Some years ago, I went to hear an author (who shall remain unnamed) speak at an event in Wilton, Connecticut.
Whenever I have the opportunity, I make a point to attend author events. I’ve gone to hear my friends — fellow young adult authors — speak at schools and bookstores and libraries. Leslie Connor, Sarah Albee, Tony Abbott, Alan Katz, Gae Polisner, Sarah Litman, Katherine Paterson, S.E. Hinton, Katelyn Detweiler, and Wendy Mass are but a small fraction. 
I’ve heard Elizabeth Strout, Anita Shreve, Marc Doty, Susan Cheever, A.J. Jacobs, Eve Ensler, Elinor Lipman, Dani Shapiro, Kathryn Harrison, Meg Wolitzer, Amy Bloom, and Lorraine Gengo talk about their work. 
I go to support and to learn and to work on my craft. I go because being a writer means being a part of the writer community, a group that anyone can join but not everyone knows how. Most authors understand that they’ve been helped by another at some point early in their journey, someone who showed them what it means to be a writer and how to get started, and are always looking to pay it forward.
But this author was a snob.
That was evident from the moment she stepped up to the podium. It wasn’t just that she was as far from humble as could be. It was because she felt the need to let everyone in the audience know that hers was a profession limited to the elite few. And she was one of the few, and those in the audience were not.
Her message was clear: Being a writer wasn’t something that just anyone could do. To drive her point home she then relayed a story that every author knows well, making it sound as though nobody had ever heard it before.
“I was at a party one time, making small talk with a man whom I happen to know was a doctor,” she began. “He asked me what I did for a living and when I told him I was an author he immediately responded by telling me that he had a great story and he had always wanted to write a book, too. ‘What a coincidence,’ I told him, ‘ because I’ve always wanted to be a brain surgeon.’”
Certainly, as any author will tell you, they’ve had a similar experience many times before. Because everyone does have a story. And you know what? Despite what this author wants to pretend, everyone can tell it. 
I’m never going to say that it doesn’t take talent to write well.
It does.
It takes years of practice. It requires being willing to listen to the feedback from people you respect. Trying and failing. Trying and succeeding. Realizing that good is not enough and that you’re never going to feel good enough. It means always wanting to be a better writer than you think you can be.
But no one has the right to tell you that you can’t do that.
I’ve been teaching and mentoring writers for over twenty years and one thing I can say with absolute certainty is that everyone who works hard and tries in earnest to write better, gets better. Many get really good at it. A few even become great.
I work with people who have a manuscript they want to publish, and need help shaping it. One writer I worked with wanted to brainstorm and jumpstart a project he had put aside for years. I have one student who is organizing her poetry into a verse novel. Another is working on short stories and submitting them to literary magazines. Some of my students simply want to leave a written history for their family. Others simply want to learn the basic techniques of creative writing.
Not every writer has the dream of being published, but every writer wants to be read. So here’s something to chew on:
Laura Engles Wilder published her first book at 65.
Raymond Chandler was 51.
Frank McCourt was 60.
Lorna Page was 93.
Jane Campbell’s first novel, “Cat Brushing,” was published in April 2022,
She was 80 years old.