by Patricia Bradley, @PTBradley1

If I told you it would take years to get published, would you continue to write year after year? If you’re like most authors, you would because I don’t think authors have a choice. They are born to write, but once they realize it, nothing can stop them. 

But what if they think they’re too old to start a new career? Is there an age limit to what we can do? 

…Bear with me a minute—I’m thinking. Part of me wants to say NO! But then I think about how I used to climb trees, and while in my mind, I think I could still do it, I’m not sure I want to, unless a bear is chasing me. 

Physically, we might get to a place in our lives where we can’t do what we once did, but there are so many other things we can do—like learn something new. One year at Christmas my mother learned to text, and she learned to use a computer. She was ninety. She had a Facebook page when she passed away at ninety-four. She always wanted to be challenged and so do I. That’s the key, I think. The desire to stretch ourselves. 

I hear it now. But how would I start?

That’s the easy part. Be it writing a book or learning how to use a computer. Take a class. Did you know after age sixty, about 60% of accredited colleges offer a waiver for senior students? And at most colleges you can audit a class for free. Check it out here and here. Whatever you decide to do, be sure to learn the nuts and bolts of how to do it. 

I believed God called me to write, and not just any old story, but suspense stories. Except I wasn’t having any luck with them, so I went to my first writing retreat. I had been writing for years with success in writing short pieces but had not gotten any results from my novels. I was making the same mistakes over and over because I didn’t have anyone to tell me what I was doing wrong…or right. 

But at the retreat I learned so much and continued to return each year for four years total. After the third year, I had an agent and a publisher and sold my first book… Since 2012, I have had fourteen books and four short stories published.

If I did it, you can too! There are plenty of writing conferences around where you can learn the craft. I know they can be expensive, but it’s an investment in your career. Do you have the desire as well as discipline to do what it takes to learn the craft of writing? If so, go for it, do the hard work, and then, you’ll be ready when God opens the door.

 

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Deception, Natchez Trace Park Rangers, Book 4

When ISB Ranger Madison Thorn arrives in Natchez to investigate a white-collar scheme, she has no idea she will be thrown back into the violent crimes division–or that it will get so personal. She’ll have to work with her childhood-enemy-turned-handsome-charmer to unravel the clues before it’s too late.

Patricia Bradley is a Carol finalist and winner of an Inspirational Readers’ Choice Award in Suspense, and three anthologies that included her stories debuted on the USA Today Best Seller List. She and her two cats call Northeast Mississippi home–the South is also where she sets most of her books. Her romantic suspense novels include the Logan Point series and the Memphis Cold Case Novels. Deception, the third book in the Natchez Trace Park Rangers series, releases August 2, 2022. She is now hard at work on a new series set in the Cumberland Plateau around Chattanooga, Tennessee. Her writing workshops include American Christian Fiction Writers online courses, workshops at the Mid-South Christian Writer’s Conference, the KenTen Retreat and Scrivenings Press Author Retreat where she was also the keynote. When she has time, she likes to throw mud on a wheel and see what happens.