Older characters and older authors

I'm preparing for my three panels at Dublin Worldcon this week, and one of them is a panel about older characters and older authors.

Do older authors write and champion older characters? the panel asks.  In my case, the answer to this is yes and no.  And, of course, it depends on how you define 'older'.  I've seen a lot of scathing Twitter threads recently reacting to articles about 'older' people in their forties.  As you might expect, those of us who can genuinely qualify for the label older didn't think much of this.  Old at forty?  Come back in twenty+ years' time.

At 65 I think I qualify for the label as 'older', but only just.  From my perspective, 'older' starts at seventy and goes on well into the nineties.  And if I apply that criteria to my own work I have to admit that I haven't done a great deal along the years to champion older characters.

I've written about a lot of mid-life characters.  The novel which was originally Snowbird 25 years ago had a 42 year old protagonist.  The novel I've just finished also has a pair of forty-something sisters as the main characters.  I have an older character in my novel Churri, and interestingly he's the bad guy.  

I do have an older character, Elke, as captain of a recycler ship in my novel Renaissance.  She's approaching 100 and manages what is effectively a medium-sized business with 50 employees.  I made a deliberate decision to make her older to show a positive role model for older people.  It's instructive that I only wrote that novel a couple of years ago.

My panel also asks what are the advantages and disadvantages of being an older writer.  A huge advantage is more life experience.  I can write authentically about a mid-life person getting a divorce because I've been there.  A twenty-something would have no idea how that feels.  Older people also have a lifetime's work experience.  We know how people relate, what motivates people, and often what prejudices they have.  Disadvantages?  One is wrong perception of older people.  Like agent Jamie Cowen thinking they might be disadvantaged because they don't do social media.  Ha!   He hasn't seen how long I spend on social media every day.

I'm sure the other panellists will have other insights, and I'm looking forward to hearing their take on this.