Mollie McNeil’s A-Z of Publishing a First Book: A IS FOR AGE
We’re delighted to feature this weekly column by Mollie McNeil!
A IS FOR AGE
For pro-athletes, runway models, rock and rollers and dancers, age is the enemy, but for writers, it’s the opposite. Margaret Atwood’s latest book came out when she was eighty-five. Wallace Stegner published Crossing to Safety at seventy-eight. Patti Smith wrote her luminous memoirs in her seventies. Toni Morrison and Cheryl Strayed were in their forties when their best books came out. The list of accomplished older writers is long. Perhaps writing –like wine, friendships and favorite slippers — gets better with age.
And if you are wondering which occupation is safe from being mastered by AI, I believe being a fiction or memoir writer is one of them. It seems unlikely that AI will ever truly be able to replicate the unique artistry of mature writers who have had decades of nuanced experiences with desire, grief, fury, ecstasy, shame, contentment and anxiety and also the unique alchemy of having many emotions at the same time.
Additionally, writers draw in different ways on literature, philosophy, politics, economics, science and/or history, to create captivating settings and scenes, complicated family dynamics and work struggles, romances and rivalries, alien invasions and the unlimited other fantastical creatures and worlds writers feel called to dream up and scribble down.
So begin writing your book at any time, but in my opinion, the older you are, the richer it will be.
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Mollie McNeil studied art history at the University of California, Berkeley, and English literature at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. She has published seven short stories. The Curve of Light is her debut novel. Mollie lives, writes, swims, and makes art in the San Francisco Bay Area, where her family has lived for six generations.
THE CURVE OF LIGHT
For fans of Kate Quinn and Kristin Hannah, a historical novel about a bold young woman who flees her rural home for San Francisco in 1919, bent on unearthing a guarded family secret—and who discovers what it means to be an artist along the way.
It’s 1919, and Arden Winslow’s family is thick with secrets—the kind that are kept from a young lady of a certain station. After her high-society birthday party goes off the rails, Arden, a newly minted adult and aspiring photographer, flees Marin County for San Francisco. She’s determined to find her own way in a world free of her family’s repressive expectations—and committed to learning the truth about the mysterious death of her mother, the accomplished artist India Winslow.
In San Francisco, Arden throws herself into city life—bonding with characters in a boarding house, sneaking her way into job at a posh art gallery, and stumbling into first love with a fellow photographer—all the while getting closer to unearthing the truth about her mother. Spanning the bustling streets of San Francisco, dramatic waterfalls of Yosemite, and ancient forests of Marin, The Curve of Light is a coming-of-age novel of adventure and activism with a clarion message: Home is where the artist’s heart is.
PREORDER HERE
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