Artist’s Conception of Your Humble Author as a Child Writer
Here in 2017 we’re all basically waiting around to be woken up at 2AM to the news that the missiles have launched and we’ve all got about five minutes to say our goodbyes or go crawl into our bomb shelters with our cans of Dinty Moore and our gold bars. It’s hard to soldier on and try to write novels and such when you’re pretty sure the morons we’ve elected to the government — suddenly not simply an outsize insult, but rather an accurate description — are either stealing everything not nailed down or eager to destroy everything.
But soldier on I do, mainly because civilization has not crumbled yet to the point where the whiskey reserves are free for the stealing, right before they dry up completely because civilization is sort of necessary for things like whiskey.
So, I’m in a contemplative mood. And I am contemplating the fact that Christopher Paolini is 33 years the fuck old.
The Child Author
I wrote my first real, actual novel when I was about fourteen; there were “novels” before that, but they were very likely just novellas or even long short stories. Cravenhold was a short novel, but I wrote it. And promptly began trying to sell it. And telling everyone I met that I was just fourteen and I’d written a novel, as if that somehow warranted special attention. Like the president of Ballantine Books was going to call me up and congratulate me for being a super genius after offering me a million dollars.
The reason I think about this now, when I am withered by age and practically on death’s door with a whiskey in one hand and my smartphone in the other, is because it’s not unusual, believe it or not, to see kids posting to various Internet writing forums and announcing, smugly, that at the tender age of (14, 15, 16) they have written a novel. And I want to tell them, with all affection and sincerity, to go fuck themselves, because it doesn’t mean anything.
I sort-of, kind-of sold my first novel when I was 16; this wasn’t Cravenhold, but a subsequent novel titled White Rabbit. And believe me, I told everyone and more or less dug a hole for myself, so that when the deal dissolved like tears in the rain I had a lot of explaining to do.
Look, writing something recognizable as a novel when you’re still a kid is an achievement. And if, like Paolini, you manage to sell that novel and publish it to strong sales, that’s amazing. But simply writing a novel as teenager isn’t anything to shout about. Writing a novel at all isn’t something to shout about, actually; people write novels all the time — and routinely write them in a month or less. Sure, writing a novel is an achievement. But it doesn’t mean you’re destined for greatness or anything. Heck, I did it, but I didn’t sell my first real novel to a real publisher until I was 28 years old.
I always assumed that when editors read about my tender years they would be impressed; of course now I wonder if they didn’t immediately stuff the manuscript into the return envelope, rolling their eyes. Which, come to think of it, is pretty much what I imagine happens now.