{"id":10428,"date":"2023-05-01T08:12:41","date_gmt":"2023-05-01T12:12:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=10428"},"modified":"2023-05-01T08:12:41","modified_gmt":"2023-05-01T12:12:41","slug":"oldest-female-debut-novelist-tells-all","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=10428","title":{"rendered":"Oldest Female Debut Novelist Tells All"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Guest Post by Bobbie Jean Huff<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

I was twelve when I wrote my first novel. It was four pages long, and in it Martha, the butt of bullying by her eighth grade classmates, graduates top of her class. Not much else happens, but with the novel\u2019s completion I had accomplished a major life goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nearly sixty years later I started another novel. For two years I basically lived in the quiet room of the Ottawa Library, and then another year in the Princeton Library, ignoring cracks from my sons about posthumous publication. That novel was published a year ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Writing it, I discovered, was actually the easy part of the publishing process. The next step was finding an agent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019d been warned by my editor. She told me that as an older author I might have trouble finding an agent. She knew a Canadian agent who prided himself on never taking on a debut novelist over the age of 45.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The reasoning behind this: first novels typically don\u2019t sell\u2014or so I was told. If a novelist is to succeed, it\u2019s usually the second or third book that pushes them over that hill.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In view of all this, I thought it best to hide my age. My Twitter profile pictured an older lady, her white hair done in a braid. My name was beneath it. My Facebook profile showed that same lady holding a newborn who was clearly a grandchild\u2014or worse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I needed to get younger, and fast, so I called my niece and suggested lunch. A few days later, if you checked my profile pictures, you would have seen a young woman with her blond hair piled on top of her head with a purple claw clip.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And so, the younger me proceeded to search for an agent. This took time: multiple query letters, various extracts from my novel (fifty pages to this one, the first chapter to another, the full manuscript to another). Persuading an agent to even take a look at your finished manuscript is nearly impossible for a debut author, whatever her age. You might as well send it to www.themoon.com<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

But an agent did respond. The upside of the pandemic: she suggested a phone call instead of a meeting, and courtesy of contemporary hearing aid technology, phone calls to my phone go directly to my ears (providing I remember to charge the hearing aids each night).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

People say I have a young voice. When the agent said, \u201cTell me about yourself,\u201d I told her that I moved down from Canada to New Jersey a few years before, to be near my four sons. And that when I was in Ottawa, I had written and published essays and poems and short stories. Also, I said, I played church organ. Then I quickly changed the subject to the writing I was currently doing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here\u2019s some of what I left out: My sons are all over forty, I have five grandchildren, and some of my organ playing has been for the funerals of close friends.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I signed with her. There then followed a month-long nerve-wracking process: submission of the novel to publishers, the offer, the negotiation of a contract, the unbelievably lengthy period of time that passed before signing, and then, yikes; a request from the publisher for a photograph!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

No photo, no publication? I panicked. Then I recalled an author photo I had seen years before\u2014was it Margaret Atwood\u2019s? That picture featured a lone hand holding a pen. I contemplated doing that, but then decided no, I was tired of all this. I\u2019d send the damn photo, but before that I\u2019d do The Big Reveal. I called my agent and said, timidly, \u201cThere\u2019s something you need to know.\u201d And then I told her, fully expecting that as soon as those two awful words\u2014seventy-four\u2014were out of my mouth, she would gracefully bring the conversation to a close and I\u2019d never hear from her or the publisher again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That night I called my third son. \u201cOf course they knew your age,\u201d he said. \u201cThey only had to type your name into Google.\u201d I tried it and discovered he was right. Google even knew my birth date. But superstitiously I waited until publication day to replace the photos of my niece with pictures of the old lady with the white braid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

British novelist Martin Amis was once quoted as saying, \u201cOctogenarian novelists on the whole [are] no bloody good. You can see [them] disintegrating before your eyes as they move past 70.\u201d (It should be said that Amis\u2019 most recent novel, Inside Story<\/em>, was published in 2020 when he was 72.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then there was Simone de Beauvoir: \u201cA novel is the least suitable form of literature for the elderly writer, because they risk simply repeating things and are past imagining new possibilities.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When The Ones We Keep<\/a><\/em> was published last year, it occurred to me that at 76 I might be the oldest traditionally published female debut novelist. I\u2019ve spent some time searching \u201coldest debut female novelists\u201d and the same names keep popping up: Laura Ingalls Wilder, 65 when she published the first book of her Little House<\/em> series, Mary Wesley, 70 when she published Jumping the Queue<\/em>, and Harriet Doerr, 74 when Stones for Ibarra<\/em> came out. Then there is Delia Owens, whom everyone thinks<\/em> is the oldest female first novelist. But Delia was only 69 when she published When the Crawdads Sing<\/em>. Compared to me, Delia was just a puppy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now, once again, I am searching for an agent and a publisher. By the time The Ones We Keep<\/em> was published, I had another novel ready to go. My agent loved it and submitted it to my publisher. Early indications were good, and I was told that the editorial staff were over the moon about it. But the sigh of relief I heaved was premature. To everyone\u2019s shock, Sales and Marketing gave it the thumbs-down.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was crushed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That rejected novel has now been paused. My agent told me that, based on its rejection, another publisher would only wonder why my own publisher didn\u2019t want it. Instead, I have a third \u201cslim\u201d novel (aka novella) ready to go. My job now is to find a publisher who will like it enough to take the risk of publishing an \u201colder\u201d author. If I succeed in finding that publisher, all well and good (and I will continue the sequel I\u2019ve already started to The Ones We Keep<\/em>).  But if I don\u2019t? I will never know whether it\u2019s because I am, as de Beauvoir put it, \u201cpast imagining new possibilities,\u201d or just, according to Amis, \u201cno bloody good.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Regardless, I no longer try to hide my age, which is now 77. After all, anyone looking at my book jacket can figure that one out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bobbie Jean Huff\u2019s essay, originally published in <\/em>Bloom<\/strong>, has created a stir in the Author\u2019s Guild community, whose members have set up a pair of meetings to discuss it further. Good job, Bobbie!<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Guest Post by Bobbie Jean Huff I was twelve when I wrote my first novel. It was four pages long, and in it Martha, the butt of bullying by her eighth grade classmates, graduates top of her class. Not much … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"A clever and heartfelt essay about ageism in publishing that is stirring the pot.","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[174,68,29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10428","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-first-draft-blog","category-publishing","category-writing"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-2Ic","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10428","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10428"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10428\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10430,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10428\/revisions\/10430"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10428"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10428"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10428"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}