Do you ever find yourself thinking things like, “I’m too old to start this”, “I’m too late”, “I’ve wasted too much time”, or “I’ve missed my chance, so why bother”? In today’s episode, we’re talking about comparison, regret, and why it’s NEVER too late to start writing, publishing, or even learning a new creative skill. 

The Lost Time Fallacy

It’s so easy — for me, at least — to compare myself to other writers (like we talked about back in Episode 88). Especially if they’re younger than I am. When I see someone who’s 16, 21, 27, etc. publishing their first (or second or third) book, I have a tendency to immediately think about how far behind I am. How much time I wasted in my early 20s by… what was I doing in my 20s? Working in a cubicle, angry and alone and miserable. 

 But did I actually waste my time in my 20s, or did I need to go through what I went through to get where I am now, close to 40 and finally living the life I’ve always dreamed of living?

Usually, we’re precisely where we need to be — where we’ve placed ourselves — and if we’re not, it’s up to us to figure out where we want to be and get there.

And it’s not too late to get there. If you’re listening to this episode or reading these show notes, chances are you’re still alive — and alive is a great place to be, especially if you want to accomplish something. 

It’s important to remember we haven’t lost anything — we’ve taken the time to get to this moment in our lives, and the only place we can take action is in the present.

It helps me to remember: the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago, but since we can’t go back in time to do that, the second best time is NOW.

Writers Who Published Later In Life

There are scores of famous writers who got a “late start” — who didn’t make that Forbes “30 Under 30” list, who didn’t even consider writing until they hit their fourth decade or beyond. For example:

  • Toni Morrison published her first book, The Bluest Eye, at the age of 40.
  • Mark Twain (yes, the very famous Mark Twain) didn’t publish his first book, An Innocent Abroad, until he was 41.
  • J.R.R. Tolkien published his first (and soon very famous) novel, The Hobbit, at the age of 45.
  • Anna Sewell began writing at age 51 and didn’t publish her first book, Black Beauty, until she was 57.
  • Laura Ingalls Wilder, author of the famous “Little House On the Prairie” books, didn’t publish her first book until she was 64.
  •  Frank McCourt published his first book, Angela’s Ashes, at the age of 66… and then went on to win the Pulitzer.

This isn’t even just a list of authors who published books later in life — this is a list of authors who didn’t even start writing until later in life. Yet none of these writers were “too late”. They arrived on the writing scene exactly when they needed to. Just like you.

Forestall Those Regrets

If you find yourself thinking about all the time you’ve “lost”, or all of the books you haven’t published yet, one of the ways you can center yourself is by thinking about all of the future regrets you can forestall today. 

What will you regret not having done on your deathbed, or even 10 years from now? Writing your memoir? Publishing your first manuscript? Submitting your poem to that contest? What action can you take now to make sure you don’t have that regret later on? 

Life hasn’t passed you by. If you’re listening to this episode or reading these show notes, you’re alive and you have plenty of time within the now to create your art.

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Full Episode Transcript (click to expand!)

This is The Write Now Podcast with Sarah Werner, Episode 117: It’s Not Too Late.

Welcome to Write Now, the podcast that helps all writers, aspiring professional, and otherwise, to find the time, energy and courage you need to pursue your passion and write. I’m your host, Sarah Werner.

And today I am wondering if you’ve ever felt like it’s too late for you. If it’s too late to start writing, if it’s too late to start publishing, if you’re too old, if you’ve somehow missed your window or ruined your supposed one and only chance.

This is a question that I’ve asked myself a lot. And it’s a question that I also see asked very often in my Wednesday and Friday evening creator longs. And it’s not hard to see why. Here in the United States, we live in a very youth forward culture, whether that is fair or not to the youth themselves is up for debate, but it feels like the younger that you can do something, the more lauded you will be.

Wow. She published her first book and she’s only 19 or wow, that Olympic gymnast who just won the gold medal 16 years old. Wow. This is something that I thought a lot about as I slowly and steadily grew older than those 16-year-old gymnasts than the 19-year-old football players. The people who published that outstanding award-winning novel at 24 or 25 years old. The people who made the Forbes 30 Under 30 list.

I felt like I was watching something very slowly and yet all too quickly passed me by. But were these things really passing me by? Or was I simply in a place where I wasn’t ready for them yet? Or in the case of the Olympic gymnast, was I comparing myself to someone else using a standard of dreams that I had never held in the first place?

It’s so easy to feel like you are in the passenger seat of a car that is being driven way too fast and completely out of your control. And often that’s exactly the case. Often we don’t have control over our own situations.

I did not ever have a chance of becoming that 16-year-old Olympic metal winning gymnast because growing up, we didn’t have the money for gymnastics lessons. I also do not have the genetics to become a gymnast. I am extremely tall and I have asthma and scoliosis and all of these things.

Something that’s a little closer to home, I do remember going to the library as a child. And at the time there was this series of books and they were hardbound picture books. And they were written and illustrated by children who had won this young authors contest. And I remember reading these books and checking them out. And I had so many huge emotions at the time. I remember feeling in awe that people my age could be living this dream. I felt jealous that they had somehow had a chance to get their books published. That somehow a door had opened for them.

I felt a little bit resentful that I had not had this opportunity. And I felt at the age of, I don’t know, seven, eight, nine years old, that it was too late, that these other young authors were ahead of me. And then I could not hope to ever catch up.

I know that sounds a little silly saying that now. It’s like, “Oh Sarah, young Sarah, you have your whole life ahead of you.” But at the time it didn’t feel like it. At the time, it felt like I had lost my one and only chance.

Today as I near my forties, I’ve gained a little bit of perspective. And I’m going to presume that as I continue to age, I will continue to gain more perspective. It often feels like it’s too late. It often feels like that because we’re comparing ourselves to where someone else is now. We’re comparing ourselves to someone or several people who may be started earlier or had the opportunity to start earlier or had some advantage that we did not have when we were that age or some advantage that we did not have until very recently or some advantage that we might never have at all.

You know what I’m going to say about comparing yourself to other writers? That we’re all on our own journey, that we’re all running our own race and that the finish line, if there even is a finish line, which spoiler there is not, is a different place for each and every one of us. We’re that unique. Everything is relative. Especially time.

The other day I found myself comparing to a lot of audio drama creators. Many of whom are 19, 20, 21 years old. And I sigh and I say, “Oh my gosh, do you know how far along I would be in my journey if I had started at the age of 19 or 20 or 21.” And then I fall into this place where I begin to regret and I begin to mourn this perceived lost time. And then all I can focus on is how much I have lost.

But the funny thing is I haven’t actually lost anything. When I was 19, 20, 21 years old, I was on my own creative journey. I was working for a software company and then I was working for a marketing firm and I didn’t like it, but I was exactly where I needed to be in order to become the creator that I needed to be. Does that make sense?

I didn’t actually lose anything I had ever possessed. I was mourning something that I had never had. And you can say, “Oh, well, maybe you were mourning the opportunity. Looking at all the roads not taken, looking at all the opportunities, not seized.” We have the same opportunities today and probably even more than we did a decade ago or two decades ago.

And we will continue to have those same opportunities. The possibility never dies. The possibilities never go away. There is always a possibility to start something. There’s always the possibility to create something. Life hasn’t passed you by. If you are listening right now, the chances are very good that you are alive. And if you are alive, you have possibility. You have everything you need to write. You have everything you need to create your art.

So I’ve been the 30 something looking back on my “wasted twenties.” But for that extra dose of perspective that I talked about, I’ve also been the young creator. Some of my closest friends in podcasting are much older than I am. In their fifties and beyond. And they look at me and they say, “Oh, if only I had started back in my thirties.” I think that no matter what age we begin, we always think, “Oh, I could have begun earlier. I’ll never catch up.”

Here’s the secret. You don’t need to catch up. You don’t need to mourn a past that never happened. Wherever you are, however old you are, however much education you’ve had, whatever opportunities you’ve had, the possibility is yours. You can pick up that pen. You can pick up that laptop. You can dictate into your phone. You can write.

There’s a saying that the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago, but we can’t go back in time. So the second best time to plant a tree is now. What tree do you need to plant? And where are you? If you’re still dreaming about a past that never existed, maybe it’s time to shift your gaze, not even toward the future, but to now.

There’s a really beautiful thing about the present moment. And that is that, now the present moment is the only time that really exists. It’s the only time that is actually ever real for us. The past is a memory and the future is a dream. And we have no agency in those far away times. The only time when we can act is right now. And yes, I realize I am dropping the name of my podcast into this episode. There’s a reason that I called it Write Now. Now is perfect. Now is the only time that’s real. Now is the eternity of possibility.

It is natural for us to look back on the past with a little bit of wistfulness and regret and maybe some rose colored glasses. But most of the time, what we need to do, if you are feeling some sort of regret that’s tying you to the past is to forgive yourself. Any mistakes you may have made, any choices that you made that in hindsight, weren’t amazing. You have to forgive yourself, forgive your past self and move forward.

Let those regrets go. They don’t need to belong to you anymore. They don’t need to weigh you down. You don’t need to carry around that heavy burden of what could have been or what should have been. The only thing you need to do now is move forward. I know that’s a lot easier said than done, and sometimes it helps to reframe the way in which we’re thinking about it.

So for me, I need to tell myself, “Okay, yes, you’ve had some regrets, but now is your chance to the regret cycle.” This is the time when you can move forward and act so that you don’t create even more future regrets for your future self.

What is a regret that you will have on your death bed that you could vary, maybe not easily, but you could manage to start now. What is a regret that you’ll have in five or even two years that you can prevent by taking action now? How can you prevent your future self from feeling as though you have lost time?

Here’s another thing that often helps me. And I’m not always receptive to this idea, especially when I’m feeling extra angry or resentful with myself. More accurately, this is something that other people tell me very often that I know is true. And that is, I am right where I need to be.

Right now, you are exactly where your journey has taken you and you can’t change that. But what you can do is honor where you’ve been. Realize that you’ve gotten to this place where you are because of your experience. And you needed that experience to get where you are. It’s very likely that you are not in a place however many years ago to start.

I know I wasn’t. I needed to write several terrible novels. I needed to learn my craft. I needed to learn how to market. I needed to learn how to network. I needed to learn how to build lasting relationships within a creative community. I needed to figure out how to belong to a community, how to create community. I launched a successful show in 2017 because I had spent the previous oof, more than a decade, preparing myself to get there.

The truth is I did not know how to write a good story back in 2004. I didn’t know how to write a good story when I was 17 or 18 or 22. And even if I did, I didn’t know how to market it. I didn’t know how to help it find success. I didn’t know what I know now. I didn’t have all of the equipment I needed to be successful. And it’s only now that I’m coming to terms with that. It’s only now that I’m realizing that.

I needed to write some terrible unfinished novels and let them sit in a drawer while I stood in a corporate cubicle and learned, and I still have a lot more learning to do. When I’m 80, I imagine I’m going to look back at myself and how I was at 35 or 40 and say, “Oh, Oh, she was just starting. She was just starting to learn. She was just starting to master her craft.”

I know that perspective is important, but I also understand that dealing with where we are right now can be extremely frustrating. I realized that there is a frustration and a pressure to be exactly where you want to be right now. To be a good writer, to be a best selling writer, to be a celebrated creator, to be someone who gets invited to speak on panels, at conferences. And we can’t get there until we get there, but we can take steps today.

So if you’re feeling like you’re too old, or it’s too late to start, or you’ve missed your chance or that everyone else is so much younger and has so many better ideas than you do. Stop it. And I say that with love. Stop it. You’re not too old. It’s not too late. You haven’t missed anything. At least not anything important. If you’ve ever been a Forbes 30 Under 30 congrats, but it’s not important. It seems like it is. And it feels like it is, but it’s just vanity.

Now are these the words of someone who is better, that they never became a 30 under 30? Maybe. But speaking about these awards, this recognition in this way helps me to forgive myself and helps me to dismiss that regret to let it go and to move forward with what is actually important for me to create.

There are so many writers who are in advanced years, who are publishing novels now in their eighties and nineties, but there are also… And this is a special focus. There are also so many successful and well-known writers who did not start writing until a little bit later in life.

For instance, did you know Mark Twain? We think of as this huge person in American literature. Do you know how old Mark Twain was when he published his first book? Mark Twain published An Innocent Abroad, his first novel, when he was 41. Being around that age myself, I know that some of you are thinking, “Wow, that’s so young.” And some of you are thinking, “Wow, that’s incredibly ancient.” Again, it’s all perspective. Toni Morrison published her first book The Bluest Eye at the age of 40. J.R.R. Tolkien published The Hobbit, his first book, at 45.

Laura Ingalls Wilder. The author of The Little House on the Prairie books did not start writing until she was 64 years old. That’s when she started. Anna Sewell who wrote Black Beauty, which was one of my favorite books growing up. She didn’t begin writing until she was 51 years old and she didn’t publish her first book until she was 57.

Frank McCourt, the Pulitzer Prize winning author of Angela’s Ashes. He was 66 when he published his first book. Some of you even may remember a coffee break episode, which was a interview spinoff of the Write Now Podcast that I did years ago. I interviewed an author named Jay Greenfield, an 84-year-old man who had just published his very first novel and was so excited to continue writing novels.

There is no early. There is no late. There is no too old. There is no too young. Those are comparative terms and they don’t speak to the reality of ourselves. They don’t honor the journey that we are on.

For us as writers, it’s not possible to go back in time and plant a tree 20 years ago, but it is possible for us to plant that tree right now. So what about you? Do you find yourself giving yourself labels like too old, too young, too late, past due. Do you find yourself giving comparative labels that don’t matter to yourself? Do you feel like you’ve missed out? Do you feel like you’re too late? Do you feel like you’ll never catch up?

I would love to hear your experience. I would love to hear your story. I would love to know how you deal with feelings like these. And while I can’t respond to every email that I receive, I do read and respond to every single comment that’s left out on my website.

So please feel free to leave me a comment on my website under the show notes for today’s episode, this is episode number 117, it’s called, It’s Not Too Late. And you can find my website out at sarahwerner.com. That’s S-A-R-A-H-W-E-R-N-E-R.com. Just scroll to the bottom of the show notes for today’s episode and you’ll see a comment box where you can type in your thoughts and hit submit. And I will read those… Actually, I’m pretty good at reading comments. I usually read them the day that they’re written.

So yeah. So some of your comments, I will respond to you and we can have a really lovely discussion there. I would love to hear your thoughts.

You can also find me on Twitter and Instagram and all of those things at Sarah Rhea Werner. That’s S-A-R-A-H R-H-E-A W-E-R-N-E-R. I’m also on Facebook, but I’m not great at checking Facebook. So if you want to reach out to me via social media, Twitter is probably the best.

I also want to say, If you would like to support this show, if the Write Now Podcast has helped you through some writing difficulties or just inspired you to write, please consider either financially or non-financially supporting the Write Now Podcast.

If you’re interested in supporting us financially, you can do so via Patreon. Patreon is a secure third party donation platform that allows people like you to donate a dollar per episode, $2 per episode, whatever it is you feel is right for you.

You can do that in a couple of different ways. You can go over to patreon.com. That’s P-A-T-R-E-O-N.com/Sarahrheawerner. Or you can go to the show notes for today’s episode and in the show notes, you’ll see a link that says help support this podcast. You can just click that link, it will take you right out to Patreon. And I will be very appreciative.

Current patrons that I would like to think include, Amanda King, Laurie, Regina Calabrese, E.V. Knight, Garret, Leslie Duncan, Michael Beckwith, Sarah Lauzon, Sean Locke, Summer, Tiffany Joyner, Tim Shen, and Whitney McGruder. Thank you all so much for your generous financial support. I could not make this show without you.

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And with that, this has been episode 117 of the Write Now Podcast. The podcast that helps all writers, aspiring professional and otherwise, to find the time, energy and courage you need to pursue your passion and write.

I’m Sarah Werner and it’s not too late for any of us.