Baby Boomer Writers Find Markets

By Audrey Owen

Are you are a baby boomer visiting this site? You are or could become a baby boomer writer.

As a writer and an editor, I notice that baby boomer writers sit in the enviable position of looking both backward and forward.

If we look back on our lives we discover, sometimes to our utter shock that we grew up in historical times. I recently read the comment of a university professor who said his students couldn't understand the seriousness of the Cuban missile crisis in part because they couldn't conceive of the technology of the sixties. (If the phone lines were down, why didn't they use a satellite hook-up or a fax?)

Anything from our young lives counts as history. There is a market for historical fiction. If you are a baby boomer writer who writes for children, your own life falls into the category of history. You can write your own story, or you can set a fictional story in the time of your own childhood.

There is a place for memoir in the world of literature. Baby boomer writers who think critically about their experiences are in a good position to write memoirs. For information on writing memoirs, click here.

Baby boomer writers can look ahead as well as back. We are aging, moving into the senior category. As writers we can solve approaching problems through writing.

If you think you may need to reinvest some of your money to prepare better for retirement, put your research to work in a secondary stream by writing a book or Web site for others in the same position.

Are you facing an empty nest? How will you handle it? You can write about that. Or about how a middle-aged person relates to the dwindling resources of the Earth. Or about how you and your parents are planning to handle their diminishing capacity to care for themselves.

Can you put your past and future together? How will your young life in the country influence your choice of housing as you age? How can your collection of GI Joes meet needs in the 21st century? Where were you during Viet Nam? How does that relate to the current political situation?

As baby boomer writers we can use where we've been and look into the future, enriching both those coming after and those who have gone before us.

If you are a baby boomer writer, submit your work for a free sample edit here.