by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
There are times — like these –when feel pretty insecure about my age and my looming querying of this scifi dramedy novel I’ve been working on. While I’m still in my early 50s, that’s way older than most people when they try to sell their first novel.
I’ve wasted so much of my life brooding over a failed magazine for expats in Seoul. And now I have to live with the consequences. There’s just no going back, I’m afraid.
I have to make do with where I am in life.
My only hope, I suppose, is the technological Singularity happens and instead of being mid-middle aged I will be a spring chicken as we all get to live to be 500 or whatever.
But I have my doubts.
And my age is just one of numerous other headwinds I face when querying. I’m something of a conspicuous kook. Enough of one to potentially scare off your typical liberal white woman literary agent.
And there’s the issue of my native, innate writing ability. I could just suck. And there is the lingering problem of political instability in the United States. It could be that, lulz, a civil war will break out and I won’t be able to survive, much less successfully query a novel.
Only time will tell, I suppose.
