Writing for no audience for 30 years

*Nearly no audience.

So much of life I’ve spent waiting for that one stranger to come along and say my deepest, dumbest thoughts aloud to ease the weight. Until one day, I thought screw it, I’ll do it myself.

When you finally discover what’s insane to you is normal to everyone else, you’re forced to become a writer. And then there’s no end to it.

And sometimes you’ve gotta enjoy your insanity without an audience for decades before something interesting happens, before the light of ridiculousness shines bright. When you finally stop playing the game, the game rewards you. Not because you won. Because you stopped.

Bestselling authors are ‘old’

It’s a long journey until you stop playing the game. And perhaps it’s the reason why most bestselling authors are aged between 48-52. This average age for a bestselling author was news to me. For some reason I assumed it was much younger. But that’s probably because there’s a lot of fanfare and media for younger best selling authors. The glamour of youth has always sold well and the reason why most advertising is aimed at 18-35 year olds. And maybe that’s what also adds to bestselling authors being closer to 50 - 10 years after this heavily marketed to 18-35 year old demographic? But it makes sense that 50 is the average bestselling age for authors. They’re out of that dazzling spotlight that brings confusion that tries to relentlessly sell ‘reality’. At this age, these authors are closer to knowing who they are and are not.

Some of my favourite, most re-readable books are written by authors into their mid forties and older. Simply because they’ve been around longer (which sounds tautalogical and redundant, but true).

And the genre and age of best selling authors is interesting:
- The horror genre is the youngest average bestseller age at early 40s.
- The romance genre averages in the author’s mid 40s.
- Then crime and thriller into late 40s.
- And finally, self help over 50.

I’ve always read authors ten years older than me

At my retail job in my early 20s, a 35 year old coworker said something about life that blew my mind. And then when I was 35, I reflected on his words and at this point they seemed self evident. And it happened again. When I was 35, someone who was ten years older blew my mind again. And again the same revelation and self-evident wisdom arrived another decade later.

So it’s the reason why I’ve always read books by an author at least 10 years older than me. And it’s the reason I’ll generally avoid books by authors my age or younger, even if they’re classics or highly awarded. I don’t really care if I’m missing out or if this is shortsighted. This loose principle has served me well. And if I think I’m being too harsh and blind, all I have to do is read a book by someone my age or younger to remind me why I rarely do this. We live in a time where wisdom isn’t respected (‘Boomer’) and intelligence is highly awarded. Personally I can’t stand clever, intelligent comedy, I find it smarmy and unlived. But I love comedy that has wisdom to it.

Older writers (who aren’t comedians) are brutally funny because they’ve honed hard-earned life truths

The insane repetition of life while existing with the heavy burden of consciousness does something profound. It dizzies us and makes things ridiculous. And that’s what life is: wonderfully ridiculous. Authors over 50 seem to be able to distil highly complex parts of life into something simple and ridiculous. Cut through the manufactured confusion.

Some of the wisdom I’ve read from these older authors is so bang-on, it makes me laugh loudly, even though I know they’re being dead serious. Ekhart Tolle, although not a comedian, does this for me. Tolle had his first best seller at 49, The Power Of Now. His talks tickle me. Cormac McCarthy had his first bestseller, All The Pretty Horses, at 58. McCarthy writes very seriously, almost Old Testament style, but I still laugh at his razor blade truths. And there’s Charles Bukowski, who at 50, had his first bestseller, Post Office. These writers are all laugh-out-loud funny for me, even though they’re not classified as humourists. Oh, I’ve gotta mention Alan Watts lectures here too.

I’ve often noticed that comedians in their 20s and 30s are nowhere near as funny as serious writers over 50 who aren’t comedians. For me the best comedy is based on truth - the adage, “it’s funny because it’s true”. Great writers end up being deeply funny simply because they’ve taken worn-out truth and sharpened the shit out of it with life experience. Because for authors over fifty (often regarded as “late in life” to anyone younger than 35), to say anything less than brutally true, is a waste of their time. Past 50, you have don’t have time to muck around and win people over with bullshit. The older you get, the better you know yourself, the less friends you have. Because you’re no longer concerned with half-truths to fit in. To be accepted. Life squeezes the lies out of you.

And I’ve heard it said before by a couple of famous comedians, that it takes about 30 years to make a great comedian. Starting that journey from 20, you make it to 50.

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When you no longer need something it’s given to you

And perhaps this magical age of 50, the average bestselling author age, is also around the time when you no longer fawn for this kind of success. Mortality concerns you more than the fake immortality of success. You’re over trying to prove yourself to anyone else. Success and fame is a young person’s game. Being young is the game of fitting in. So the balance of the universe is smiling on authors finding this bestseller success around 50. Because when you no longer need something, it’s given to you. That’s the law of everything.

And writing is a process of waking yourself up. If the words are any good, they wake both you and the reader. I’ll wake in the morning, I write, and I’ll try to wake up a second time through the process of writing. And if all my words are crap, I’ll often be in a bit of a shit autopilot mood for the rest of the day. But if they work, I can look up from what I’ve been writing and I’m double-awake into my own world with my own myths, oxygen and light.

Stumbling into your own world

At some point I realised I didn’t have to deliberately get into a story for something interesting to write about. All I had to do was simply exist. And all I needed was the courage to survive the vast boring parts of myself through the repetition of the days and nights and decades.

And you might have to write for decades before stumbling into a new world of your own invention. With its own oxygen, its own myths. And that’s when the old world’s recognition comes knocking, eager to enter the new space you’ve opened. And now everyone wants in. There it all is at your door - the old world’s smiling faces that once eye-rolled you - now offering its shadow rewards and trivial success. But it’s too late, too little. You’ve invented a place of your own from thin air, richer than any of that shit. You can cheat at getting better at writing by simply getting older.

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I crap on about creativity on my podcast Blah Di Da

My new book, Darby, Love… is available for preorder, published by Andrews McMeel