haven’t had enough life.
A writer in their twenties or thirties, and even in their forties (depending on just how eventful that life has been to date)… they might have to get examples of experiences from books they read, or television shows and movies they watch. When they depict it in their own fiction, they might be presenting an interpretation of an interpretation.
The emotional authenticity is twice removed. They watched or read someone else’s interpretation, and then wrote it as something happening to their own characters.
A skillful writer, well-versed and well-practiced in their craft, can certainly do a convincing depiction… if they have that skill and craft.
But you?
You’ve already been through it.
You’ve experienced the marriages, and the childbirths, and seeing your kids off to college, and seeing your own children have children. You’ve experienced, very possibly, serious illnesses for yourself or for people you love. You’ve probably experienced if not actively caring for your own older parents, then by the time you’re 50, 60, certainly 70 or 80, the loss of those parents.
You’ve lost some siblings, maybe. Almost certainly, you’ve lost friends and loved ones. You’ve gone through the divorces, the job loss and the promotions, the birthdays and the funerals… probably more than once!
So, when you have to write deep joy, or sublime awe, or unconditional love, or terrible, crippling grief as something your characters are going through… it’s going to have the stamp of authenticity, because you are not writing about it twice removed. You’ve experienced it, and now, through the eyes and thoughts and actions of your characters, your readers can experience it with that much less of a filter. Very nearly from the source.
That’s your secret weapon.
And you have earned the right to use it simply by being alive for 50, 60, 70, 80 years or more.
So use it.
Think about your superpower. Think about the secret weapons of experience and authentic life you have in your arsenal. Think about the characters you could be writing into your stories. Think about the stories themselves that you can, and absolutely should, be telling.
And get to work!
