When the Job Ends, the Story Begins

I’m going to pause the introductions to the next volume of Whakataukī Among the Stars for a little while and talk instead about my writing process. How do I find the ideas? What keeps me awake at night? Why do certain stories grab me by the collar and refuse to let go until I’ve written them down?

I started writing seriously when my job came to an end while I was in my sixties.

There. I said it.

Not thirty-three, when people expect you to be reinventing yourself with frightening enthusiasm and a suspicious amount of coffee. Not twenty-three, when you’re meant to be full of grand plans and questionable shoes. In my sixties. Old enough to know better, young enough to ignore that fact entirely.

When my working life stopped, the first feeling was not freedom, exactly. People talk about retirement or job endings as if someone hands you a sunhat, a deckchair, and a permanent sense of peace. In reality, it can feel more like being dropped into the middle of a very quiet room and realising nobody has given you the instructions.

The practical side, thankfully, was not frightening. I did not need to rush out and find another job. My finances were stable enough that I had breathing room, and I know that is no small thing. It gave me something very precious: time.

But time, as it turns out, is not always the soft golden gift people imagine. Sometimes time sits across from you at the kitchen table, folds its arms, and says, “Well? What now?”

For years, work had provided shape. It told me when to get up, where to be, what needed doing, and when I was allowed to complain about being tired. Then suddenly, that structure vanished. The days opened wide, which sounds poetic until you discover that wide-open days can become very long indeed.

I was bored.

Properly bored. The sort of bored where you tidy a drawer that has offended nobody, make another cup of coffee you don’t particularly want, and consider developing strong opinions about the neighbours’ bins.

I needed something to occupy my time. More than that, I needed something to occupy my mind.

So I began to write.

At first, it was simply something to do. A way to fill the blank spaces. But writing has a sly way of pretending to be a hobby while quietly becoming a calling. One minute you are tapping out a few sentences, and the next you are arguing with fictional people who have apparently moved into your head without paying rent.

I discovered that writing gave me back a rhythm. Not the old rhythm of paid work, deadlines, and routine, but a new one. A quieter one. A deeper one. I could sit with an idea and follow it. I could build worlds, create people, break their hearts a little, patch them up badly, then send them off to make questionable decisions in space.

There is something wonderfully freeing about beginning later in life. You are not writing from theory alone. You have lived. You have lost things, found things, endured dull meetings, watched people surprise you, learned that love is complicated, grief is sneaky, and humour is sometimes the only sensible response to disaster.

When you come to the page in your sixties, you do not come empty-handed.

You bring every awkward conversation, every family story, every job you survived, every place you have lived, every silence you understood too late, every cup of coffee made in crisis. You bring the past with mud on its boots. That is not a disadvantage. That is material.

Of course, starting seriously in your sixties also means facing that annoying little voice that says, “Isn’t it a bit late?”

To which I say: late for what?

Late for becoming twenty-five again? Probably. Late for writing stories? Absolutely not.

There is no age limit on imagination. No expiry date stamped on the soul. The page does not care how old your hands are. It only asks whether you are willing to begin.

And I was.

Writing has become more than something to pass the time. It has become a way of paying attention. A way of gathering all the odd, tender, ridiculous, painful, beautiful fragments of life and turning them into something with shape.

Some people take up gardening. Some learn painting. Some travel. Some buy walking shoes and become very intense about footpaths.

I wrote.

And in writing, I found that the end of one life chapter was not an ending at all. It was a door. A slightly creaky one, perhaps, with a stiff handle and a worrying draught underneath, but a door all the same.

Behind it were stories.

And I had time.

That, it turns out, is a dangerous combination.

In the best possible way.

-Rebecca

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