This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage

by Ann Patchett

Though I felt intimidated and unqualified to write for the Times, I realized

magazine writing had given me yet another skill (also essential to fiction): the ability to fake authority.

was sure that very few people, and maybe no one at all, would read what I wrote.

the Kafka model: obscurity during life with the chance of being discovered after death.

Every writer approaches writing in a different way, and while some of those ways may be more straightforward than others, very few can be dismissed as categorically wrong.

In short,

the story is in us, and all we have to do is sit there and write it down. But it’s right about there, right about when we sit down to write that story, that things fall apart.

During the months (or years) it takes me to put my ideas together, I don’t take notes or make outlines; I’m figuring things out, and all the while the book makes a breeze around my head like an oversized butterfly whose wings were cut from the rose window in Notre Dame.

is the greatest novel in the history of literature, and I have thought it up, and all I have to do is put it down on paper and then everyone can see this beauty that I see.

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.

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.

I’m not quite so pessimistic, not so self-critical. I don’t know what will emerge but at times I’m surprised at how good it actually is, better than the ephemeral notion in my head. It may need polishing and orienting into the rest of the text but it is good. I just hope others think so too.

Forgiveness. The ability to forgive oneself. Stop here for a few breaths and think about this because it is the key to making art, and very possibly the key to finding any semblance of happiness in life.

I believe, more than anything, that this grief of constantly having to face down our own inadequacies is what keeps people from being writers.

More fear than grief I think, but the self-forgiveness part is useful. Acceptance maybe. Face the fear and do it anyway.

Sturm und Drang

She taught me that writing must not be compartmentalized.

if I wanted to be a better writer, I was the only person who could push myself to do it.

I learned how to tune my ear to the usefulness and uselessness of other people’s opinions.

Every workshop was an explosion of judgment.

roman à clef,

I puzzled it out, went down dead ends and circled back, made connections and plot twists I never saw coming. All in my head.

narrative structure. Who was telling this story?

construct an omniscient voice.

Novel writing, I soon discovered, is like channel swimming: a slow and steady stroke over a

long distance in a cold, dark sea.

The part of my brain that makes art and the part that judges that art had to be separated. While I was writing I was not allowed to judge.

Over the years I’ve come to realize that I write the book I want to read, the one I can’t find anywhere.

The thing I relied on most heavily to get me up and typing was the power of plot.

I believe in keeping several plots going at once.

The length and shape of the chapter go a long way towards determining how your plot will move forward.

A chapter isn’t a short story and needn’t be able to stand

alone, nor is it just a random break that signifies the

Chapters are like the foot pedals on a piano; they give you another level of control. Short chapters can speed the book along, whil...

Tiny chapters, a lone paragraph or a single sentence, can be...

I like a chapter that has both a certain degree of autonomy and at the same time pushes the reader forward, so that someone who is reading in bed and has vowed to turn off the light at the chapter’s end wi...

do your best to write it in the order in which it will be read, because it will make the writing, and the later editing, incalculably easier.

I had been hijacked by my own characters. I was no longer in control. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

One more thing to think about when putting a novel together: make it hard.

I raise the bar with every book I write, making sure I’m doing something that is uncomfortably beyond what I can manage.

as far as I’m concerned, writer’s block is a myth.

I understand being stuck. It can take a very long

time to figure something out, and sometimes, no matter how much time you put in, the problem cannot be solved.

The many months (and sometimes years) I put into thinking about a novel before I start to write it saves me considerable time while I’m writing,

Even if I don’t believe in writer’s block, I certainly believe in procrastination.

We are, however, entirely responsible for procrastination and, in the best of all possible worlds, should also be responsible for being honest with ourselves about what’s really going on.

Writers handle the process of revision in as many different

ways as they handle the writing itself.

One method of revision that I find both loathsome and indispensable is reading my work aloud when I’m finished.

I try to conduct

my research after I’ve started writing, or sometimes even after I’ve finished, using it to go back and correct my mistakes.

Stories are based in conflict, and when the conflict is resolved the story ends. That’s because for the most part happiness is amorphous, wordless, and largely uninteresting.