Becoming a Writer in Midlife

This post was inspired and sponsored by Domain.ME, the provider of the personal domains that end in .ME. As a company, they aim to promote thought leadership to the tech world. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

Are You Becoming a Writer in Midlife?

The average age of a best-selling author is 55, so anytime is the right time to start writing. Laura Ingalls Wilder didn’t even publish her first novel until she was sixty-four.

So if you’ve been thinking about writing (and getting it published) read on.

Getting Published Online

If you want to build experience and your writing resume, there are so many great sites to submit your work for publication.

One tip is to submit writing you’ve already published on your own website. Many sites accept content like this for curation. You won’t get money, but you’ll get a chance to build your audience without having to create anything you haven’t already benefited from.

Always include a link back to your site in your submissions. It will help new fans and potential business offers find you. On Midlife Boulevard, we also love it if writers link to their books on Amazon. Curating your content should be mutually beneficial for the publisher and the writer.

Here are some great sites to submit your previously-published content for curation.

BlogHer

Huffington Post

For more, check out Beyond Your Blog‘s recommendations.

Writing For Pay

Of course, getting paid cash money is the ultimate goal for many writers. While a lot of paid publishing seems to be focused on younger mothers, there are a growing number of sites specializing in the over-45 market.

Here are some of our favorite sites that pay for content:

Next Avenue. Midlife Boulevard is happy to be a preferred site of public media’s first and only national service for America’s booming 50+ population.

Grown and Flown. Grown and Flown looks at parenting teenagers and young adults through the middle school, high school and college years.

AARP  Getting published one of the premier sites for midlifers, the standards are high, but the pay is great!Find Your Tribe

Unless you want to be like Emily Dickinson and have your kids find a trunkful of your amazing, but unpublished writing, you need to connect with a supportive writing community. And you don’t even have to hook the horse up to the buggy and hie into the village. Bless the internet, because now writers can connect without even changing out of yoga pants.

Connect with other writers on Twitter.

Searching for and using hashtags in your tweets is a great way to find writers from all over the world. A good place to start is the #AmWriting tag.

Connect with other writers on Facebook.

Facebook, and Facebook private groups is especially popular with our midlife cohort. You can also search for hashtags or keywords on Facebook. This is especially helpful if you write for a niche like midlife or a particular genre from erotica to finance.

Connect with other writers at conferences.

I know, leaving the house is hard. But there really is no substitute for making connections like meeting people in real life. Here’s a great list of writers’ conferences for 2016.

Creating Your Own Space Online

Whether your site is a standard author’s site or a blog you keep updated with your writing, you need it. Virginia Woolf recommended a room of one’s own, but today a writer needs a site of her own.

A website acts as your online resume, helps readers develop into fans, provides a platform for information that you own and control, and helps editors find an effective way to contact you and offer you lots and lots of money.

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