Written out

Reading Brooklyn Follies I found a list of how young people were who achieved literary feats. Well, how young they were when they died: Poe, 40; Kafka, 40; Marlowe, 29; Keats, 25; Georg Buchner, 23; Byron, 36; Emily Bronte, 30; Charlotte Bronte, 39; Shelley, 29; Wilfred Owen, 25; Leopardi, Garcia Lorca, Apollinaire, 39; both Pascal and Flannery O'Connor at 39; Rimbaud, 37 ; Chatterton 17.

That's just the writers though - think of the musicians , Pergolesi, Mozart....

Still, organists and harpsichordists all seem to have kept going to enormous ages so it must be composing that does it. Philosophers and economists are tough too. No-one is to take up writing novels, plays or poetry , or composing before they are already old. Perhaps it's living in garrets that does it?