Back in my twenties, in those what-did-we-do-with-all-that-time-we-had days before children, I did some tutoring. By the far the most interesting student I taught – although autistic Swedish Religious Studies GCSE boy might object – was a lady in her fifties. I was not qualified to diagnose her mental condition, with the old English degree, but let's just say that even though she paid for 10 lessons in advance no other tutor would teach her. A couple had tried, and backed out quickly.
And she smelt a bit.
So, third time lucky, I was sent, the youngest recruit in the agency, to see if I could prevent a full refund. It was fine. You can get a long way just being kind to people. She smoked her way in and smoked her way out again, and in the hour between fidgeted incessantly, but all that she wanted was some help with grammar for her own creative writing.
It became apparent that although she respected my knowledge of grammar, my restless student nevertheless found it amusing that I was so much the younger than she. When I said that I was wondering myself about writing fiction, she said, "you haven't got anything to write about until you're at least 30."
And for all the reasons I could have disqualified this lady's advice (the smell, the attention deficit, the hopelessly appalling writing), that thought stuck with me. That there should be a certain amount of experience, or maturing, that takes place in a writer before he or she has anything interesting to say.
Thinking of it again, and this time on the other side of 30, I had a glance at the prestigious Booker Prize list, to see at what age recent winners had started writing.
I found something curious.
The magic number for writing novels
This year's winner, Hilary Mantel, published her first novel Every Day is Mother's Day at the age of 33.
Aravind Adiga's debut novel, The White Tiger, was so good that it rocketed straight onto the Booker shortlist and won the prize last year, when the novelist was 33.
In 2007, the year before that, Anne Enright claimed the prize. She was in her forties when she won, but had kicked off her fiction career with The Wig My Father Wore when she was, you've guessed it, 33.
The 2006 champion might seem a little old in comparison, Kiran Desai scooping the prize for The Inheritance of Loss at 34. Two years before that though, Alan Hollinghurst was the judges' favourite. He penned his first novel, the award-winning The Swimming Pool Library, when he was, altogether now, 33.
The astute among you (and my readers are nothing if not astute) will notice that I skipped a year. That's because John Banville, Booker winner 2005, started writing aged 26, although he didn't gain the crown until he was 60, for his eighteenth novel, The Sea. I don't know whether to laugh or cry about John Banville. It's encouraging that his best work could be recognised later on in life, but pretty hard going to have to write 18 books before getting there.
Banville aside (and I would put him aside – ghastly over-poetic prose), all the others were 33-ish. Perhaps my nicotine-stained sage was right, not only that there's not much to say before the age of 30, but in a deeper fashion, that there's something about coming through the decade-turning mini crisis that prompts writers to undertake a novel with a more urgent commitment.
Or perhaps the judges just like what 33 year olds have to say. After all, Jesus was pretty profound around that age.
Either way, it was a little string of coincidences that encouraged me to keep on writing.
Did I mention I have a birthday soon?
I'm going to be 33.
His first novel was published at 26.
The Sea was his 15th.
And Birchwood was published in '73.