When to Write One's First Novel

In today’s “The Writer’s Almanac,” which is delivered to my email box daily, and which I recommended to readers in my 4/29/10 post, there is a brief synopsis of the life and work of the now obscure English writer, Storm Jameson. In her time (1891-1986), she wrote 45 very popular novels. One thing among many that I appreciate about “The Writer’s Almanac” (the daily poem, the short bios of writers and others, the nuggets of literary information) is the way it reminds us of writers we may have forgotten or perhaps never known about.

A point that particularly interested me in the entry about Jameson was her recommendation to young, hopeful writers that they wait until their early 30s before writing their first novels. She felt that writers shouldn't wait too long to start, "not so long that the terrible sharpness of young senses – like the sharpness of sensual excitement which makes a traveler’s first moments in a foreign country worth more to him in insight and emotion than a year’s stay – had lost their acuteness, but long enough to be able to see…with a margin of detachment.” This strikes me as wise advice, but also as advice that individual writers have always ignored, and will always ignore, as each writer's life and circumstances are different. We know of authors who started writing when they were in their teens and twenties, as well as of authors who wrote their first novels in their sixties or seventies. This information is of interest to readers, especially when writers are at the far ends of the spectrum (e.g., Francoise Sagan’s publishing her first novel, “Bonjour Tristesse,” at age 19, and Harriet Doerr’s publishing her first, "Stones for Ibarra," at age 74). But whether or not writers follow this advice, I think Jameson expresses it beautifully. I especially like the observation about “the traveler’s first moments in a foreign country.”