Consider this: David Eddings’ entire career as a fantastist lasted from when he was 51 until his death at 77.

I think the much more likely explanation is that each writer only has so many extraordinary book ideas in them — no human being can be an infinite fountain of genius 24/7 — and a professional writer with a long career will be lucky enough, or unlucky enough, to have a chance to get all those extraordinary ideas out on paper while he or she still has some life left.

If that study has any validity, it may just be that writers (sedentary, isolated, financially unsound creatures in many cases) tend not to live that long past the years you’ve identified as their primes. It’s hard to keep writing at the top of your game after you’ve died.

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/01/why-john-j-mearsheimer-is-right-about-some-things/8839/?single_page=true

“The best grand theories tend to be written no earlier than middle age, when the writer has life experience and mistakes behind him to draw upon. Morgenthau’s 1948 classic, Politics Among Nations, was published when he was 44, Fukuyama’s The End of History was published as a book when he was 40, and Huntington’s Clash of Civilizations as a book when he was 69. Mearsheimer began writing The Tragedy of Great Power Politics when he was in his mid-40s, after working on it for a decade. Published just before 9/11, the book intimates the need for America to avoid strategic distractions and concentrate on confronting China.”

The root of this evil is Metaphysical.

My Ultima Thule, my Holy Graal, my Golden City Far, my souls obsession…

I am taken aback however that so many of the people here are just now looking at the fact that the cycle of life/death can be applied to anything within that macro-cycle.

Yes a souls creativity will have a ‘life/death cycle.’

There can likely be found an average age of ‘death’ for ones ‘creativity.’

Just like anything.

Lets all direct this wonderfully morbid, grim, and dark, ( maybe brooding too! What joy! ) energy into the ‘life of our work.’

Hurry you could ‘die’ reading this…In many ways!

But know that in some ways you are already dead.

That’s what happens when old authors get knocked off their bikes by “happy slapping” diverse thugs? =)

(see http://voxday.blogspot.com/2012/01/sic-semper-pusillus.html )

Nah. Caesar, October Horse and Antony and Cleopatra are all worth reading. The main problem with the last one is that Augustus is a less attractive personality than Caesar, who in turn is less interesting than Sulla and Marius. But none of that is the author’s fault, though she could perhaps be accused of liking Caesar a little too much.