ANN PATCHETT ON WRITING NOVELS

Ann Patchett by Heidi RossOh dear - this is so true:

'When I can’t think of another stall, when putting it off has actually become more painful than doing it, I reach up and pluck the butterfly from the air. I take it from the region of my head and I press it down against my desk, and there, with my own hand, I kill it. It’s not that I want to kill it, but it’s the only way I can get something that is so three-dimensional onto the flat page. Just to make sure the job is done I stick it into place with a pin. Imagine running over a butterfly with an SUV. Everything that was beautiful about this living thing – all the color, the light and movement – is gone. What I’m left with is the dry husk of my friend, the broken body chipped, dismantled, and poorly reassembled. Dead. That’s my book.' Ann Patchett

And the more 'hopeful' bit:

'The journey from the head to hand is perilous and lined with bodies. It is the road on which nearly everyone who wants to write – and many of the people who do write – get lost... Only a few of us are going to be willing to break our own hearts by trading in the living beauty of imagination for the stark disappointment of words.'

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