Aging and writing

[Dearelliot]

At whatever level my writing used to be, I have a much harder time trying to reach that level today.
Finding the right words, always difficult but so much harder today. Keeping track of my cast of characters, and their dialogue is like trying to color inside the lines when you were a kid. Wonder if other seniors may have noticed this.
I suppose under the age of say the mid 70s, you might not notice this.

 

[KeithD]

I think writing is helping me keep (relatively) sharp into old age.

 

[intim8]

At whatever level my writing used to be, I have a much harder time trying to reach that level today.
Finding the right words, always difficult but so much harder today. Keeping track of my cast of characters, and their dialogue is like trying to color inside the lines when you were a kid. Wonder if other seniors may have noticed this.

I'm in my late 50s, and so far, no. Maybe just a little bit with my mental thesaurus, but not much. I think my writing is getting better, but that is partly a function of taking it more seriously lately.

They say that risk taking is for the young, but I think in some things, the fact that as you get older you start to run out of fucks to give might bring some of that back.

 

[Dearelliot]

I should have been more specific as to my idea of "seniors" maybe starting mid late 70s..80s.

 

[nice90sguy]

Thank you for making me feel young again

 

[StillStunned]

I'll let you know in 25-30 years.

 

[nice90sguy]

They say that risk taking is for the young, but I think in some things, the fact that as you get older you start to run out of fucks to give might bring some of that back.

100%

 

[nice90sguy]

I'm well out of my forties now, but I still have the body of a forty-year old.

I must dump it in the lake one of these days, the neighbours are starting to notice the smell

 

[ronde]

I'm in the age group of which you speak. As KeithD said, writing helps me stay young, or at least young-feeling.

Mind age and body age are two different things. Notice that I said "mind age", and not "mental age". Mental age is a separate thing altogether.

You can't do much about body age. It just happens because the machinery starts to wear down. You can do things about mind age though.

Read and read a lot. Pick something that interests you, but stay away from the paperback novels in the grocery store. They're written for people with an 8th grade education. Read something by a name author. The classics are good for this as are some modern name authors. The classics are written in English as it was supposed to be written and the authors used an extensive vocabulary. Most best-selling authors do the same. Reading something challenging helps keep your mind remembering how words go together and what less commonly used words mean and the feelings they convey.

Crossword puzzles work for some, or so a nurse once told me. Crossword puzzles keep your mind searching for words until you find one that fits.

Stop watching television. Most TV programs are written to be easily understood by someone with that same 8th grade education and won't do anything to expand your vocabulary. Most of the stuff on the internet is the same way and may be full of words that don't mean what they used to mean. The word "insane" used to describe something that is supposedly unbelievable comes to mind, along with the adjectives used for anything even remotely remarkable being the supurlative form.

Mental age is a self-inflicted wound that is hard to heal. Some people think they're "old" at 50 while others are still going strong, albeit perhaps a bit slower, at 80. Nothing can change that but the individual involved deciding they're not too old to keep on trucking.

 

[nice90sguy]

^^^ this

I suggest ppls look at @ronde s story list spanning the last 1/4 century

 

[gunhilltrain]

I'll let you know in 25-30 years.

As my grandfather told me once, it will go by faster than you think. 2024? Where are the replicants? (2019.) Where is the soylent green? (2022.) On some level I knew I might still be alive, but I couldn't imagine it. I certainly didn't think something like Lit would exist, or that I'd be writing for it.

 

[gunhilltrain]

I'm in my late 50s, and so far, no. Maybe just a little bit with my mental thesaurus, but not much. I think my writing is getting better, but that is partly a function of taking it more seriously lately.

They say that risk taking is for the young, but I think in some things, the fact that as you get older you start to run out of fucks to give might bring some of that back.

You start running out of fucks to care about everything. That's not such a bad thing; it allows me to post things here regardless of what other people think. But, yes, every dumb and embarrassing thing that happened decades ago; it's all moot. Nobody but me remembers them, partially because so many people are not alive any longer.

 

[CockSparrow]

Last year I had a bad year, healthwise. That definitely messed with my memory. After 60-something years of writing for a living, I had to take a break. But it seems to be gradually coming back to me now. Fingers crossed.

 

[MillieDynamite]

Writing is work. It isn't a hard job like digging a ditch or loading a truck. But it is working to figure out who these people we write about are and why they do what they do. It's work to put down in a file. It's work to go back through it and figure out how to say this or that better. Whether we do it for fun, profit, or both, we work at it. Sometimes, it all falls into place, and everything goes smoothly. Most of the time, it doesn't. I hope I've gotten better with each story I've written. I hope I don't slide back into old habits of poor stories that are only there because I have an issue I need to work out. But even in that kind of writing, it's work for me. Pleasurable as it is, I take my writing seriously. I've been writing since I was 15, not so well back then. I'll turn 35 this September, that will make 20 years of writing. Hopefully, I go for at least twice those years before I'm done.

I hope both I and my writing age well.

 

[AG31]

Finding the right words, always difficult but so much harder today.

I was 76 when I started writing, so I don't have a good comparison. But here's one thing. I spend a lot of time and mental energy trying to come up with just the right word to express something. This is true IRL as well as in writing stories. I enjoy the process. I think of it as sort of a hobby. But lately I've wondered if it would be so hard to find the right word if I were 20 years younger.... whether it's related to the common aging experience of problems with simple word retrieval.

Stop watching television.

Hubby is 88 and experiencing pronounced short term memory problems and the beginnings of confusion. I think that watching TV and trying to follow the plot and keep the characters straight is excellent mental exercise. Besides that we cuddle on the couch each evening when watching.

 

[KeithD]

But lately I've wondered if it would be so hard to find the right word if I were 20 years younger.... whether it's related to the common aging experience of problems with simple word retrieval.

I do have more or a problem--sometimes with simple or often used words--now than I did when I started writing stories.

 

[Dearelliot]

I was 76 when I started writing, so I don't have a good comparison. But here's one thing. I spend a lot of time and mental energy trying to come up with just the right word to express something. This is true IRL as well as in writing stories. I enjoy the process. I think of it as sort of a hobby. But lately I've wondered if it would be so hard to find the right word if I were 20 years younger.... whether it's related to the common aging experience of problems with simple word retrieval.

Hubby is 88 and experiencing pronounced short term memory problems and the beginnings of confusion. I think that watching TV and trying to follow the plot and keep the characters straight is excellent mental exercise. Besides that we cuddle on the couch each evening when watching.

Sorry about that issue, I'm a few months shy of 90, but managing. Short term memory is an issue.

 

[MyBareTorso]

As my grandfather told me once, it will go by faster than you think. 2024? Where are the replicants? (2019.) Where is the soylent green? (2022.) On some level I knew I might still be alive, but I couldn't imagine it. I certainly didn't think something like Lit would exist, or that I'd be writing for it.

I don't recall New York being turned into a walled prison either (1997)....

 

[dmallord]

At whatever level my writing used to be, I have a much harder time trying to reach that level today.
Finding the right words, always difficult but so much harder today. Keeping track of my cast of characters, and their dialogue is like trying to color inside the lines when you were a kid. Wonder if other seniors may have noticed this.
I suppose under the age of say the mid 70s, you might not notice this.

I may not be one to speak to this subject as I only started writing stories and posting on Lit during the Pandemic. At that point, I was eighty-four. At eighty-six, I don't remember the major struggles of first starting. I tend to think it was easier then, but from comments from detractors, my early stories really needed editing help.

Then, I wrote without on-board editing tools and tried to script out my stories in outlines. Later, I met @kenjisato , a Lit editor, which was a boon. He made the homophones melt away, and I 'sounded' better. He catches all the mistakes the on-board wretched tool misses - especially those pesky homophones and homonyms. As a grammarian, he is excellent, though he does not address writing style, plot issues, etc. I still am unsure of those, but comments are aplenty about most of the stories being entertaining and well-written [by most.] Nearly two-thirds of my work is designated with the red 'H.' If that's any indication, I guess I'm fairly good at coloring within the lines.

Today, as I work on a story, I'm finding the spelling of words to be slipping, even some that should be easy to peck out. I find myself just getting close to the word and letting the Grammarly paid version sort those out. Vocabulary does have its own pitfalls. Words that once were easy to conjure up are now occasionally slipping from my grasp. So, I resort to a thesaurus more often now.

Yes, remembering the character names as I plod through gets annoying, so I turn more often to the plot outline; it helps.

So, in conclusion, yes, I've noticed some senior moments in my writing.

 

[gunhilltrain]

I don't recall New York being turned into a walled prison either (1997)....

Yeah, when that came out, it actually - I wouldn't call it plausible - but people were really down about New York. It was actually filmed mostly in St. Louis, a city that has lost about half its peak population by now. A great cast, however, and they seemed to get into the somewhat tongue-in-cheek spirit of the thing. Kurt Russell has said that this was his favorite movie that he had been in.

 

[Dearelliot]

I may not be one to speak to this subject as I only started writing stories and posting on Lit during the Pandemic. At that point, I was eighty-four. At eighty-six, I don't remember the major struggles of first starting. I tend to think it was easier then, but from comments from detractors, my early stories really needed editing help.

Then, I wrote without on-board editing tools and tried to script out my stories in outlines. Later, I met @kenjisato , a Lit editor, which was a boon. He made the homophones melt away, and I 'sounded' better. He catches all the mistakes the on-board wretched tool misses - especially those pesky homophones and homonyms. As a grammarian, he is excellent, though he does not address writing style, plot issues, etc. I still am unsure of those, but comments are aplenty about most of the stories being entertaining and well-written [by most.] Nearly two-thirds of my work is designated with the red 'H.' If that's any indication, I guess I'm fairly good at coloring within the lines.

Today, as I work on a story, I'm finding the spelling of words to be slipping, even some that should be easy to peck out. I find myself just getting close to the word and letting the Grammarly paid version sort those out. Vocabulary does have its own pitfalls. Words that once were easy to conjure up are now occasionally slipping from my grasp. So, I resort to a thesaurus more often now.

Yes, remembering the character names as I plod through gets annoying, so I turn more often to the plot outline; it helps.

So, in conclusion, yes, I've noticed some senior moments in my writing.

I first noticed this when I was around 83, and it has gotten worse over the years.

 

[SimonDoom]

I'm in my 50s, and I started writing in my 50s, so I don't know anything different. My faculties and energy are still fine, but I often wonder what it would have been like to start creative writing in my 20s. I wish I had. It's so rewarding and stimulating, even to write short, silly erotic tales. I hope to keep doing this in one way or another until I drop dead.

 

[nice90sguy]

I really, really am impressed with the people who are writing smut in their 80's here! to all of you, inspirational

 

[32aa]

Writing is work. It isn't a hard job like digging a ditch or loading a truck. But it is working to figure out who these people we write about are and why they do what they do. It's work to put down in a file. It's work to go back through it and figure out how to say this or that better. Whether we do it for fun, profit, or both, we work at it. Sometimes, it all falls into place, and everything goes smoothly. Most of the time, it doesn't.

It is work. I just turned 74 and started writing here the beginning of 2020. Pretty much all of my stories are multi-chapter, and I remember that as i wrote those, new ideas for the story would just come to me and the story would take on a life of its own.

It's like what @MillieDynamite last sentence, 'Sometimes, it all falls into place, and everything goes smoothly. Most of the time, it doesn't.

Today, I've got a story that has been in my 'In progress' file for a couple of months. Seems like I've 'hit the wall'. I kind of know where i want the story to go, but am having a hard time getting there in a way that I like. Sometimes, i think that I'm my own worse critic.

as I work on a story, I'm finding the spelling of words to be slipping, even some that should be easy to peck out.

So true. I used to be pretty good at spelling. Now, when i do crossword puzzles, I stumble on simple words, or I have to wait a bit for it to come to me.

Like my dad always said, "Getting old sucks".

 

[MyBareTorso]

Yeah, when that came out, it actually - I wouldn't call it plausible - but people were really down about New York. It was actually filmed mostly in St. Louis, a city that has lost about half its peak population by now. A great cast, however, and they seemed to get into the somewhat tongue-in-cheek spirit of the thing. Kurt Russell has said that this was his favorite movie that he had been in.

It's a stone cold classic...