My second novel, A Little Life — about a group of men in New York and their friendship over the course of 30 years — will be published in March. Because my first book, The People in the Trees, came out in August of 2013, people have been asking me: What happened? Why did the first book take 16 years to write, and the second only 18 months?
The true (though unsatisfying) answer is: I don't know. (Well, I partially know: I spent a lot of those 16 years fooling around and being lazy.) But not knowing is not going to stop me from sharing the following nine rules for anyone working on their manuscript, wondering if, and when, and how, they too might be published.
1) You don't need an MFA to write a novel.
2) Publishing is not a foot race. It doesn't matter how old you are when you publish your book. Or rather: it may matter (to publishing reporters, to your house), but it will never mean your book is intrinsically better or worse than it already is. And there are advantages to publishing later in life, as well — as someone who published her first book when she was 39, I'd say that the real advantage is this: when you get published as a middle-aged adult, the fact that you're a published author won't and shouldn't define how you identify yourself, or how you feel about yourself as a person (for better and worse). You'll know already. If you want to, you will be someone who writes, rather than a writer, and this can be liberating...