Is it too late to become a writer at 23-years-old?
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It depends.
If you want to write children’s books or software code or video games, you might be at exactly the right age. If you want to write business or self-help books, you are too young and need seasoning or risk being dubbed naive. If you want to write novels, you are likely way too young and need to gain what I and others call life-experience.
An old and favorite aphorism is, “it’s never too late to be what you might have been.” Perhaps we can change that to read, “ it’s never too early to be what you might become.” So my advice as a “seasoned writer” is to write whatever suits your fancy and see where it takes you. Writing — becoming a writer — is a voyage of discovery, not a destination. I am fond of saying to my students that writing is the only, and I mean only, way to make sense of the world around you. Daydreaming or brainstorming just won’t cut it.
“ it’s never too early to be what you might become”
Lest you think that my advice is the irrelevant ranting of a demented old man, consider that I have written more than three million words that have been published or spoken in formal settings, taught hundreds of university and professional students how to write, am the founder of a growing publishing company, and am studying how to write a first novel that will raise me from obscurity.
I started all this at age 40, after a disheartening career in industry. Perhaps it was my life experience.
