Comments on: It’s never too late to bloom

By: Kelley

Kelley — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 18:45:09 +0000

Hey Robert, nice to see you here.

I taught CW last year, and really enjoyed it. And I tried to tell the writers at the workshop that they would not all come blazing out of the box after week 6, no matter how much they wrote while they were there. That’s just not how it works for everyone.

Of course, most of us (myself included, from my Clarion experience back in the Stone Age) believe that the instructor is talking about the person next to us… it can be a hard realization that we might be among the late bloomers, because it can look so much like “we will never be successful.” But I don’t think that’s true. I hope you don’t either.

By: Robert Wexler

Robert Wexler — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 20:40:50 +0000

Hey Kelly,

Great posts. I’m one of Nicola’s CW ’97 students, and I’m sure a lot of people wouldn’t think I have that much to show for the last 10+ years but that’s how it goes. For a three- or four-year period in there I had at least a story a year published… I think us late bloomers will be around longer (as long as we keep at it of course). If I can write half as much post age 80 as Carol Emshwiller I’ll be happy.

Robert

By: Jennifer D

Jennifer D — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 22:06:47 +0000

I’ll probably have to comment more on this later, but I wanted to say something now. This stuff is great.

And thanks for that NPR link too Karina. I’m listening to it now.

I’m just glad I didn’t peak too early.

By: karina

karina — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 05:16:58 +0000

I listened to Gladwell’s audio and I was sure I’d heard about Old Masters and Young Geniuses before, not just through the article or the lecture. Then I remembered the source: one of PRI’s To the Best of Our Knowledge shows I’ve got on my iPod. It’s called “The Fine Art of Aging”.

Here’s the synopsis:
“David Galenson talks about Old Masters and Young Geniuses. Nick Lowe has been making music for 40 years. Amy Gorman collected the stories of women artists between the ages of 85 and 105. Millard Kaufman started a new career as a novelist at age 90.”

You can download the program here. I think you will enjoy it.

By: karina

karina — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 09:43:20 +0000

I’m one of those people who look forward to being sixty. My life has only gotten better with age. Same goes for my attempts at creating stuff—they’ve gotten slightly more successful and much more satisfying. I don’t think I could have written even the beginner poetry and stories I’m working on right now when I was fifteen or twenty or even twenty five. My thoughts were so alive and restless, pulling one way and another in a cacophony of voices. I feel I’ll never be as mentally active as I was when I was fifteen, my neurons teeming with math and physics and biology and literature and English and Spanish and sports and hormones and discovering the whole wide world and myself at once. But it was a useless goop whenever I tried to make art out of it. I sense I’ve still got at least one or two more decades to go before my mind settles into its ideal rhythm and I can finally create something worthy of bragging about.

Gladwellâs article is excellent. I remember reading it when Jennifer first posted the link to it. And today I chuckled @ your gone forever and you missed it, now go sit in the corner and sulk line. You’re funny. I enjoy your blog and our Pixel Pal relationship. And your work challenges me in many ways. I can also understand and identify with the curiosity that compelled you to explore a number of career paths and experiences, I can see how it has all become part of the stories you wrote and that I now so totally adore. I’ll help you hold the place where you stand as best I can.

This quote probably reflects how you’ve used those years that lead you here, to this fruitful time and Dangerous Space:

“Where the world ceases to be the scene of our personal hopes and wishes, where we face it as free beings admiring, asking and observing, there we enter the realm of Art and Science.” —Albert Einstein