I'm not seventy yet

I am old. Let's get that clear at the start. I don't feel old and I'm told I don't act my age - whatever that might mean - but when it comes to Twitter, FaceBook, and writing in general there can be little doubt: I fall into the last third of life category.

Let me go back a bit, to when I was in grammar school. I was very good at English. I was also good at Latin. What do these two subjects have in common? That's right: you don't have to put on a silly accent to speak. (Please bear with me; I'm not suggesting that a French accent is in any way silly, in fact it's sexy when done properly. But that wasn't the way I did it.)

I was painfully shy in my teenage years so speaking aloud in front of the class was a nightmare for me. And that was in English. To have to do so in French was my worst nightmare come true. I dreaded the class.

So thus it was that I ended up taking the science path through A-levels and university. Scraping through it every time. 

If only. If only I'd not been so shy. If only I'd had better career advice. If only I'd known it were possible to be a professional grammar pedant (editor/linguist/whatever) my life could have been so different.

I didn't start writing until I was in my thirties, for a local newspaper. And it wasn't until I was in my fifties that I wrote my first novel, which I ended up self-publishing. I've since written three more novels and have a sequel to the first on the go.

I haven't found fame and fortune but I love writing.Because of my academic history and my general wooliness I tend to put myself down a lot saying, 'I'm not very clever,' but it really has only just - as I was thinking about this post - occurred to me that the path I took didn't help me progress or flourish.  And I'm glad I was able to return to my first love. 

I've gone slightly off the point I think but I suppose the encouragement I would offer is that it's never too late - or too early - to write. If it makes you happy, do it.

Mary Wesley had her first novel published when she was seventy. She wrote ten best-sellers, and three million copies of her books sold worldwide. There's hope for me, for us all, yet.

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