It's Never Too Late

I detailed yesterday how, in my late fifties and recently let go from my office job, I decided to jump headlong into novel writing.

Occasionally, I'm asked if I waited too long to get into the game, that perhaps this writing thing might be a young person's game.

Malarkey! Let me tell you a familiar story.

Back in the late Fifties, there was a writer and editor who had been a professional for over fifteen years. He started out working as a gofer in a relative's publishing business. Then he was published at seventeen. It was just a filler story, but it was a published one and the start of a career.

This writer did the story under a pseudonym. He felt a need to write The Great American Novel, but he wanted to save his true name for that tome. But in the meantime, he continued to write. In fact, he wrote whatever was needed from him by his editor. Then the editor left and this writer took his place temporarily. Except for a stint in the Army, where he wrote for the military, this writer held that position for thirty years ... but that's another part of the story.

The company proved good at taking the concepts of other publishers and putting their own spin on them, making something fresh in the process. The writer worked in every genre: super-hero, romance, war, horror, westerns, teenage humor, whatever was needed to make the deadlines.

But at one point, the publisher wanted to save money during a market downturn so he fired the staff except for this writer. Except for a couple of freelancers, this writer/editor keep the printers busy and his relative happy.

The company's fortunes slowly improved again until the start of the late Fifties when a distributor went under. Now, the company scrambled to get its wares onto the newsstands. A deal was finally made, but the company was owned by this publisher's greatest rival. Suddenly, their output was limited, their challenge kept at bay.

Now in his early 40s, the writer/editor took a hard look at his life. He wanted to be an actor and write that book. He seriously pondered a mid-life career change.

Back in those days, two men could be at each others throats during the day's business, then play Poker on Friday night and share some beer, cigars, and laughs. Well, the publisher and his chief competitor would play golf and one day, the competitor bragged about how well his newest release performed on the newsstands. It was a revival of an old concept, something that his company found very successful in recent years, one that included a teaming of its most popular intellectual properties.

When the publisher heard the sales figures, he ran back to the office and told the writer/editor to get busy and create a super-hero title of their own.

This was NOT fitting into the writer/editor's agenda. He wanted to quit, to pursue his own dreams. He vented to his wife who told him to go ahead, but create the super-hero comic book HE wanted to write. When the writer/editor replied that he could get fired over that, the wife smiled and said, "So? You were planning to quit anyway."

The writer/editor then reached out to another man who was already in his mid-forties and shared the idea with him. The two put out THEIR version of the super-hero team ... and it sold like CRAZY.

The company was saved and went from the brink of disaster to become the number one comic book publisher in America less than ten years later.

The book was The Fantastic Four, the title that issued in The Marvel Age of Comics.

The Writer/Editor was Stan Lee and his artist was Jack Kirby. These guys began a cultural revolution that eventually led to geek culture going mainstream. It turned Marvel Comics into a multimedia conglomerate. And they didn't catch lighting in a bottle until they were in middle age.

Grandma Moses didn't launch her painting career until she was 78.

Many actors, writers, artists, and other creative people continue past retirement age. There's only one good time to start being creative ... and that's NOW!

NEXT WEDNESDAY: Planning Your Self-Publishing Career

NEXT THURSDAY: Waiting For Your Inspiration

NEXT APPEARANCE: I will be at the TOYMAN TOY & COMIC SHOW from 9-3 this coming Sunday. This awesome event will happen at The Machinists Union Building, 12365 St. Charles Rock Road, Bridgeton, MO (on the west side of St. Louis). I'll be there with Steve Geiger (former Spider-Man & Bloodshot artist) and Candice Comelieri (great portrait and pop culture painter), and a host of other great guests and vendors. For more information, go to www.toymanshow.com

SPECIAL NOTE: My newest book, The Haunting Scripts of Bachelors Grove​, is currently on sale. It's part memoir, part grimoire. The first half deals with my entry into writing indie comics and joining Silver Phoenix Entertainment. I print four of my comic scripts for The Haunting Tales of Bachelors Grove, three of which have not been produced yet. Then I add four horror prose tales, three of which are NEW. All this behind a great cover by my Art Sherpa, Trevor Erick Hawkins, over 300 pages of terror and history for only $19.95 in paperback, $2.99 in e-book (FREE if you belong to Amazon Prime). If you have any questions for me, write to me at Brian@RisingTide.pub. No attachments, please, for security reasons.

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