Read "Irrepressible Words" Jo's new essay on her journey from suppressing her literary ambitions in her teens to publishing her first novel in her sixties and her second in her seventies.
Hello I am now working on the three stories in my heart that I can’t bear to see go to the grave with me... I just turned 60 this past August. I wrote my first poem in the first grade and then started writing more sophisticated projects each year until my work was so polished that I was constantly accused of having plagiarised it from someone else’s perspective (always said I was too young to be such a good writer rather then being such a talented writer who was so young.) But never❤️
For a long time, I gave up on any ambitions behind motherhood and marriage. I was raised Mormon and taught that my place was in the home, supporting my husband in his dreams. Many years, one religious exodus, and one divorce later, I am finally daring to believe that I (at 42) can grow up to be whatever I want. I so appreciate Jo’s story of later-in-life success as a novelist. I hope that will be the story of my forties!
This essay and Jo Salas' story resonated with me. I admire her determination and I can't wait to read her books. I am 63 and have wanted to publish a novel since my early 20s. I came close around age 50 with an agent offering to represent a middle-grade novel but when he couldn't find a publisher for it, dejected, I stopped trying and did not take his suggestion to approach an indie press. I wrote another novel, a YA, and now am about done with a third, contemporary fiction. I have been debating whether to try again the agent route (it took 62 queries to get that agent over a decade ago and it is decidedly more competitive now) or seek out a small publisher directly. This current novel is close to my heart, the best thing I've ever written, and I would love it to reach the readers I have written it for. It is not too late, I tell myself, to have a 40-year dream realized and writers like Jo show us the way. And so early next year when I consider it ready, I will put this tender manuscript of my mine out into the world. I am glad Jo found her manuscript sherpa. Perhaps I will need to find one, too!
I gave up creativity. I was never encouraged to explore that part of myself, and I thought creativity was best left to famous artists. As you can imagine, its absence led to a bleak sense about myself. Finally though, in my late 50s, I saw that I couldn’t not create. I had been doing it all along without knowing it. Thank you for the inspirational interview 🤍
This is lovely, as are all Jane's posts. I want to say thank you to Jane and Jo, and go go go to everyone who's written in to share their hopes. I gave up writing to become a professor in a field I love, only to find out that, as much as I love teaching, I really did not enjoy scholarship in its current form. Publish or perish is real: you can't keep a job without doing it. I just didn't like writing or responding to literature as one must in order to get published in scholarly journals. I started writing again in my early 40s, but it was stop and start for a long time because I was fighting depression and all the self-squashing things that it does to you. Then good things happened and I'm back to it. I'll be 68 next week (ufff, first time I've written that down! But yay me!) and if fate is kind I will keep writing and being blessed to find other ways to teach.
Thank you so much for this piece. I saw the title and was like a child who see’s her mommy walking to pick her up on her first day of preschool. I have been so terrified of being poor (my mom went through not being able to hear our NY home for several winters) that I have stayed over 12 years in a career I hated to try to keep myself and babies and husband seemingly secure. Today I’m 50 and still I keep trying to come up with ways to earn a living doing things that are not my passion, instead of wholeheartedly receiving the greatest gift the universe has ever given me of time, to be all in on my manuscript. I do write about 3 hours a day but pray to believe in myself enough to stop worry about plan B. Thank you again Ilona! Sorry this is so long Blessings!
Thank you for this beautiful post. So deeply appreciated. As a woman entering my late 40s, and still dreaming of completing and publishing my novel, it was so inspiring and moving.
This interview hit so close to home. I wish I could go back to the days before I was “interrupted” as a writer. It happened many times. know I’m not alone. Now in my sixties, I’m giving myself permission to call myself a writer. Coincidentally, my new Substack - and I’m still learning to whisper this - is “Writer, interrupted.” Whatever happened that silenced us, we can still tell our truths. Thank you for sharing this inspiring story.
For years, I gave up on any significant ambitions behind motherhood and marriage... My ex-husband was a novelist and everything was about supporting his work. It wasn't until he left me, and my own book came out, and then my substacks started to take shape, that I found my "funny". I was always conditioned to believe that he was the genius... if only we both could have seen things as less of a zero-sum game... and made room for each other. (Le sigh.)
This post really, deeply resonates, and is an inspiration. You asked what we carry now from our childhoods, and what we denied ourselves. At 43 I began an MFA program after knowing my whole life I should write. Why quiet myself like that? The conditioning you spoke of, that’s it. And also, I kept quiet--almost invisible even to myself--the truth of my sexuality and fullness of my own humanity. Again, the conditioning. I am now writing through all of that, and so relieved.
Hello I am now working on the three stories in my heart that I can’t bear to see go to the grave with me... I just turned 60 this past August. I wrote my first poem in the first grade and then started writing more sophisticated projects each year until my work was so polished that I was constantly accused of having plagiarised it from someone else’s perspective (always said I was too young to be such a good writer rather then being such a talented writer who was so young.) But never❤️
For a long time, I gave up on any ambitions behind motherhood and marriage. I was raised Mormon and taught that my place was in the home, supporting my husband in his dreams. Many years, one religious exodus, and one divorce later, I am finally daring to believe that I (at 42) can grow up to be whatever I want. I so appreciate Jo’s story of later-in-life success as a novelist. I hope that will be the story of my forties!
This essay and Jo Salas' story resonated with me. I admire her determination and I can't wait to read her books. I am 63 and have wanted to publish a novel since my early 20s. I came close around age 50 with an agent offering to represent a middle-grade novel but when he couldn't find a publisher for it, dejected, I stopped trying and did not take his suggestion to approach an indie press. I wrote another novel, a YA, and now am about done with a third, contemporary fiction. I have been debating whether to try again the agent route (it took 62 queries to get that agent over a decade ago and it is decidedly more competitive now) or seek out a small publisher directly. This current novel is close to my heart, the best thing I've ever written, and I would love it to reach the readers I have written it for. It is not too late, I tell myself, to have a 40-year dream realized and writers like Jo show us the way. And so early next year when I consider it ready, I will put this tender manuscript of my mine out into the world. I am glad Jo found her manuscript sherpa. Perhaps I will need to find one, too!
I gave up creativity. I was never encouraged to explore that part of myself, and I thought creativity was best left to famous artists. As you can imagine, its absence led to a bleak sense about myself. Finally though, in my late 50s, I saw that I couldn’t not create. I had been doing it all along without knowing it. Thank you for the inspirational interview 🤍
This is lovely, as are all Jane's posts. I want to say thank you to Jane and Jo, and go go go to everyone who's written in to share their hopes. I gave up writing to become a professor in a field I love, only to find out that, as much as I love teaching, I really did not enjoy scholarship in its current form. Publish or perish is real: you can't keep a job without doing it. I just didn't like writing or responding to literature as one must in order to get published in scholarly journals. I started writing again in my early 40s, but it was stop and start for a long time because I was fighting depression and all the self-squashing things that it does to you. Then good things happened and I'm back to it. I'll be 68 next week (ufff, first time I've written that down! But yay me!) and if fate is kind I will keep writing and being blessed to find other ways to teach.
Thank you so much for this piece. I saw the title and was like a child who see’s her mommy walking to pick her up on her first day of preschool. I have been so terrified of being poor (my mom went through not being able to hear our NY home for several winters) that I have stayed over 12 years in a career I hated to try to keep myself and babies and husband seemingly secure. Today I’m 50 and still I keep trying to come up with ways to earn a living doing things that are not my passion, instead of wholeheartedly receiving the greatest gift the universe has ever given me of time, to be all in on my manuscript. I do write about 3 hours a day but pray to believe in myself enough to stop worry about plan B. Thank you again Ilona! Sorry this is so long Blessings!
Thank you for this beautiful post. So deeply appreciated. As a woman entering my late 40s, and still dreaming of completing and publishing my novel, it was so inspiring and moving.
This interview hit so close to home. I wish I could go back to the days before I was “interrupted” as a writer. It happened many times. know I’m not alone. Now in my sixties, I’m giving myself permission to call myself a writer. Coincidentally, my new Substack - and I’m still learning to whisper this - is “Writer, interrupted.” Whatever happened that silenced us, we can still tell our truths. Thank you for sharing this inspiring story.
For years, I gave up on any significant ambitions behind motherhood and marriage... My ex-husband was a novelist and everything was about supporting his work. It wasn't until he left me, and my own book came out, and then my substacks started to take shape, that I found my "funny". I was always conditioned to believe that he was the genius... if only we both could have seen things as less of a zero-sum game... and made room for each other. (Le sigh.)
This post really, deeply resonates, and is an inspiration. You asked what we carry now from our childhoods, and what we denied ourselves. At 43 I began an MFA program after knowing my whole life I should write. Why quiet myself like that? The conditioning you spoke of, that’s it. And also, I kept quiet--almost invisible even to myself--the truth of my sexuality and fullness of my own humanity. Again, the conditioning. I am now writing through all of that, and so relieved.