{"id":3587,"date":"2026-03-31T04:32:18","date_gmt":"2026-03-31T11:32:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/?p=3587"},"modified":"2026-03-31T04:32:18","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T11:32:18","slug":"too-old-to-publish","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/?p=3587","title":{"rendered":"Too Old to Publish?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>I posed the question in my last blog. I\u2019m closer to 80 than to 70 now so what makes me think I can go on writing something people will actually read?\u00a0 Don\u2019t those creative juices dry up when you get older?<\/p>\n

Maybe not.<\/p>\n

In 1932 Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote Little House in the Big Woods<\/em>, the first in her beloved Little House series. She was 65 years old.<\/p>\n

In 1968 retired high school teacher Frank McCourt wrote Angela\u2019s Ashes<\/em>. It was the first novel for this 66-year-old, and he won a Pulitzer Prize for his efforts.<\/p>\n

Similarly, Katherine Anne Porter published her novel, Ship of Fools<\/em>, at age 72, and Norman Maclean wrote A River Runs Through It<\/em> at 74. This semi-biographical account of a fly-fishing family in Montana became a classic, and Maclean\u2019s prose is still a favorite with me (by the way, the Robert Redford movie wasn\u2019t too bad either).<\/p>\n

So I don\u2019t hope to match an Ingalls or a Maclean (not worthy to untie their sandals), but their successes let us older writers know creativity doesn\u2019t have a set expiration date. I\u2019m counting on it with this one. I\u2019m truly counting on it.<\/p>\n

**<\/p>\n

Tomorrow I\u2019ll post the photo and link of the new book on FB for you to Like and Share with others. And if you\u2019re going to buy an e-book at the discounted price or send a copy to a friend or two, now is the best time. Amazon\u2019s algorithm promotes those books who get a lot of initial sales.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I posed the question in my last blog. I\u2019m closer to 80 than to 70 now so what makes me think I can go on writing something people will actually read?\u00a0 Don\u2019t those creative juices dry up when you get older? Maybe not. In 1932 Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote Little House in the Big Woods, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3587","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3587","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3587"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3587\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3589,"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3587\/revisions\/3589"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3587"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3587"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3587"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}