Friday, September 16, 2022

Everyone Starts Somewhere

I keep hearing baby writers worried about learning curves and time. It's an incredibly naive way at looking at the universe. Time marches on for every single human on this planet. The only question is what do you do with that time.

Or maybe I really did get lucky. You see I didn't have grandparents or even great-grandparents that quit living when they reached a certain age. One grandmother didn't graduate high school, but she could give most botanists and ornithologists a run for their money. The other grandmother worked her way through college during the Great Depression. One great-grandfather literally farmed until the day he died at the age of 92.

I got in a discussion/argument during a science ethics class with the professor. At what age do you quit? Quit learning. Quit growing. Quit living. My point was they are all the same thing. His argument was people get tired or they've reached a peak and they stop. The problem is we are both right.

Some people create their own timer of when to stop living. Or writing.

And it's not a function of age either. It's what you decide. Not what other people think.

When I was in law school, I was in in my thirties. I didn't have a whole lot in common with the students fresh out of college. No, I hung out with the other students who treated law as a second or third career. The folks in their forties through their sixties.

It doesn't matter when you start writing or publishing. You need to learn the craft and master the tools. You're still going to be ten years older a decade from now whether you write and study or not. If you don't want to write, that's fine. But do it or don't do it because that's what you want. Not because you're whining that it's going to take too long.

We all start somewhere at some point in time. Go read Aesop's The Hare and the Tortoise is you need some perspective.

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