![365books:
The Getaway Car: A Practical Memoir About Writing and Life, by Ann Patchett
Sometimes I read a book at exactly the right moment. And every time it happens, I am struck by that peculiar feeling that I’ve received something valuable that I didn’t even know I needed. I needed to read this and I read it at exactly the right moment, and that might color my feelings about it, but isn’t that how it is with everything?
When I was younger, mostly middle school and high school, I read books on writing. I never wrote much myself, as I knew that most of what I would attempt would be garbage and besides, I hate the sight of my own words. However, I absorbed a lot of information about the intricacies of plot, setting, character development and the like. Those books didn’t teach me to write, and I didn’t expect them to. They taught me to read. I read like a writer even though I’m not one. And that’s one of the things I appreciate most about my younger self, my willingness to just lie there and really think about what I was reading, and judge it, and hold a miniature writers’ workshop in my mind.
When it comes to actual advice on writing, I’ve never expected to actually receive any that would apply to me, to the way I think, or to the way I write. I remember discussing Stephen King’s On Writing (which was a fine book, don’t get me wrong) with a group of reader/writer friends and feeling like I was the only one for whom the book was totally irrelevant, completely disconnected from my reality. Ditto for Ray Bradbury’s Zen in the Art of Writing.
To make a long story short, this book was exactly what I thought I would never get. It’s not a real how-to, and that’s not what anyone needs, least of all me. I know how to write. I just can’t for reasons that lie somewhere between my brain and my pen (or keyboard). Reading her description of her writing process, how she comes up with an idea, lets it grow into this huge, flowering, fully formed beautiful object in her mind, like a butterfly, was like reading my own thoughts. And then this:
When putting it off has actually become more painful than doing it, I reach into the air and pluck the butterfly up. 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. […] Everything that was beautiful about this living thing…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 the book.
And that act of killing is the one thing I can’t do. Of the short fiction I’ve written, afterwards, trying to explain that feeling that I’ve murdered a friend, I’ve never met anyone who felt similarly. It seems like for most people there’s an urgency to writing—stories come alive on the page instead of dying there.
There’s so much more in this book that was relevant to me, but this really should be a book review and not a dissection of my personal problems. Sorry for the digression. Read this if you like Ann Patchett (curiously, I’m not much of a fan). Read this if you want to write.](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_ly4ng10OYu1r7tljoo1_400.jpg)
The Getaway Car: A Practical Memoir About Writing and Life, by Ann Patchett
Sometimes I read a book at exactly the right moment. And every time it happens, I am struck by that peculiar feeling that I’ve received something valuable that I didn’t even know I needed. I needed to read this and I read it at exactly the right moment, and that might color my feelings about it, but isn’t that how it is with everything?
When I was younger, mostly middle school and high school, I read books on writing. I never wrote much myself, as I knew that most of what I would attempt would be garbage and besides, I hate the sight of my own words. However, I absorbed a lot of information about the intricacies of plot, setting, character development and the like. Those books didn’t teach me to write, and I didn’t expect them to. They taught me to read. I read like a writer even though I’m not one. And that’s one of the things I appreciate most about my younger self, my willingness to just lie there and really think about what I was reading, and judge it, and hold a miniature writers’ workshop in my mind.
When it comes to actual advice on writing, I’ve never expected to actually receive any that would apply to me, to the way I think, or to the way I write. I remember discussing Stephen King’s On Writing (which was a fine book, don’t get me wrong) with a group of reader/writer friends and feeling like I was the only one for whom the book was totally irrelevant, completely disconnected from my reality. Ditto for Ray Bradbury’s Zen in the Art of Writing.
To make a long story short, this book was exactly what I thought I would never get. It’s not a real how-to, and that’s not what anyone needs, least of all me. I know how to write. I just can’t for reasons that lie somewhere between my brain and my pen (or keyboard). Reading her description of her writing process, how she comes up with an idea, lets it grow into this huge, flowering, fully formed beautiful object in her mind, like a butterfly, was like reading my own thoughts. And then this:
When putting it off has actually become more painful than doing it, I reach into the air and pluck the butterfly up. 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. […] Everything that was beautiful about this living thing…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 the book.
And that act of killing is the one thing I can’t do. Of the short fiction I’ve written, afterwards, trying to explain that feeling that I’ve murdered a friend, I’ve never met anyone who felt similarly. It seems like for most people there’s an urgency to writing—stories come alive on the page instead of dying there.
There’s so much more in this book that was relevant to me, but this really should be a book review and not a dissection of my personal problems. Sorry for the digression. Read this if you like Ann Patchett (curiously, I’m not much of a fan). Read this if you want to write.
