Ann Patchett, the author of This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage, among other books, has some great advice about writing. She says the key is to practice writing several hours a day for the sheer joy of getting better, and find the thing that you alone can say. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Ann Patchett Writing Advice”
You’re listening to A Way with Words, the show about language and how we use it.
I’m Grant Barrett.
And I’m Martha Barnette.
Grant, you and I both enjoy reading advice about writing from other writers.
And I had some that I wanted to share with you.
This is from the book by Ann Patchett called This is the Story of a Happy Marriage.
And it’s part memoir, part advice.
It came out a couple of years ago.
And she has some really good observations about what it takes to make a good writer.
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 how to write well,
Because there’s something that you alone can say.
Does this sound like a lot of work without any guarantee of success?
Well, yes, but it also calls into question our definition of success.
Playing the cello, we’re more likely to realize that the pleasure is the practice,
The ability to create this beautiful sound, not to do it as well as Yo-Yo Ma, but still to touch
The hem of the gown that is art itself. I got better at closing the gap between my hand and my
Head by clocking in the hours, stacking up the pages. Somewhere in all my years of practice,
I don’t know where exactly, I arrived at the art.
And then she circles back to an idea that she’s
Mentioned before, which is the notion that you can have this great work of art in your head,
But whatever you end up writing never turns out to be as good. You know, it’s just a pale,
Flawed imitation. But I really love the way that she puts it. She says,
I never learned how to take the beautiful thing in my imagination and put it on paper
Without feeling I killed it along the way. I did, however, learn how to weather the death,
And I learned how to forgive myself for it.
And then she goes on, 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.
Great. What book was that again?
The book is called This is the Story of a Happy Marriage by Ann Patchett.
There’s an interesting thing that you said at the top that I wanted to talk about.
We like writing advice.
And I think of writing advice as being like prayer.
You don’t just do it once, right?
You have to keep practicing, keep absorbing the ideas of other people constantly.
There’s no one great idea that’s going to set you off.
You’re constantly getting input from other better writers on how to be better as a writer yourself.
Or as I always say, my dad used to say, milk all the cows you can and then churn your own butter.
That’s it. That’s it.
We’d love to hear your favorite passages,
Writers giving advice, the stuff that motivates you,
Or a new book that really turns you on
And changed your mind about some things
That you were doing well or doing poorly.
Email words@waywordradio.org.
