STORIES BEHIND THE PATH TO PUBLICATION
By D.G. Thomas, DBN Magazine Editor-in-Chief
I think one of the most interesting things about becoming an author later in life is that you arrive at the page with decades of experiences you simply didn’t have when you were younger. A career, hobbies, successes, mistakes, and all the things you’ve learned along the way can suddenly become material for something new. That’s what stood out to me when I revisited my interview with Bob Savar, author of Pickleball for Seniors. Bob’s story isn’t simply about publishing a book. It’s about retirement, reinvention, and discovering that a later chapter of your life can lead you somewhere you never expected.
Bob retired from business in 2017, but retirement certainly didn’t mean slowing down. He became a certified professional pickleball instructor, taught clinics and private lessons, coached doubles teams, competed himself, and built a pickleball Meetup group that had grown to more than 1,300 members by the time of our interview. He had also taught hundreds of people how to play the sport.
All of that experience eventually gave him something to write about.
Bob published his first book, Pickleball for Beginners, in 2020, and it became an Amazon bestseller. In 2022, he published an expanded and revised version, How to Get Started Playing Pickleball, followed by How to Improve from a Beginner to an Intermediate in Pickleball. Then, in August 2023, he published Pickleball for Seniors.
What I find most interesting about that timeline is what came before it: retirement. Bob didn’t retire from one career with a publishing résumé and a stack of manuscripts waiting to be released. He retired, became deeply involved in something he enjoyed, developed expertise through doing and teaching it, and then turned that knowledge into books.
I think there’s something especially encouraging about that for people who have always thought about writing a book but worry they’ve waited too long. We tend to associate pursuing big dreams with youth. There’s an underlying message that you’re supposed to figure out what you want to do early, build your career, accomplish your goals, and then eventually slow down.
Bob’s journey went in another direction.
At age 76, he described himself as having reinvented his life into one he thoroughly enjoyed. He was teaching, playing pickleball, exercising, hiking with his children and grandchildren, writing books, and continuing to pursue something he was passionate about. I love that part of his story because it changes the way I think about what it means to start late.
Maybe starting later doesn’t always put you at a disadvantage. Sometimes it means you have more to draw from. By then, you know some things. You’ve developed skills. You’ve discovered what works and what doesn’t. You’ve had time to develop interests you may not have had when you were younger. You may even discover an entirely new passion and spend enough time with it to become the person other people come to for guidance. And somewhere in all of that experience may be a book.
Bob’s story also makes me think differently about retirement. We usually talk about it as an ending—the point when you finally step away from what you’ve spent your life doing. But retirement can also create space to ask a very different question: What would I like to do now?
When I look at Bob’s story through the lens of The Author’s Journey, I keep coming back to the fact that at 76 he described himself as having reinvented his life. I think that’s the lesson worth holding onto. If you’ve always wanted to publish a book but worry that you should have started years ago, Bob’s journey offers another way of looking at those years. They aren’t necessarily evidence that you waited too long. They are years in which you lived, learned, developed interests, gained experience, and became someone with more to say. The years behind you may not be the reason you can’t write the book. They may be the reason you finally have something worth writing about.
Read Bob’s author interview on DBN Magazine.
The Author’s Journey: Stories Behind the Path to Publication are from the DBN Magazine archives. Editor D.G. Thomas revisits past author interviews with published authors, sharing her reflections on the stories they shared behind their paths to publication—and the lessons that may inspire the next generation of authors.
Want to Share Your Author Journey? Are you a published author with a story to tell? Be featured in a DBN Magazine Author Spotlight and share the story behind your book, your path to publication, and what you’ve learned along the way. [Apply for an Author Spotlight]
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