Am I Too Old for This?
In this article, a 65 year old writer discusses her experience of publishing a debut novel amidst a youth obsessed industry saturated by social media trends and an increasingly online market. DeBare shares her thoughts on the recent skyrocketing of the term “debut” to describe novels, and how it has different implications for someone at the beginning of their career vs someone retired. She grapples with imposter syndrome and looming mortality, and shares lessons she has learned from the blindly hopeful dreams of her youth clashing with sobering reality. Finally, she offers an inspiring, accessible vision of writers that breaks free of the glamorized 30 Under 30 stereotype. This article would be useful as discussion material in a creative writing class, particularly for older adults. Outside of its specificity to novelists, this could be helpful in a sociologically focused class or any class that deals with public perceptions of age and ageism. It could be used as part of a larger unit on the way aging is viewed in a variety of professions. It might even be helpful for premed students who are looking to work in fields where they will have primarily older patients to gain empathy and understanding of the different life paths of their patients.