Dream a Little Dream
Of (belatedly) following your dreams!
Dame Karen: Something that’s scary about being a beginner when you’re 46 is having to admit to yourself that the reason you’re a beginner is because you’re only just now working at what you want, rather than what you think you should want. I spent 20 years getting more experience and more expertise in a series of careers that made me miserable. Not jobs; careers.
Despite being a writer and writing in some capacity just about every day since kindergarten, I only started submitting my writing for publication in 2013. (Thank you, as always to the dearly departed The Toast, for housing my first publication!) I was 38. I took a non-fiction writing class for the first time that year and it was there that I admitted, out loud to a bunch of relative strangers, that I’d spent my entire adult life working at getting better at things I didn’t care about rather than working at getting better at something I loved. I spent a few years day jobbing and night writing and in 2019, after being fortunate enough to have saved hard and not run into any financial emergencies, I decided to try freelancing full time. Then 2020 happened and while some stuff fell through, other stuff came through and although I do other things that aren’t writing, I remain a relatively solvent full time freelancer and hope to stay one for a while. ::stopping to furiously knock on wood:: It’s also important to note that another reason I could do this is because I live in Massachusetts, which has MassHealth. Sometimes I joke that Massachusetts is the spouse from whom I get my health insurance. I’m also not married and I don’t have kids; the only person I’m supporting right now is myself.
Dame Sophie: my experience has been a little more linear, but the incremental nature of your process rings a familiar bell. I worked in and on behalf of libraries for over 20 years, always writing – blogging, then co-writing a book with one of my most beloved colleagues, working as a book reviewer, managing various organizations’ social media presences – but not quite considering myself a writer, despite a mountain of evidence to the contrary.
I was kind of like a sandpiper, running up to the edge of where the water’s receded, then racing back to dry sand when the next wave comes in. Nothing to see here, folks! I’m just minding my own fully avian and not remotely writerly business on this beach!
Working on Two Bossy Dames with Dame Margaret – which we launched when I was 39, and in retrospect I think that was not entirely coincidental – forced me to face that as fiction. I wouldn’t say I was falsely humble or lying; I genuinely thought of writing as something I did very well, that I loved doing, that was also the most useful tool in my professional toolbox, but not something I could really do. You know, in a “so what do you do for a living?” kind of way. But eventually, that is what I was doing here, every week. I wasn’t earning a salary, but it was more than just fun money. Huh.
It took me about 44 years to start thinking of myself as a writer! And then another two to let that idea percolate away in the back of my mind, to start to coalesce into something resembling a plan to actually be one.
So, Dames Nation, what we really want to know is: does any of this resonate with you? We’re planning to publish a full issue on Pursuing Your Deferred Dreams next week, and would love to include your voices and experiences! If you’d like to share – for publication or for our eyes only – we invite you to respond to our brief survey.
We’re extremely nosy very keen to learn about all of your experiences, and of course, we’re particularly interested in what dream-following after 40 looks like for Dames who are not your stereotypical overeducated BosWash Corridor-originating white ladies of culture writing (which, as you may have had occasion to notice, is what we are).
Thank you so so much! We’ll share as many responses as we can in next week’s issue.
We appreciate you, readers of Dames Nation!
This week’s issue is brought to you by:
SuperYaki’s 25% off everything sale celebrating their 6th anniversary!
A tweet that is either a tiny gem of very silly comedy genius, or grounds for being dispatched at once to The Hague (or both?)
The very good Vroom Vroom Boys appearing in the pages of Vanity Fair sporting some truly impressive plumage!
Every time you tell a friend to subscribe, some woman, somewhere, thinks that her friend who stayed offline this week, thereby avoiding some of the most foolish Twitter discourse of the last few months, has really got some important things figured out. And yet!
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Love this idea and hearing more about your journeys! I think there’s a misconception that publishing young is a requirement or the norm. But you can obviously start whenever. Even as someone who was always writing and wanted to be a writer, I was 37 when I sold my first novel and 40 when I went full-time. It takes as long as it takes! And I’m often grateful for the experience and perspective I had when it finally happened.