A Writer's Perspective
by Beth K. Vogt

Monday, February 12, 2007
Nothing Like a Dream

There is nothing like a dream to create the future.
Victor Hugo

Is it too late for you to be a writer? I’ll let a few bits of historical information answer that question.

At the age of 86:

• Robert Frost recites his new poem, “The Gift Outright,” at the presidential inauguration of John F. Kennedy.
• Thomas Hobbes translates Homer’s Odyssey.

At the age of 87:

• Mary Baker Eddy launches The Christian Science Monitor.
• Sophocles writes his play Philoctetes.

At the age of 89:

• Will Durant, along with wife Ariel, publishes The Age of Napoleon, the eleventh volume of their epic history, The Story of Civilization.

At the age of 92:

• George Bernard Shaw writes Shakes Versus Shav: A Puppet Play.
• P.G. Wodehouse completes another Jeeves book, Aunts Aren’t Gentlemen.

At the age of 95:

• Mother Jones, union organizer, writes her autobiography.

At the age of 100:

• Ichijirou Araya climbs Mount Fuji

Andrew Postman,
There’s Always Time For Greatness;
Who Did What When From Ages 1 – 100

Sometimes I compare my start-stop-start-again writing career to others’ careers and wish I’d started when I was younger—which I did—and just kept on writing—which I didn’t.

Then I give myself a shake and say it’s not about age unless I make it about age. And, the funny thing is, I couldn’t have written my book BABY CHANGES EVERYTHING when I was younger. It is a book about late-in-life motherhood, after all.

Duh.

When my son Josh said he wanted to try writing a novel, I told him to do it. He was twenty—young and unencumbered.

I wrote a book when I was forty-five, married, and had four children.

So be it.

Success doesn’t happen just to the young.

It comes to those who dare to dream—and then dare to turn that dream into something real.

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