Although I’d decided to be a writer at the age of 16, I was never in a rush to get published. Virginia Woolf said that no one should publish a novel before he or she turns 30, and that seemed about right to me. Skip the callow, autobiographical coming-of-age novel, along with any signs of apprenticeship. Bide your time, get better at your craft, and publish something unembarrassing in the early years of your maturity.
That philosophy stood me in good stead throughout my 20s. But as my 30th birthday approached, I began to feel uneasy. “What do you do?” people asked at the New York cocktail parties I went to. “I’m a writer.” “Anything I might have seen?” When I mentioned the one story I’d placed in an obscure literary magazine, my interlocutors nodded uncertainly, and drifted away.
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