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Thursday, 28 September 2017

The Write Advice 099: ANNE TYLER


The best part about being a writer is the experience of learning, gradually, what it is like to be a person completely different from me.  The hard part is that for years on end, I am working in a vacuum.  Is this a story anyone will believe? Anyone will care about?  I won’t know that until I’m finished… I would rather read the writer, not hear him or her talk.  I know that from being a writer myself: what I have to say, I have already said through my stories… I map my books out in a very cursory way — say, about a page for each novel — and I always think I know how they’ll end, but I’m almost always wrong.  In the case of The Accidental Tourist, I actually began a chapter in which Macon stayed with Sarah.  But it didn’t work; something in the characters themselves persuaded me the ending would have to be different.

A Conversation with Anne Tyler [2002]


 

Use the link below to read a 2015 interview with North American novelist ANNE TYLER:

 

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/feb/15/anne-tyler-interview-i-am-not-a-spiritual-person-spool-of-blue-thread

 

 

You might also enjoy:

 
The Write Advice 089: EUDORA WELTY

 
The Write Advice 039: DEBORAH EISENBERG

 
The Write Advice 009: NORA EPHRON

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