Your list is inspirational although I could argue that it is flawed because those late starters actually had early practice.
Jules Verne is one of my favorite childhood writers thus I knew he had an early start.
Wikipedia concurs: By 1847, when Verne was 19, he had taken seriously to writing long works in the style of Victor Hugo, beginning Un prêtre en 1839 and seeing two verse tragedies, Alexandre VI and La Conspiration des poudres (The Gunpowder Plot), to completion.
Same deal with Bukowski, sure he had not written a novel but he knew he was a writer much earlier + plus he devoured the whole library ages 15-24.
Same deal with Fleming: His wartime service and his career as a journalist provided much of the background, detail and depth of the James Bond novels. Emphasis on being a journalist.
Still writing is indeed one of those fields where you can get by with not being fluent in your skill as long as you got a good editor.
Programming is the same thing, you can write a decently sized program without knowing the language and its idioms very well but it is oh so painful.
So yes you can achieve outside success in some craft without being really gifted/skilled but that's not the same thing as achieving proficiency and being in flow. Yeah you can fake being a modern painter but someone like Rothko or Pollack had the early classical training.
My lament is that past the age 40 you can not achieve proficiency in some new craft that you have taken up. There are no neurosurgeons who started at 40.
You have to settle for less, pick your battles very carefully and delude yourself with special prizes.
Jules Verne is one of my favorite childhood writers thus I knew he had an early start.
Wikipedia concurs: By 1847, when Verne was 19, he had taken seriously to writing long works in the style of Victor Hugo, beginning Un prêtre en 1839 and seeing two verse tragedies, Alexandre VI and La Conspiration des poudres (The Gunpowder Plot), to completion.
Same deal with Bukowski, sure he had not written a novel but he knew he was a writer much earlier + plus he devoured the whole library ages 15-24.
Same deal with Fleming: His wartime service and his career as a journalist provided much of the background, detail and depth of the James Bond novels. Emphasis on being a journalist.
Still writing is indeed one of those fields where you can get by with not being fluent in your skill as long as you got a good editor.
Programming is the same thing, you can write a decently sized program without knowing the language and its idioms very well but it is oh so painful.
So yes you can achieve outside success in some craft without being really gifted/skilled but that's not the same thing as achieving proficiency and being in flow. Yeah you can fake being a modern painter but someone like Rothko or Pollack had the early classical training.
My lament is that past the age 40 you can not achieve proficiency in some new craft that you have taken up. There are no neurosurgeons who started at 40.
You have to settle for less, pick your battles very carefully and delude yourself with special prizes.