Anyone else been watching Top Chef Masters? 

We have, because, well, we would watch Top Chefs Pour Cereal. And also because it’s summer and there’s not much else on the air. If you haven’t watched it, it’s four master chefs (usually chef/restauranteurs) competing for a donation to the charity of their choice. There’s usually at least one “young gun”  and at least one seasoned professional. 

Not only is it just good fun watching the cooking and crazy challenges, but I like the dynamics of the competition. So far, its been the older, more experienced chefs that are taking home the prize money. I’ve got to admit, I can appreciate a field where youth and beauty aren’t everything. I like to think that writing is like that too. Sure, it never hurts if you’re a former beauty contestant like Lisa Kleypas. But with a a few exceptions, we don’t have many author child stars. (Yeah, yeah, there’s that guy who wrote Eragon, but we’re not going to count him.)

Many authors improve with age. Earnest Hemmingway wrote Old Man and the Sea when he was fifty-two. (Okay, so I didn’t love it, but apparently those Pulitzer people did.) One of my favorite writers is Elizabeth Peters is eighty-two and still going strong. After thirty-one years she decided to end the brilliant Amelia Peabody mystery series because the characters were getting too old. She herself is still going strong. 

I love that writers get better with age. That no one cares if we look old. (Though bio pics that our clearly our high school yearbook picture from 1989 will open us up to ridicule.) And thank goodness I can work in my stained, nine-year-old t-shirt from Target. I may be humiliated to open the door for the UPS guy, but at least none of you see me looking like that. 

So do you have any favorite older authors?