Here's one that has bothered me for a long time... I am writing (as I always am) a children's fantasy novel that I hope to submit to an agent this year. It's a fairly dark, spooky story in a magical setting, starring an ordinary girl. I only have one problem with it...
I'm only 21.
Is that enough life experience to be writing anything? Can a person's style be sufficiently mature by that age? Will an agent look at the DOB and dismiss the submission? I'd appreciate some thoughts on this!
Thanks very much for the feedback ladies and gents.
I can't see that your relatively tender years would be a problem. After all, a younger writer could potentially have a extremely long writing career in front of them. The only time I've seen things mentioning a writer being young, it's been used as a positive thing, not a negative. Don't wait for some mythical age when you are "mature" enough - as you get older, maturity is a highly overrated thing, anyway!
Age is but a state of mind, as some lovely person told me once. It doesn't matter if you have walked this earth 21 years (well probably crawled one), or 46 like me, because age doesn't determine how much knowledge your brain absorbs, or come to think of it how wise you make think you are.
So no, I don't think you're too young to submit a manuscript, as Antoinette stated, it's all about how good your story is, and of course how much you believe in the story yourself.
I wish you the best of luck.
P.S. It was your shared work I was timed-out on. Very good by the way.