How I Started Writing Books At 65

I was a freshman at Williams College in 1973.

I had a friend named Mikael Levin. He was an Israeli, and because the 1973 Yom Kippur War broke out that year, he had to leave school to go back to Israel to join the army.

Before he left, he asked me if I could drive his car, an old Simca, back to New York and return it to his parents for their safekeeping while he was away. Of course, I was happy to help.

I drove the car to NY. His parents lived on Central Park West, in one of those massive, pre war apartments that seem to go on forever.

They invited me in. I had grown up in suburban Long Island, but I had never seen a home like this before. Where my house in Cedarhurst was dominated by TV sets, this one was dominated by books. The walls were lined with books. And where there were not books, there was original art. The wood floors were covered with Persian carpets. It was hushed and civilized.

After I handed over the car keys, Mikael’s father invited me into his ‘study’ for a chat. His study was a massive library in itself. The walls were also lined, floor to ceiling with books. At the center of the room was a great oak table that was covered with papers that surrounded an old manual typewriter.

Mikael’s father was Meyer Levin, the author of books such as The Settlers, Compulsion and the screenplay adaption of The Diary of Anne Frank. In fact, he had, by the time of his death, written and published more than 25 books.

As I looked around the room and talked to Meyer, it occurred to me that this, this is what I wanted to do for a living — to write.

Several years later, on fellowship from the Thomas Watson Foundation, I traveled overland from London to Kathmandu. In Milan I bought a portable Olivetti typewriter, the laptop of its day, and carried the thing in my backpack all the way to Nepal.

When I got to Nepal, I checked into the Kathmandu Guest House on Thamel, bought myself a bottle of wine and a candle, and sat down to finally start writing. The first thing I wrote was a letter to Peter Matthiessen, the author of The Snow Leopard. It was his book that had brought me to Kathmandu in the first place.

In a mastery of sophomoric writing, I penned (or rather typed) a 10-page letter to Matthiessen explaining in great detail how his book had inspired me to become a writer and mailed it off to him.

Two weeks later, a small package was waiting for me at the Kathmandu Post Office. It was from Matthiessen. He had returned my original letter, but across the top he had penned, in red ink, “If you want to write, write, but don’t write to me.” Signed, Peter Matthiessen.

Good advice.

Life often takes another turn, and so I got into the television and video business, and I have no complaints, but as I reached 65 I thought, it’s either now or never.

Writing is one thing, but publishing is another, and as I learned from my many years in the TV business, if no one sees your shows or films, there was not much point in making them.

I had lots of ideas for books, but to get them published I would need an agent. I had been banging out fragments of books and novels for years, but without much focus and with no success.

The search for an agent was much harder than I had at first thought. It took me nearly two years of unrelenting searching and hundreds of either unanswered letters or formulaic responses from interns or assistants. “We very much appreciate your work but…”

But in my own experience in television, success most often goes to the most driven, not necessarily the most talented.

Then, one day, I found an agent on LinkedIn, Alicia Brooks with the Jean Naggar Literary Agency in New York who actually took the time to answer my inquiries, read my bits and pieces of books and took me on. She believed in me.

This really inspired me and she was as much editor as agent, constantly commenting and shaping my embryonic work.

It took me nearly a year to complete the draft of my book, Don’t Watch This: How The Media Are Destoying Your Life. She then proved as determined and unrelenting in finding a publisher, Skyhorse Publishing, as she had been in shaping my writing.

After the deal was done, she took me out to lunch and asked, “What other ideas do you have for books?”

I had never really thought much about getting beyond that one, but her interest motivated me to get back to the keyboard, and in four months, I ground out two novels — The Survivor — a holocaust survivor’s story with a twist and The Book of Joe — the undiscovered personal diary of Joseph, husband of Mary, stepfather of Jesus.

I am now working on a third novel, The Time Traveller — archaeology, murder and Asperger’s, a killer combination.

Nearly fifty years after I had met Meyer Levin, I had finally started writing my novels. I cannot tell you how emotionally fulfilling this has been. I finally feel like I am doing what I was supposed to do. It is never too late to start.