I am one of those funny little people who is creative and has made the dubious decision to try to make a career out of it.

I didn’t fully commit until I was around 30, and I’ve spent the last 14 years in an up and down ride, trying to chip away until I reach the mysterious and elusive level of success where nothing bad happens ever.

I have had more heartening bits than many aspiring writers, but they have never coalesced into any kind of stability. Somewhere in the distance is the dream: I get to make my own TV show or movie, and everything finally falls into place and I never struggle or doubt myself again. The vague-but-strengthening-with-each-passing-day sense that I’ve made a terrible mistake that is too late to fix will vanish.

One of the things I have done to keep my head above water is collect stories about people who have achieved that kind of success later in life. Morgan Freeman was 52 before his breakthrough role in Driving Miss Daisy. Charles Bukowski was 49 when he quit his job to write full time. Yesterday a guy I follow on social media posted that a movie he co-wrote was about to start shooting, a first for him – and he is 43.

There are many artists who quietly beaver away (not all of them lesbians like me) for half their life or more until they finally get their “breakthrough”. When you’re younger than them, a late........

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