Author Elizabeth Strout Is at Peace With Aging

Why do you think, after all those rejected works, that Amy and Isabelle landed?

I think I was just literally trying to find my voice. And that for all those years, I was writing like a writer, and not writing like myself.

How did you find your voice?

I got worn down, frankly. When I was writing Amy and Isabelle — [which] I had started as a short story, which, thank goodness, nobody published — but I kept going back to it, realizing I wanted to write this as a book. I remember thinking as I was writing it, Probably nobody’s going to read this. And that was a little liberating for me, even though I was always thinking about a reader.

Not only did it get published, it became a bestseller. How did that feel?

It’s interesting, because I was writing and I thought, Oh, I’m learning. It’s a little bit like learning to ride a bicycle, like I realized, Oh, I have this now. Now I know what I’m doing. And so I privately — I don’t even think I’ve said this publicly before — but I think that privately I kind of thought that it was a good book. Which doesn’t mean that it would have had the success it did, but I did sort of think it was a good book.

And here you are publishing your 10th novel at age 68. How does that feel?

I don’t think about it. It’s just weird.

Do you feel your age?

I don’t think that I do, and then, every so often I realize, Wait a minute, I’m 68 years old…. Like I just saw this woman walk by through the window, and she was really walking [fast], and I thought, Oh, wow, she’s really walking. And I thought, [I’m] probably never going to be able to walk like that again. She’s really striding. It doesn’t really bother me, but I noticed it. I still think of myself as somebody who takes those strides, but I don’t. It’s weird, because you’re so at odds with a certain sense of yourself, and yet you’re not. It’s like, Oh, I get it, I’m getting older. And then I look in the mirror and I think, Oh, you really are getting older. But I don’t even actually care that much. I would like to not look so old, but I do. And I think, OK, well, there you are. You’ve earned every piece of it.

What are your favorite books to read these days?

Back to the classics — books that I probably read when I was younger but haven’t read for maybe 20 years. So that’s what I tend to do. I realize that more and more. And I used to just rip through every single thing that was contemporary, but I noticed more and more, I don’t do that as much as I did. I just sort of seem to go back to the books that I had loved when I was younger.

When you’re not writing, what do you like to spend time doing?

Oh, I like to talk to my husband [James Tierney, 77, a former Maine attorney general and a lecturer at Harvard Law School]. I like to tell him little things I saw and stuff like that. When I have my friends here, I like to talk with them. I just like to be with people, but not that many people. I like to be with my good friends.

What advice would you give to a young writer?

I would say just keep going. Because we do get better at everything. Like anything, if you continue to do it, you generally get better at it. And so I would say to a young writer, just do not stop. Just keep going, keep going, keep going. Keep reaching for those sentences that you think will be the truthful sentences.