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Too Old to Write?

9 December 2002

'I represented a writer some years ago called Kay Mitchell who started writing in her late 50s and published many successful books. She said she'd been to a writers' seminar and there were a couple of young publishing people from the literary imprints who said quite blithely: If you haven't got your first book published by 40 there's really no point in trying. Kay said if she'd heard that before she'd got an agent, she would have believed it and just given up. I think that's a wicked thing to say because people know more when they're mature. Writing is an intellectual activity keeps the brain going and you don't have to be particularly active to do it.'

Agent Carole Blake of Blake Friedmann in Publishing News