Helpline
Your writing problems solved with advice from Diana Cambridge
Email your queries to Diana (please include hometown details) at: diana@dianacambridgeco.uk or send them to: Helpline, Writing Magazine, Warners Group Publications plc, 5th Floor, 31-32 Park Row, Leeds LS1 5JD. She will answer as many letters as she can on the page, but regrets that she cannot enter into individual correspondence. Publication of answers may take several months. Helpline cannot personally answer queries such as where to offer work, or comment on manuscripts, which you are asked not to send.
Q Like a lot of people, I have thought all my life about becoming a writer. But at seventy years old, have I left it too late? I have seen in your magazine suggestions about selfpublishing on Amazon. How do you go about that?
A No, it’s never too late – and many writers do start when demands of family, profession etc are less pressing. Writers who began when well into the autumn of their years include Mary Wesley, Kenneth Grahame, Laura Ingalls Wilder and Frank McCourt. The Oxford poet Craig Raine published his first novel, Heartbreak, at 65.