How many candles?
In answer to Sandra's half-mocking question, I was born in the (first) Summer of Love, July 1967. You can work the rest out for yourselves.
Older than the hills, but younger than the sky, as they say.
It used to say my age in the little blurb up in the top right hand corner of this blog, along with Mr Stuart's flattering portrait of a younger, more wantonly bearded me. I took it out after a while, partly because I thought it was more information than was necessary, and partly because I am worried about the effect my age might have on my chances of publication.
I don't consider myself old. Come back to me next year and I might have a different opinion on that as a significant landmark barrels towards me with the unstoppable inevitability of an oil tanker in a storm. But right now I'm spry, fit(ish), healthy. My brain works when I need it to, and I don't groan every time I bend down to pick things up from the floor. As Miss Jean Brodie would say, I am in my prime.
Maybe I'm worrying about things needlessly, but I keep hearing about publishers equating new with young, and pursuing pre-pubescent authors as if their talent was inversely proportional to their years. I'm sure some of these child prodigies are very good indeed, but the corollary - that a writer who has reached a certain age without publication must be no good, and is certainly not worth the risk of investing money in - does not necessarily follow. Sadly, however, the older you get, the more difficult it seems to be to land the deal.
My agent never asked my age when I approached her, and it's not information I include on my writer's resume. If someone asks (as Sandra did, so you can blame her for this post), I won't lie. Sometimes I'm tempted to lop ten years off and pretend to be John Rickards' evil twin, separated at birth. My full and manly beard and youthful complexion work in my favour here, but I fall down on a complete inability to understand mobile phones and the strange thing that is txt mssgng.
Oh, and my extensive knowledge of early eighties New Romantic bands is a dead giveaway, even if a lot of them are re-forming right now.
I hope that when a publisher reads my work they won't care how old I am. Plenty of famous authors haven't started out until their retirement years, so in truth I'm a whippersnapper. But I'm not so naive as to think it isn't a factor in the decision making process. I may have let the cat out of the bag here, but this post will soon disappear off the bottom of the screen.
Then I shall go back to being just as old as you think I am, and not a day more.
Older than the hills, but younger than the sky, as they say.
It used to say my age in the little blurb up in the top right hand corner of this blog, along with Mr Stuart's flattering portrait of a younger, more wantonly bearded me. I took it out after a while, partly because I thought it was more information than was necessary, and partly because I am worried about the effect my age might have on my chances of publication.
I don't consider myself old. Come back to me next year and I might have a different opinion on that as a significant landmark barrels towards me with the unstoppable inevitability of an oil tanker in a storm. But right now I'm spry, fit(ish), healthy. My brain works when I need it to, and I don't groan every time I bend down to pick things up from the floor. As Miss Jean Brodie would say, I am in my prime.
Maybe I'm worrying about things needlessly, but I keep hearing about publishers equating new with young, and pursuing pre-pubescent authors as if their talent was inversely proportional to their years. I'm sure some of these child prodigies are very good indeed, but the corollary - that a writer who has reached a certain age without publication must be no good, and is certainly not worth the risk of investing money in - does not necessarily follow. Sadly, however, the older you get, the more difficult it seems to be to land the deal.
My agent never asked my age when I approached her, and it's not information I include on my writer's resume. If someone asks (as Sandra did, so you can blame her for this post), I won't lie. Sometimes I'm tempted to lop ten years off and pretend to be John Rickards' evil twin, separated at birth. My full and manly beard and youthful complexion work in my favour here, but I fall down on a complete inability to understand mobile phones and the strange thing that is txt mssgng.
Oh, and my extensive knowledge of early eighties New Romantic bands is a dead giveaway, even if a lot of them are re-forming right now.
I hope that when a publisher reads my work they won't care how old I am. Plenty of famous authors haven't started out until their retirement years, so in truth I'm a whippersnapper. But I'm not so naive as to think it isn't a factor in the decision making process. I may have let the cat out of the bag here, but this post will soon disappear off the bottom of the screen.
Then I shall go back to being just as old as you think I am, and not a day more.
Comments
And you aren't.
I mean, you're older than me, but you aren't that old.
But then I'm young in spirit. Kevin would say that means I'm childish, but I prefer to think of it as youthful exuberance.
Of course, Stuart's proven eyesight is generally the first thing to go...