I’ve seen this pattern with a number of authors. There’s a period in their life when they write prolifically - writing a new novel every year for example - but then they get to a certain point and they just stop.
What happened?
Is writing harder work than I imagine? Does it take energy that a person just no longer has past a certain age? (Keep in mind I’m talking about people who have demonstrated they do have this energy.)
Is it success? Do authors get to a point where they no longer feel a need to earn money so they just kick back and relax? I can see this happening but I’d be surprised if this was universal.
Do the ideas dry up? Do authors have a finite supply of ideas when they start out and eventually they’ve used them all?
I’m an outsider here. I’ve never even written a first book. But I feel that if I did have the ability to write books, it’s a thing I’d want to keep doing. So I’m surprised when I see people who have the ability choose to stop using it.
My guess for a lot of them it’s age related. Your mind works slower, it takes more effort to make yourself sit down for hours facing a blank screen. At some point you realize that the book you just finished just isn’t as fresh/exciting/creative/satisfying/whatever as the ones you wrote ten years ago…
We aren’t surprised if an automobile mechanic decides he no longer wants to spend all that time looking into the guts of a car while contorting his body into the awkward position required. Or a plumber – have you ever watched one of them at work? There is a whole ton of do a chunk then run down the stairs out to your truck to get a different gidget, then back up the stairs. Sometimes over and over multiple times on a single job. Climbing stair with increasingly aged bodies just can’t be fun. And, let’s face it, replacing the whatever fitting for the zillionth time in your career – it’s probable you’re doing it almost exclusively because of the money they pay you, not for intellectual entertainment.
And if you’ve done a somewhat decent job at whatever, if you’ve saved enough, if your kids are launched and doing well, if you’ve already run your heroic lawyer through all your best ideas, there comes a point where the rewards of continuing to do whatever no longer exceed the results of, oh, taking up bowling or traveling or whatever else you could be spending that time on.
And so you stop. Maybe you slow down first for a while, or maybe it’s an abrupt think. There was an author who wrote a series about a rabbi. All with titles like “Monday the rabbi did Whatever,” “Tuesday the rabbi did Something Else.” I don’t know, I only read a few, but I can well see him running out of days of the week and deciding “That’s enough” versus, oh, “In September the rabbi did Yet Another thing.”
That was Harry Kemelman. And actually he’s a counter-example to what I’m describing. He pretty much kept the same writing pace throughout his career from 1964 until his death in 1996. He published a new Rabbi Small novel around every three years.
One issue is that when you get older, the simple stories you used to write don’t seem good or challenging enough. So you move to more complex writing, which by definition is more difficult and thus takes more time to finish.
There’s also the market. As it takes longer to write a novel, the audience doesn’t remember you (or hasn’t even heard of you). Publishers these days lean to big sellers, and if your last novel sells less than expected, they are less likely to publish you or spend to promote you if they do. The sales are a big factor and I know of authors who switched to a pen name because their name was not selling well. Publishers are looking for new names, not old ones. And there have been changes in the demographic of readers so certain books are no longer relevant.
There are certainly exceptions, but it gets difficult to get published as you get older.
Also, it’s not that the authors have stopped writing; it’s that the publishers aren’t publishing them.
Sue Grafton, with her Alphabet series, was working pretty much up to the end at age seventy-seven. I think her last book was published something like four months before she died. She never got to write the Z book, unfortunately.
She was churning them out at a pretty decent rate, although if you look at her bibliography, you can see she slowed down a bit over time. There’s a three-year gap between the first and second. After that, in the earlier years, more or less one a year. Later, there are more two-year gaps between books.
I would suspect that age had something to do with slowing down, but there’s also this:
Grafton’s later books were somewhat more complex and dealt more heavily in social issues, such as homelessness etc. There was probably more research involved than there would have been for the earlier ones.
I remember a Hispanic author who explained this way:
“Because those who told me the stories died”
The phrase, attributed to Mexican writer Juan Rulfo, was an answer to why he stopped writing, it reflects the importance of oral sources and the personal connection to stories that are lost with death.
I’m sure it varies, but many do continue to write. Stephen King still publishes books pretty often and I’d actually say his hit-to-miss ratio hasn’t changed much. I loved “Later”, but found “The Institute” to be a bore.
George RR Martin, on the other hand, I don’t believe when he says he is writing his next book. I mean, I am now at the point I think he’s just lying and the next books will never be published and we won’t learn what he meant to happen.
Meanwhile, that crazy-weirdo who writes Xanth is still making them. Piers Anthony. I’m pretty sure he’s another Weinstein-Cosby type guy, though. Ugh. He’s 90 and and has released Xanth books even recently.
I imagine that it’s different for every author. For many of them, they have some other full-time job, and just write a book here and there as they have time. Some probably wrote one or two books just to give it a try, NaNoWriMo or the like, but then decided that it wasn’t for them. Some probably do only have a few books in them, or only one. Some might develop health problems that interfere with their writing (either the mental process of coming up with the stories, or just the physical process of typing or writing). Some might try to keep writing, but have a decline in quality (for whatever reason, some of which overlap with the above) that results in publishers not buying their work any more. Or maybe their quality has stayed the same, but the market has changed (oversaturated, maybe) which also results in lack of publication.
For most people (even creative ones), writing is hard work. The goal of many a writer is to write something so successful, they never have to write again.
For the paycheck? I’m thinking of someone like Tony Hillerman. His last several novels really felt like he was just phoning it in. But he was still a popular writer and the books sold, so why stop?
Not books, but I’ve written a bimonthly column for almost 30 years, and at a certain point you worry about repeating yourself. I have the papers in the issue of the journal to give me inspiration, but it has gotten harder.
If you are writing a series, like Sue Grafton, you’ve probably done what you want to do with the characters after a certain number or books. Your book sales might be diminishing also, so if you have been financially prudent the next book might not be worth writing, or your publisher might reduce your advance.
But, basically, authors may want to retire also. It’s easier to convince yourself to do so if some of the things I mentioned are happening.
I’m probably one of the few folks still around who “met” Anthony via his older and much more adult works before A Spell for Chameleon. I was always surprised at his being regarded as a writer of children’s stories and, while the Xanth series has its issues, I have always wondered if some of the perception of “creepy” with him is that faced by other people producing things considered “children’s X” whether that’s literature, video, or whatever, as if these adults somehow aren’t supposed to actually be adults in “real life”.
Then again, if you think Xanath is creepy/weird try Chthon and Phthor… he seriously dialed back the weird for Xanth. He was part of a generation of SF writers that really believed in pushing boundaries in their writing. I am not aware of any real-life scandals involving him, but then, I don’t follow fandom that much.
Xanth is what paid most of the bills over the years so that’s what he wrote a lot of, what with having a family to support and everything.
And yeah, I think he’s one of those people who is going keep producing (or trying to) until the very end.
This is also the reason many potential authors don’t get very far into a career. Even if they’re not achieving great success they may not be motivated to continue if they’re not satisfied with their results. And for the people with an innate talent for writing time can wear them down. People can get tired of doing something they’re successful at too. Creative people often want more variety in their creative efforts. A good writer might want to try complete different pursuits, creative and otherwise even if it’s not what they do best. And once someone gains some success at writing or any other pursuit if they begin to depend on it financially they can lose the motivation that originally made them successful.
Just to be clear, I’m aware that what I described in the OP is not a universal situation. As people have noted, there are many authors who maintain a prolific output and keep writing. And, on the opposite end, we have the Lees and the Salingers who were never prolific and went decades without producing a book.
What I’m wondering about are the authors who were very prolific at one period of their life but then essentially stopped writing - the authors who could write eight or more books in a single decade but later go an entire decade without writing a single book.
There is the classic example of the Scottish philosopher, David Hume:
Hume’s original philosophical publication ceased around age forty, and most of his other writings were completed by his early fifties, more than a decade before his death in 1776. To his publisher, who earnestly solicited him to complete his History of England , Hume replied, “I must decline not only this offer, but all others of a literary nature, for four reasons: Because I’m too old, too fat, too lazy, and too rich.”
Is it common for an author to become so successful that they can completely retire? I realize there are a handful of authors who are massively successful and make millions from their works. But my understanding is that they’re the exception and most authors - even successful ones - make money that’s more in the range of tens of thousands. They make enough money to earn a living but not enough to be able to afford to live off of it for the rest of their life.