Jessica Berger Gross On The Special Euphoria Of Debuting As A Novelist In Her 50s

Five years ago, erstwhile I mentioned nan thought for my caller Hazel Says No over avocado toast to my now editor John Glynn, he said, “I emotion it! And you’ll beryllium a debut!” I practically spit retired my grapefruit juice. I was forty-seven and had already published a memoir. What would beryllium next: debuting astatine seventy arsenic a poet?

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Of course, I’m acold from nan only caller novelist to begin, aliases statesman pinch renewed editorial and scholar enthusiasm, successful her fifties, aliases moreover later. (Think: Annie Proulx, Penelope Fitzgerald, Sue Monk Kidd. Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney, Cynthia Bond, Cynthia Weiner. Jocelyn Nicole Johnson, Delia Owens, Angeline Boulley. Bonnie Garmus, Fran Littlewood, Catherine Newman.)

A fewer months ago, my Brooklyn writer friend Cassandra Neyenesch sold her debut novel—at fifty-five!—to Summit Books/Simon & Schuster aft moving connected it for a decade.

Even so. It wasn’t really I’d erstwhile imagined my penning profession would go.

When I started penning a memoir astatine twenty-nine, and landed an supplier a twelvemonth aliases 2 later, I figured I was doing things astatine nan “right” time. (Or possibly, laughably, moreover a spot late? I’d had a different career, and studied for an unrelated postgraduate degree, successful my twenties.)

But then, inevitably and thankfully—that early effort astatine a memoir wasn’t picked up by an editor. The feedback was each complete nan place. The pages were excessively emotional. The pages weren’t affectional enough. I put nan memoir aside.

Ten years later, I met an editor who was willing successful a caller type of nan story, astir really and why I stopped speaking to my parents. I wrote a Kindle Single that became a bestseller. I took meetings and signed pinch a caller agent. I sold a book connection for what became my memoir Estranged to Scribner.

But that’s nan item reel. My thirties and forties were filled, too, pinch passes and rejections (from mag and newspaper editors, from book editors, from agents), and packed pinch imaginative mendacious starts, and nan hum of a slow burning personality crisis. There were many, galore times erstwhile I thought I was sunk, erstwhile I was convinced I would ne'er fig my penning life out.

When my memoir Estranged was published, it sewage immoderate bully property and praise, but not truthful overmuch that it changed nan style of my life. It wasn’t a bestseller. It didn’t apical immoderate year-end lists.

Though I wouldn’t alteration a connection of nan book, that clip aft publication was, to beryllium honest, a spot deflating. I took a “break” from writing, which meant, successful reality, a descent into post-publication slump and ennui. For a twelvemonth aliases two, I was lost. I’d been mostly freeloading disconnected my husband’s dependable professor salary.

I checked nan occupation listings, thought astir going backmost to school. Maybe I could go a librarian? Open a bookstore, aliases get a occupation astatine one?

Or possibly I could try, 1 much time.

Because, arsenic overmuch arsenic I doubted myself, arsenic slim arsenic nan chance of things “working out” felt to my perfectionist self, I was sicker still of not writing. Like, not penning made my tummy and caput hurt. I was frustrated, too. I benignant of knew that maybe, conscionable maybe, I could do it? Or that I had a 2 percent chance? Which was something? Only, I was measurement excessively old? At what, forty-seven??

But I was tired of being funny exclusively successful nan kitchen, and to a fewer friends connected text. I watched TV pinch my past tween boy and would (annoyingly!) spit lines of speech retired earlier nan characters could. You should constitute for TV, he said.

You should constitute a novel, he besides said. So did a publishing manufacture friend, and a writer friend. And truthful did nan woman successful me. The 1 who sat connected a character stump during recess and devoured novels. It was nan thing, creatively, I wanted astir to try, but that seemed nan riskiest and astir impractical and impossible.

But, also, this: I had an idea, 1 I couldn’t extremity reasoning about, 1 I loved, and I decided to constitute it. I wrote a shitty first draft, I wrote a twice-as-long-as-it-needed-to-be 2nd draft, I worked my measurement done a 100 revisions. After 2 years, I had a VERY IMPORTANT AGENT interested. I rewrote again, reasoning of her and what she seemed to want, reasoning that she was my 1 and only chance for a past large break.

And then, I mislaid nan liking of that VERY IMPORTANT AGENT. After that, I was officially “in nan woods.” I considered giving up. Again! For a period aliases two, I woke up each greeting crying. So I recovered a therapist, I went connected HRT, I started taking St John’s Wort, I redoubled my yoga practice. I rewrote my novel. Again.

And then? It (finally) clicked. The story. The characters. The voice! The tone. The years of waiting, of passes, of revision.

What I had to do was make nan caller I loved. Not to impressment aliases get (or keep) a VERY IMPORTANT AGENT, but to make nan benignant of book that sounded for illustration me, nan benignant I’d want to publication and thing I wanted to stock pinch my friends and — possibly 1 day—readers.

I wrote down nan jokes I’d show successful nan room connected scale cards. I made a section representation and a chainsaw draught and recovered my characters soul lives and plotted and brainstormed and wrote and rewrote until nan reside and sound and connection of nan book was precisely what I wanted it to be.

I made my friends publication and reread. Montage of filled wastepaper baskets, of scale cards arranged each complete my agency level and walls, of weekends and family vacations wherever I stole disconnected to write, of saying nary to greeting meetings aliases luncheon because I had immoderate mysterious activity but not nan benignant of activity anyone was paying for aliases needed benignant of work.

But I needed it. And then, 4 years aft I started, I was done.

Beyond each nan difficult work, possibly this was made imaginable by nan earned life experience, nan years of rejection and passes, nan menopausal self-confidence. The push and state of emotion for illustration it was now aliases never.

As I approached and entered my fifties, successful portion done nan weathering and patina of nan passes and rejections, nan imaginative (and publishing industry) ups and downs, but mostly, by being a quality successful nan world for agelong enough, I’d travel to find and understand nan contours of thing precious—my taste. And to find nan assurance to judge successful it. And more, by fifty, I knew myself good enough, to put my existent and truest aforesaid connected nan page.

I utilized to judge that life was benignant of benignant of complete erstwhile you deed fifty. Okay not over, but you were perchance pushing your “sell by” date. It was a small excessively precocious for starting thing marque new.

It’s not that life originates astatine fifty. It’s that everything you’ve learned for 50 years is now successful your toolkit arsenic a writer: The language, nan empathy, nan grit, nan humor, nan style, nan refusal to springiness up, nan knowing astir nan transportation and nan woody and nan books lists and nan income rank and nan reviews, and nan knowing that penning is astir much than that. Writing is astir nan process and nan page and nan magic done your fingers. And nan people, too.

When I was fifty-one, I sent a long-shot email to my ABSOLUTE DREAM AGENT (because of his iconic customer list, and because I conscionable had a feeling) nan week aft Thanksgiving, expecting nary response. I heard backmost wrong an hr pinch a manuscript request.

And past my ABSOLUTE DREAM AGENT started reference nan adjacent morning, a Friday—he vanished reference that weekend. We talked for an hr and a half connected Monday evening, and signed Tuesday morning. My dream supplier sent nan caller disconnected to editors connected January 2. John, nan editor friend from breakfast, made an connection a week aliases 2 later.

A debut caller (and a book deal) retired of nowhere. A caller 20 years successful nan making. Or make that fifty.

Here’s what I wish I knew each those years ago. It tin be better to return decades to get published. Debuting astatine fifty-three is sweet. And I americium truthful incredibly grateful. The dream I had arsenic a girl—the 1 I couldn’t opportunity aloud—not successful my family—has somehow, astonishingly, travel true.

When a writer successful her fifties (and yes, I’m seeing this mostly pinch women writers) posts a euphoric—and seemingly retired of “nowhere” Publishers Lunch woody connected her Instagram, down it (probably) lays decades of rejection, passes, grounded attempts, novels successful drawers, self-doubt, and sometimes, almost having fixed up.

And usually? Their books are nan ones I extremity up loving nan most.

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Hazel Says No by Jessica Berger Gross is disposable via Hanover Square Press.