One tends to overlook the fact that all during the 30's and actually during the late 40's I was a highly successful writer and a great many properties accumulated during that period of time.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I began writing seriously in my mid-20s and didn't publish my first book until I was 41.
I wrote my first book when I was in my late thirties.
I spent 20 years of my career primarily being a writer for hire.
I think my very best work came out when I was about 60, not when I was 20. I was publishing all the time when I was in my 20s, and some of those poems I still like. And there were a few after 60, and in my 70s, that I like. But they became fewer and fewer.
I chose a time in the century which had the greatest moments for novels - the late '30s and World War II.
By the time I was twenty-three, I'd given up any thought of becoming a fiction writer, and I didn't return to the craft for over two decades. But, at the age of forty-five, return I did.
I was really exposed to great old-time literature - the classics, the poetic realists like Strindberg and Ibsen and all those guys. I was really inspired by all those guys. That's when writing became a primary focus.
I was 40 years old before I became an overnight success, and I'd been publishing for 20 years.
Not until my middle thirties did I consider myself a novelist.
I started writing seriously about 1960, at the fairly advanced age of 30.