I stole this from Karen at First Offenders. But her post about being thirty got me wondering — if forty is the new thirty, why is it that there are so many bright young twenty-somethings writing crime novels these days, or trying to? When I started out, Dennis Lehane was, at 30, the youngest guy in the room, with Sujata Massey clearly the youngest gal. The other “youngsters” included Harlan Coben, Steve Hamilton, Rick Riordan and, well, me — all thirtysomething IIRC.
I have a theory about this. In the 1980s, Vintange Books, flush with the success of Bright Lights, Big City, published a lot of wonderful paperback originals, including the work of James Crumley. I know that Coben, Lehane, Hamilton and George Pelecanos read Crumley (as did I) and I have a hunch that Michael Connelly may have as well. But crime fiction was still largely ghetto-ized, so serious young writers took fliers on more literary forms. I know I did, at least. Others, such as Pelecanos, might have always set their sights on crime fiction, but waited until the relative sedateness of their thirties to start writing. At any rate, there are a lot of Crumley-ites in our generation, too many to be mere coincidence.
I think the critical success of writers such as Connelly, Lehane and Pelecanos, among others, legitimized crime fiction in the minds of younger writers in the 90s and now the aughts. So instead of spending their 20s on the Not-so-Great American Novel, they’re trying genre. I’m thinking of Bryon Q., Dave White, Sarah Weinman and even Duane S. (Although 34, Duane earns young artist status because he also managed to marry and have two young children.)
I spent my 30th birthday flying to Mexico, where I had a three-month fellowship to study Spanish. Wait — memory errs. I traveled two days earlier than my birthday, according to the journal I kept. (“Took about eight hours door to door,” I wrote, sitting on the street outside the home of my host family, who wasn’t there when I arrived. “After the bad weather in San Antonio, everything seemed simple. Of course, I understood very little of what was going on: first taxi driver’s Spanish was virtually incomprehensible; I had no idea how things worked at the bus station, so I just had to find someone else with an 11:40 ticket and follow them.”) I wrote again the next day, describing Cuernavaca as “dirty by my standards, but clean by the standards of a Mexican city . . . Even the trees overhanding the barranca (ravine) are full of refuse.” But my 30th birthday went unacknowledged. I had told my friends back home that my birthday wouldn’t count in Mexico. And, unlike all these bright young people I’ve listed above, I don’t remember having any career goals. I had come to Mexico with the goal of completing a long short story, but I never finished it. I started a novel, but abandoned it. I did, however, sort out my career ambitions while I was there, deciding that I wanted to land a job at a newspaper in Baltimore or Chicago, a goal I realized within three months of returning to San Antonio.
I did however, set a goal of finishing the first draft of my first novel by age 35, and I managed that. Just. I finished the book that year and it was sold while I was 36. The book was published days before I turned 38. In hindsight, that looks pretty fast. But I know it felt like anything but.
What age milestones have you set for yourself? What birthdays stand out for you? What goals have you realized? What ones have you let go, and why? What’s you’re next big goal for yourself?
(Yeah, my hands are getting better and I’m enjoying the quiet before the storm of publication. Can you tell?)
The only goal that ever meant anything was the one I had upon graduating from college: find a way to survive so that I don’t have to live with my parents. With that goal met, everything else in the past 35 years has been elusive. When,that is, I can remember what it was. Oh, wait. I lost 24 pounds at Weight Watchers. And kept it off. I am still proud of that one.
Laura, you can be me any old time you like
I think I had goals once. Then I became a mother my senior year of high school. All my focus became survival for my child(ren) (I’m up to three beauties now). I’m 33 1/2 (yup, I’m holdin’ on to every minute! LOL) And I’m still trying to figure out what I want to do when I grow up. But after reading Rae’s post, I want to be her!
My biggest wish is to see my children blossom into everything they can be – guess that’s what my parents wanted to see in me too.
I love to read, write and create anything and everything! It seems I have passed that love on to at my children – at any given time, one is inventing something, writing something, or creating something. Mostly the 16 year old. The 14 year old is into sports all of a sudden. And the 2 1/2 year old just thinks crayons and Play Doh are gifts from Heaven!
29 was hard. The twenties were on their way out and I felt like they flew by. 30 was one of the best years of my life – so far. I saw it as a new beginning. And like some of you, thought I was going to be taken seriously. HAH! Someone is always going to be older than you or younger than you. And you will be you. If they didn’t take you seriously before, well, you might want to find someone who didn’t know you before.
All in all, I’m looking forward to every day a little differently now. I see my children grow and change, and I don’t want to miss a minute trying to cram myself into a mold that society thinks I should be in.
I hope I spend any of my birthdays in my favorite place, enjoying the scenery and loving every minute! And knowing me, my favorite place will change from year to year, so I have lots of opportunities coming!!
I think the votes are in and Rae is the winner!
I too am part of the crowd that suffers from too much thinking about the future instead of enjoying the present. For me, I’m in the transition mode of my career — a few years away from ending my current, fairly demanding one and then moving into ….. who knows what. But looking forward to the change. In the meantime, I’ll try to keep thinking about some of those potential side trips along the way.
That I have a peer group in the mystery world is, in a lot of ways, pretty odd. I’m used to being the youngest in a given group anyway (the virtues of having “old” parents, as I like to joke) and that’s pretty much what I was in this group for several years. And now I look around and aside from Bryon, Dave and Duane, there’s John Rickards, Steve Mosby, Ray Banks, Jason Pinter, Blake Crouch, Rebecca Pawel (she writes historical crime fiction, ergo “not young,” but in some ways that’s all the more remarkable) and the youngest of ‘em all, Michael Koryta. I am probably forgetting a few, but what’s ultimately cool is that most of us can discuss writing and random crap equally and passionately – which is the best part of any good peer group.
In terms of goals, well, when I’m 30 I can get all the toys I want. That’s what my daddy said when I was little and I’m sticking to it.
I’m 30. I wrote the first draft of my novel last spring and have been working on revisions, entering contests (which I’m a finalist in one and will hear the results on the 14th!) and getting it ready to submit it to agents. A few months before my 29th birthday I wrote down a few goals for myself. I wanted to read x amount of books in one year, I wanted to have an outline for a book written by the time I turned 29, I wanted to have a rough draft of a book done by the time I was 30, and I wanted to be sending it off to anyone and everyone by the time I was 31. So far I’ve been ahead of schedule, and with 6 months left til my 31st, I’m getting ready to start submitting.
It’s funny, when I was a lot younger I always said that I was going to be a writer or a marine biologist. Those goals both sort of dissolved, and I went around for a while not knowing what I wanted to do. I started working retail in Baltimore and then moved to Ocean City, where I did the same thing. I kept saying it was just until I figured out what I want to do with my life.
Now, I’m the manager for a large store and I do all of the buying, which is sooo much fun. I love going to trade shows, traveling and meeting people I’d never expect to meet. I’ve been working at the same store for 11 years now, so I know all the ins and outs of the industry. And who knew writing would creep back into my life!
When I was fifteen, I never would have guessed I’d be where I am now. But the main thing is, I’m extremely happy, I love my job, and I love to write. If I can do them both, you won’t hear me complaining!
I am 53- my goal is to retire from the Fed gov’t – on time at 55. I want to read a lot, see all the movies I missed, teach adults to read and help socialize abused dogs. I’d also like to live somewhere else for a month each year(not the same place each year- at least not at first)
I was sitting at a diner in Marina del Rey with Blake. I was 29. I’d just sold my first novel.
“When’s it coming out?” he said.
“May,” I said.
He mulled.
“When do you turn 30?” he said.
“February,” I said.
He mulled.
“That sucks,” he said.
Yikes! I just turned 40! Which means I’m the old man of my peer group.
I did have a goal of being published by 30, but real life asserted itself. Then Y2K rolled around, and while partying at Li’l Sis’s bar, she strutted up to me and said, “I wrote a novel and sold it. Where’s yours, Jim?”
Er… Well… I was 33 that night.
So I made my goal 40. Nailed it by 1 1/2 years, though in baseball terms, it was a single on a dropped ball.
So now I’ve not only done it, but it looks like the follow up is going to get shopped properly.
But I envy guys like Dave and Ray and Bryon who are already at it before 30. They didn’t waste time.
The birthdays with zeros stand out for me – no surprise. When I turned 30, I thought “Great! I’m an adult! People will take me seriously now…” Yeah, I was a naive 30-year-old
Forty was great because I was in really good shape -looked good, felt good, was getting along well with the man in my life. I turned 50 in March; a cool birthday because I was in Paris – a trip I planned for a couple of years. I spent eight days in my favorite place on earth, just hanging out and looking back on my first half century. It was awesome.
Regarding goals, I guess I’m not very goal oriented. For some reason I’ve always thought of them as being restrictive, as causing a kind of tunnel vision – if you’re too focused on your goals, you might miss a really nifty side trip. I do admire people who set goals and work to achieve them, but it’s alwasy been kind of an alien concept to me.
I think I want to be Rae when I’m 50.
At 56, I’m following the philosophy of ” no regrets”.I certainly had goals in my 20′s and 30′s but a lot of things changed. Circumstances in my life and the direction I took as a person. I now look forward to basking in the light of my children’s accomplishments as human beings, not necessarily in the financial sense .
40 was definitely a watershed for me. I felt that I was finally an adult. Not someone’s daughter or wife or mother. I feel like I’ve grown to finally know myself again. I had to the make the conscious decision to do so, I’m not sure in my case it would have happened if I didn’t. I’ve met so many people in my age group that live in the past, the “glory days” so to speak. They waste so much time mourning for lost youth and the “good old days”, that the best times of their lives go by unnoticed. I may not be the smartest person in the world, but I will always try to keep learning and keep living it up.That’s my goal for the future.
My 30th birthday was memorable.[ And unprintable; some of the participants are still alive and well and working in Flint.]
Part of my 50th birthday was spent goofing around on the old Hardboiled message board, where I got the notion [and encouragement] to try me a little fiction writing. That was two years ago. Since then I’ve had a few short stories picked up, had one orphaned, and received a rejection letter from EQMM that contained some nice words that surprised the hell out of me. [ It's my understanding, given the sheer volume of submissions she receives, that the EQMM editor rarely personalizes a rejection slip -- so I was almost as excited as if they'd picked the story up for publication.]
I’ll be 52 this month and I wish I’d started writing fiction at 32. There’s a lot about the craft of writing that I still have to learn; but I’m starting to feel like Keith Richards looks, so time is not on my side … I’d like to have me some book deal Yeeh-Hah! before I end up as a Wal*Mart greeter Wah-Wah.
[On the side: Woid on the street is that Steve Hamilton will have a new Alex novel out soon. As an occasional visitor to the real Paradise, Mi., and a fan of Steve's books, I'm already buying beer and stew.]
–john–
John McAuley
Chronologically Ray may be young, but inside he’s a crotchty old man.