When’s the Author’s Best Output

The best writing of a writer comes in the evening of his/her life considering that Hemingway wrote "Old Man and the Sea" when he was sixty-two and a certain Hilary Mantel wrote her novel in her late fifties. There is hope yet.

"The underlying assumption of any list highlighting a younger generation is that writers produce their best work in their mid-thirties, once their writing has matured. But for every novelist such as Martin Amis or Graham Swift, who featured on the 1983 Granta list, and produced their breakthrough and arguably their best books around this time (Money and Waterland respectively), there is a Hilary Mantel, whose Wolf Hall, the novel that crystallised her reputation and which she said she had been waiting all her life to write, was published only last year, when she was in her late fifites."

This advice from a guru of self-help. "Sleep less: This is one of the best investments you can make to make your life more productive and rewarding." I don't think this is the right advice to give.