Ann Patchett on the PRACTICE of Writing

Patchett: No getaway
from practice.

A nifty outfit called Byliner is publishing excellent original e-titles in miniature, and Ann Patchett's memoir, part writer's craft, part subtle encouragement, part autobiography is more than a bargain at $2.99 for the "Kindle single."

The Getaway Car: A Practical Memoir about Writing and Life weighs in at 195 KBs and is meant to be read in one sitting. But you'll want to spend many sittings with this little book, not least for the support Patchett offers aspiring writers, and the no-nonsense "get back on track, you nitwit" advice she dishes out. When you stray, she reminds us, remember: Good writing comes down to practice:


"It turns out that the distance from head to hand, from wafting butterfly to entemological specimen, is achieved through regular, disciplined practice. What begins as something like a dream will in fact stay a dream forever unless you have the tools and discipline to bring it out." 

and


"If you want to write, practice writing. Practice it for hours a day, not to come up with a story you can publish but because you long to learn to write well, because there is something that you alone can say. Write the story, learn from it, put it away, write another story. Think of a sink pipe filled with sticky sediment: the only way to get clean water is to force a small ocean through the tap. Most of us are full up with bad stories, boring stories, self-indulgent stories, searing works of unendurable melodrama. We must get them all out of our system...


You've heard the advice a thousand times, but maybe never as eloquently, as Patchett keeps circling back to it in widening gyres.

And now here's a funny story that happened to a blogging friend of mine, Joanna Marple, and a famous children's author, Kathleen Duey, only this week:

Three Ways to Develop a Sympathetic Main Character

Agents handing out rejections have been known to observe that they "didn't connect" with a novel's main character. If you attend writers conferences, you're bound to hear variations on this theme. Especially in children's lit, agents tend to be looking for "character driven" stories.  They're looking to sympathize and identify. They want to "fall in love."

So how to create main characters readers will love? My SCBWI writers group got into this topic recently when someone observed that when you've done your job with a character, really done your job, you'll feel "emotionally exhausted" after a writing session.


Digging Down Deep
That observation really hit home.

Four Must-Read Writing Books

I feel like I've read 150 books on the craft of writing this year; in my nightmares I'm stumbling through a Dickensian fog of them, pages piling around me in drifts. All offer useful tips and tricks -- never do I close the book (or hurl it across the room, or weep over its pages) without at least a few takeaways. But a handful  stand out as books that have changed the way I see the world; they're books that have sent me back for my 5th-plus revision on my work-in-progress with joy in my heart rather than dread. On occasion they speak to something that I feel I knew deeply all along but failed to recognize consciously until that "ah-ha" moment on page, say, 57. And the really great ones have lifted me, have made me feel I'm capable of more than I rightly ought to be. Here they are, in no particular order: