by Patrick Hurley

Created on: September 13, 2010

Age, over time, can affect many careers such as professional basketball or securing a lead role in most romantic movies. But, writing is not age-specific as long as the writer has a healthy mind and a clear memory of what he feels passionate about. He doesn't even need his fingers to type because he can dictate his thoughts to someone who does have them. You write from your mind and heart, not from your extremities. Age cannot steal that part of you.

The writer is a soul. Great writing is from the soul. The older the writer is, the more experiences and depths make up his soul.

When I was five years old, I could write about the impact of a kiss on the cheek from Cynthia Hunt on our last day of kindergarten. That was just about it for my wealth of experience unless I wanted to do a television review of Rin Tin Tin.

Ten years later, as a sophomore in high school, I had a few more options for my literary expression. It was the year President Kennedy was assassinated and my reporting on that in an essay would have been presumptuous with the avalanche of eloquence descending upon America relating to that infamous event in our history.

At the age of twenty-five, we were all immersed in Watergate. Woodward and Bernstein and a thousand other reporters suddenly found themselves writing entire books on the Richard Nixon and his Presidency. I lacked both the credibility and the inside reporting to match any of those #1 best sellers on the New York Times book list.

As the years went by, I dabbled in self-help books for teenagers and had several of them published but I began to believe I was not, nor would ever be, a successful writer. My talent was in speaking and stand up comedy. I came to grips with the fact that I would never be able to transfer my highly effective stage show to the written word. On more than one occasion, publishers would remind me that I was a "personality," not a writer. I believed them.

In 1997, I began writing my first mystery novel and when I finished three chapters I shared it with a lady in my Sunday School class. She gave me the kiss of death for someone who wanted to become a credible writer to my generation, "This is a great book for kids, Pat. Good job." I was devastated. It was never meant to be a book for young people.

I shoved the chapters into a file cabinet and gave up trying to write for adults. In fact, I gave up my dream of writng, period.

Then in 2005, a young lady named Natalee Holloway went missing on her senior class trip

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