Hollywood called just as I crested thirty. My novels did not and still do not interest them, but my writing ability did.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Not until my middle thirties did I consider myself a novelist.
I didn't get anything published until I was thirty-three, and yet I'd written five novels and six or seven plays. The plays, I should point out, were dreadful.
I worked as an actor for many years. Then I segued to some non-fiction writing.
My first three novels were all the subjects of intensely exciting flurries of calls from producers and even stars' production companies, and once someone actually hired a screenwriter to adapt one of my books - but it all came to nothing, so I tried not to get too excited when a Hollywood suitor came calling for 'Admission,' my fourth novel.
I had novels to write, so I wrote them.
I was an avid reader, but never thought seriously about writing a novel until I was in my thirties. I took no formal fiction-writing courses and never thought about these categories when I wrote my first novel.
Most of the stories I read are about my Hollywood pedigree.
I took two years away from making films to write a novel.
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 didn't write any fiction until I was past thirty.