Do writers have an age where their talent peaks?

[mormont]

I wouldn't go so far as the author did, to call some writers divas (even though they are), but it's not just a matter of "not owing" work to fans. It's a matter of realizing their fans are a huge part of their success -- they put the expensive cars in the garage, as Noel Gallagher of Oasis once said.

I think this is to confuse acknowledging your gratitude to fans for their support, which is certainly a good thing and is what Gallagher was talking about, with something quite different - a 'debt' to fans that requires a payoff from the artist in terms of their creative output. I'd say that at the point where a writer (or musician) sits down to write, they should not be thinking about what they 'owe' their fans in the latter terms. That leads to pandering to the audience, and if there's a better way to lose your creative voice than worrying about how every word, every note, every step of the creative process will be received by your existing fans, I can't think of it. (I'd also suggest that constant second-guessing in this way seems more likely to slow the creative process down than to speed it up.)

[AverageGuy]

I think it's a question of drive, which isn't necessarily related to age but often is. When you do something for a while, you just get burnt out and lose some of your energy. And I think this is a bigger problem for writers of series.

[Isalie]

I'm guessing that even though both Jordan and Martin probably have/had a good idea of how they want to finish their stories, the life that they take on their own and the difference between writing the small scale and the large can probably be pretty large obstacles to overcome. Especially if the story drags out and all of a sudden the supporting cast of WoT has overcome incredible odds for thirteen book rather than three.

[Myrddin]

I'd say success is more of a factor than age, though I can see the 40's could be a sweet spot for generating quality (old enough to have a grasp of the human condition and young/hungry enough to spend the time putting it to paper/pixels).

With success, you can assume there is a feeling of "I know what I'm doing", and rightly so. There becomes a less reliance on editors for collaboration and editors will trust you to do the right thing.

In a way, I see this trend in my day job, where I design and develop online training. When I was younger, I was more likely to solicit feedback to make my courses better. These days, I'm juggling so many projects as a "senior" designer, that I don't have time to collaborate and am confident enough in my own abilities to still churn out quality. I'm just conscious of the fact that the courses would have a higher level of quality if I could get peer feedback in a timely fashion.

[dornish prince]

I dunno. Dorothy Dunnett just kept getting better. Gemini came out the year before she died at 78.

I think it's possible to lose your way, artistically speaking, but I don't think it's a given.

in retrospect, i was generalizing a bit too much when i said that we ALL run out of things to say. it is just that, in my experience, some of my favorites seem to have fallen prey to it. especially in music.

[Samalander]

I don't think that age has much to do with it.

However, if history has shown us anything, it's that, for a writer, streching out one's magnus opus is a sure recipe for decline and, given sufficient time, even debasement.

Zelazny's Amber series exhibited a sharp decline in quality between the Corwin cycle and the Merlin cycle.

King's Dark tower can actually be spilt like so 4:3 good:bad.

Jordan really took it to extremes with books that are an actual waste of wood pulp and ink.

And GRRM's shotcomings in books 4&5 we all know.

The thing is, these guys don't seem to know when to stop (or maybe how?)

You never actually see a long series that starts off average and reaches new heights towards the end. That somehow never happens. If someone can give me an example of such a series, that would be good (and don't tell me that if the first book isn't good, it wouldn't be published. An average book might still get published. There are plenty of those out there).

[MinDonner]

Donaldson's Gap series. First book sucks, then gets steadily more awesome through to book 5. OK, a five book series isn't THAT long, but it was several years in the writing.

[Emo Jon Snow]

I don't think it has to do with age, my biggest problem with books 4 and 5 is the increase in POV characters, we went from about a dozen people to following half of Westeros around while some of the earlier major characters have been relegated to 3 chapters, we get an entire book basically dedicated to the iron islands.

[Gabriele]

Where's Larry when you need him, lol? I'm sure he could come up with more examples of writers who, like good wine, get better with age. Thomas Mann and Goethe come to mind, or Theodor Fontane who was 60 when he published his first novel (he'd written travel diaries that got published, poems and journalistic stuff before though, so he was not an inexperienced writer).

My grandmother got first published at the age of 86 and in the years to follow placed several short stories in literary magazines. She'd have called Martin a young sprog who had his best years still ahead. :D

That article says more about the attitude of our time towards age than about writing quality. Though I admit that some writers obviously had in the past, and still have, a peak time instead of a steady grow. But the peak may come at 30 as well as at 60something. In case of ASOIAF I'm willing to wait for the series to be finished before I make a final judgement, and Robert Jordan unfortunately never had the chance to prove whether he might still have brought his meandering monster to a satisfying conclusion.

[red snow]

If someone can give me an example of such a series, that would be good (and don't tell me that if the first book isn't good, it wouldn't be published. An average book might still get published. There are plenty of those out there).

It's hard to argue if you think they all get worse but I thought Daniel Abraham's "the long price", Abercrombie's "first law" and Adrian Tchaikovsky's "shadows of the apt" have all improved with each book they've released. You could argue that all 3 authors have been putting out a book or year so maybe they are all hitting their stride. Abraham has 3 different series out now so I think he's doing pretty well. It wiill be interesting to see how the other two fare if they ever move away from the world's they have created.

[Hereward]

Mary Wesley didn't even publish her first novel until she was 71 and continued to get better until she retired at 83.

[snake]

John Le Carre still puts out quality novels and he's 80.

Alice Munro is also 80 and her writing certainly hasn't diminished.

[mormont]

I don't think that age has much to do with it.

However, if history has shown us anything, it's that, for a writer, streching out one's magnus opus is a sure recipe for decline and, given sufficient time, even debasement.

I'm not sure history has shown us this at all, to be honest. It seems like an attempt to generalise based on cherry-picking examples, and one of those examples can just as easily be recruited as a counter-argument: the most common explanation offered by critics of the latter three books of the Dark Tower is that their shortcomings stem from being written in a far shorter time frame than the first four.

[Zoë Sumra]

John Le Carre still puts out quality novels and he's 80.

Alice Munro is also 80 and her writing certainly hasn't diminished.

And Terry Pratchett peaked quite a while ago (opinions differ on precisely when: IMO it was around 2002), but for obvious reasons.

The elephant in the room - over 50% people if they live long enough will start to experience fading faculties. The news ran a "human interest" story the other week of a woman who'd been born in her current house in 1912 and had been living there ever since: at 100, she looked and sounded younger and more alert than my father immediately before his death at 71 (for that matter my grandfather-in-law was fine well into his eighties). On a purely physical/neurological level, we'll all start breaking down at some point and at different ages, and when it's a writer, it's noticeable: Le Carre, Munro, and others mentioned here have been lucky in not deteriorating neurologically - or maybe shielded by lots of mental activity.

The difference between that situation and opinions about someone like Jordan or Martin is steep: GRRM is middle aged, not old. IMO, ASOIAF has just started to run away from GRRM, not quite in the same way as WOT ran away from Jordan (which seemed to be as much of a commercial issue as anything), and I don't think that has to do so much with drive - which I believe is an issue, or can be, with some writers - as the inability of anyone, however good, to keep that many balls in the air at once at a consistent level. (Basically I don't think that Dance wasn't great because GRRM is getting past it: I think it wasn't great because it could never have been a great book, written by anyone, at any time.)

[snake]

And Terry Pratchett peaked quite a while ago (opinions differ on precisely when: IMO it was around 2002), but for obvious reasons.

The elephant in the room - over 50% people if they live long enough will start to experience fading faculties. The news ran a "human interest" story the other week of a woman who'd been born in her current house in 1912 and had been living there ever since: at 100, she looked and sounded younger and more alert than my father immediately before his death at 71 (for that matter my grandfather-in-law was fine well into his eighties). On a purely physical/neurological level, we'll all start breaking down at some point and at different ages, and when it's a writer, it's noticeable: Le Carre, Munro, and others mentioned here have been lucky in not deteriorating neurologically - or maybe shielded by lots of mental activity.

The difference between that situation and opinions about someone like Jordan or Martin is steep: GRRM is middle aged, not old. IMO, ASOIAF has just started to run away from GRRM, not quite in the same way as WOT ran away from Jordan (which seemed to be as much of a commercial issue as anything), and I don't think that has to do so much with drive - which I believe is an issue, or can be, with some writers - as the inability of anyone, however good, to keep that many balls in the air at once at a consistent level. (Basically I don't think that Dance wasn't great because GRRM is getting past it: I think it wasn't great because it could never have been a great book, written by anyone, at any time.)

I mostly agree with what you're saying here although we do differ on why we think(assuming you do agree with me about the last two books) GRRM's last two novels have suffered in quality. I really don't think age factors into it.

I also disagree that ADwD could not have been as good as AGoT. Personally, I'm skeptical that any of the remaining novels will reach the quality of the first three. Hope I'm wrong.

[Zoë Sumra]

Oh, I don't think any of the rest of ASOIAF is likely to be as good as the first three books (and bear in mind I liked AFFC far more than most people seem to do), but because of the too-many-balls-in-air factor. When you're following that sheer number of geographically disparate POVs that closely, you can never include enough content for their stories in any one book to make a coherent story arc for them all, which IMO is what Dance was lacking in terms of most POVs (there is, for instance, a released sample chapter for Winds that totally belonged in Dance in terms of story progression. It would have improved its characters' stories to a considerable extent. But there was no room). It's physically impossible in terms of bookbinding.

But I don't think that that's to do with GRRM's age, unless you want to argue for a certain degree of hubris creeping in with the experience.

[theusualuser]

I definitely think that there's a sweet spot for all writers, but I don't know that it falls into a particular age range. That would only really be possible, in my mind, if all authors started writing at the same time. I DO believe that age plays a factor in the drop in quality. Let's remember that Martin is 63, which is definitely past what I'd call middle-aged. He's only a dozen years from his expiration date, as far as average life expectancy is concerned, and he doesn't really look like he'll be out running any marathons soon, ya know?

Also, remember that things like diabetes (a serious concern for authors, a number of whom live nearly sedentary lifestyles) can cloud your judgement at times, and can lead to mini-strokes, which would only make things worse.

Basically, posting this made me want to go eat some veggies and get to the gym.

[Werthead]

This may be a Euro-US thing. In the UK, 63 is now considered upper middle-age. The current retirement age is 65, which is going to increase to 68 in less than a decade (and will probably be 70 not too many years after that).

That said, the difference between the average lifespans in the UK and US is only 1 year, so it's surprising there is a difference.

[Gabriele]

It's the same here as in the UK (that damn Euro no one wants but the Greek nonewithstanding ;) ). They consider putting the retirement age up to 67, so you're not old at 63.

[Isalie]

Also, there's no way he will finish it in just another decade so stop with the life expectancy talk! ;)