Stephanie Raffelock, «A Delightful Little Book on Aging»:

Failure after 50

I know J.K. Rowling’s story by heart—the young, impoverished single mother who stayed true to her writing dream in the face of a failed marriage and what she saw as a failed career choice. The urgency of her circumstances turned her desire to write novels into a fierce perseverance that birthed Harry Potter.

I wish that I could say my own writing dream arose in me with the same clarity, but I’m like a Christmas cactus—a houseplant that only blooms in the brittle cold of winter. I did not come to novel writing until I was sixty-two.

A year ago, I landed a top literary agent to represent my debut novel, which made me feel that the brass ring was within my grasp. But a couple months ago, the agent sent me a long list of rejections from publishers, most of whom were generous and encouraging with their praise and admiration for my work, even as they said “no.”

While framable remarks from top publishers might have inspired the mature professional, I cried my eyes out, questioned my talent, and licked the wound of failure as though it were my last meal.

Failure after fifty feels different than the failure of youth. Even with its many philosophical and moral lessons in character building, it takes on more significance than if I were, say, thirty-two. It’s the lack of time that creeps into the space and underscores the fact that it’s all finite. Dreams and mortality collide, and the unspoken fear is this: What if I die before I see my dream manifest?

There are only two responses to failure at any age. One is to quit. That is the simplest and most seductive of the two. The other is more demanding and requires reflection. In the second scenario, failure becomes the guide that opens the doors to dig deeper into your psyche and keep going. You can choose option two all the way until you really do no longer walk this earth.

First, I took my sorrows out on a chocolate chip brownie.

Then I looked in the mirror and saw a woman who could fail spectacularly and keep going. There was no way I was going to stop writing. That seemed a far worse sentence than being turned down by a bunch of publishers. In that moment, success revealed itself. I know who I am—someone whose strivings inform her stories about the transformative forces of grief, failure, second chances, and awakening. This is the very essence of why I write.

I feel so incredibly blessed and grateful for second chances, for unexpected transformations, and for the plethora of publishers who just lit a flame under my feet, sparking my intention to keep dancing. After all, the night is young. If I should die before morning’s light, I will have done so with a heart bursting at its seams with what I know to be joyful purpose. And that is what I consider true success: to find fulfillment in what you do, regardless of the outcome.

I have accepted that, in order be successful, I need failure. I need it because it underscores how important something is to me. And, if I let it, failure will fuel my determination and my focus. I’ve done more than just eat brownies and stay in my pajamas since I got those rejections. In spite of how miserable I felt, I still got up, closed the door of my office every day, and wrote. There are many things in life that we can’t control. The subjectivity of someone’s opinion about our work is one of them.

Failure after fifty isn’t really that much different than failure after twenty, except that we all sweat the time-running-out thing. Maybe that’s why I feel so passionately about accepting the invitation to go deeper into the heart of what I love and reaffirm my chosen purpose. I’ll either become a viable novelist or die trying. It feels to me like two good alternatives.

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