Everyone thinks that a new place or a new identity will jumpstart a new life.
Caroline Leavitt
I had a nervous breakdown at 17 when my first love left me, and he was a typical bad boy, albeit a charismatic one, with a string of broken hearts trailing behind him.
If a kid disappears, now there's Amber Alerts: they know this-this-this. In the '50s, we kids wandered around. Nobody knew what you were doing.
Is there nothing the prodigiously talented Ann Patchett can't do? She's channeled the world of opera, Boston politics, magic, unwed motherhood, and race relations, creating scenarios so indelible, you swear they are right outside your door.
People love stories. They need stories.
I absolutely want and prize and love and revere every single media review I get, but if I got 50 reviews from major newspapers and one review from Amazon, I still would feel a little weird: 'What's going on? Why aren't people responding?'
I know another New York Times bestselling author - Beth Kephart - she self-published one of her books.
When self-publishing started, it was mostly people who really couldn't write. And they just wanted to get their book out, and they couldn't get traditional deals.
I'm a big believer in quantum physics, which says that the universe is more incredible and mysterious than any of us can imagine, which is my way of saying, 'Anything is possible, including angels.'
I write about what haunts me, and I write the books I myself am dying to read. I love it. I can't think of anything I'd rather do.
I call Algonquin Books 'the gods and goddesses of publishing.' Not only did they give me a career, they care deeply about every writer in their flock.
While some of the big publishers might give out 200,000 advances, if your book does not hit some of the lists in the second week, they stop paying attention to you.
Housewives of the 1950s were supposed to create show-stopping meals every night for their hard-working husbands.
I tell myself that some names can be mistakes, like Mxyplyzyk, a store in New York that lost customers because few could spell its name to look up the address. I tell myself that lots of writers agonize over titles, and often get them wrong at first.
Writing is really hard, and it's really a skill.
Literature can allow us to experience the best side of humankind, where instead of giving up, we struggle desperately in the ruins for love, connection and hope.
Open adoption, when it works, is fabulous. But when it goes wrong, it's so traumatizing for everybody.
I think I became a writer because of my love of stories and an inability to stop asking, 'What if?'
I had a writing professor at Brandeis who told me I'd never make it - and when I sold my first novel a few years later, I sent him a copy!
L.A. is a place people come to for all sorts of reasons, often to reinvent themselves, and that fascinates me.
A lot of people hurl themselves into relationships to lose themselves, but I think the best relationships help us to be more ourselves, to bring forth our best selves.
All writers know how important a good title is. It's the first thing readers see, along with a knock-your-socks-off cover - a seductive 'come hither' for the story within.
A product name has to be specific. You know that Tasty Soup is tasty - that Hot Chips will burn off the roof of your mouth.
A title means marketing. It means that company's coming soon, and you'd better get out the Christmas lights so they don't miss your house.
By the time I was 5, I was already an outcast. It was the early 1960s, and I was part of the only Jewish family in a decidedly Christian suburb of Waltham, Mass.
I was a bookworm who aced every test - until third grade, when my teacher handed out a pop quiz about Jesus and the Apostles.
I had always known that I was Jewish - we celebrated the holidays, we went to a synagogue - but I had never known that I was supposed to feel ashamed about it.
I cried to my mother that I wanted to go to Hebrew school; I wanted Jewish friends. But when my mother took me, the kids there all knew each other, and somehow I was even more of an outcast.
My dirty little secret is I don't drive at all, though I have my license and I renew it every five years. I'm phobic. I keep worrying if I drive, I'll end up killing someone. I hoped that by writing about a car crash, I might understand and heal this phobia, but I didn't! I'm still phobic.
The dead can't change, but you can.
I'm big on story structure. I studied with John Truby, who mapped out story by means of moral wants and needs, and that's what I do. Hey, so does John Irving.
I love rewriting because that is where and how you discover the story. It's like you have this skeleton, and you get to put flesh on it and hair and clothes and really wonderful jewelry.
I love real books, paper books, but I also love buying online, and I think that people are more willing to take a chance to read something if it's cheaper - sometimes books on the Kindle are $6. A hardback book is $25. For $25, it better be a really great book. Or you're going to be mad.
I am an indifferent cook, but I can make pie.
Oh, I've had terrible, terrible relationships! The fact that I ever got happily married to a great, normal man is kind of a miracle.
My first husband was a serial cheater.
I always write about the things that haunt me, the questions I have.
I am totally and completely addicted to movies. Jeff, my husband and I, watch movies every night and go out to the movies constantly.
Indie bookstores love writers as much as they love readers, and there is something about a community store, where you walk in, you feel known, and the delight in books is just infectious.
