Writing advice from someone who really knows.
Thanks, Anna.
It seems quaint to remember it now, but back in the 1980s, when I was a magazine editor in New York, I’d arrive at my desk in every morning -- the one with the stunning view of Grand Central Station and Lower Park Avenue -- and open my New York Times to read that day’s news. On paper.
I always made a point to find Anna Quindlen’s feature column, “Life in the 30s,” first.
I wasn’t 30 yet, but so much of what she wrote spoke directly to my soul. About whether to take her husband’s name when she got married. (She didn’t. I didn’t.) How it must feel as someone whose mother died when she was 19 to build an adult relationship with her mother. (I’d find out soon enough that, like Anna, that wasn’t ever going to happen for me, either. My mother died when I was 27.)
And my favorite column headline ever, still clear and bracing more than 30 years later: “It’s not that men are bad. Women are just better.”
Quindlen, now 70, went on to write a Pulitzer Prize-winning opinion column for the Times; when she was writing, she was the only woman with the job and only the third the Times had ever hired. She wrote about subjects that hadn’t had much exposure on those prestigious pages: abortion rights, feminism, sexual assault, bigotry.
Then, in 1994, she quit to write novels full-time.
The journalism world was shocked. And not a little angry. Wait a minute: Our feminist standard-bearer didn’t want to do it anymore?
Turns out that Anna had always wanted to be a novelist, starting in childhood when she read everything she could get her hands on and began to recognize her writing ability. The Betsy-Tacy books, a classic series that follow two best girlfriends from childhood through Betsy’s wedding, were favorites, and are, still.
I learned that and a little more of Anna Quindlen’s backstory last week, when I got a rare chance to see her in conversation with another towering contemporary novelist, Ann Patchett. They spoke at Parnassus Books in Nashville, the independent bookstore that Patchett founded and owns.
And it was glorious. Mostly because of how open, funny and authentic Quindlen turned out to be, just as I’d always hoped.
She has just published her latest novel, After Annie, the story of what happens to a community, a family and a best friendship when the woman who holds it all together suddenly dies. So Patchett’s questions were focused on that book, but there were also breadcrumbs of wisdom from Anna’s long and successful writing life.
Quindlen differentiated her journalistic column writing from writing fiction: With columns, “I can always fall back on the notebook,” she said, referring to the deep reporting (and notetaking) she did before each published opinion column.
Writing fiction is something else though, she said. “When I’m writing a column, I can work as long as six or seven hours if I need to, to get it right. But fiction comes from my imagination, which tends to go flat after a couple of hours.”
I was surprised to discover how difficult she finds writing, even now, though I shouldn’t have been. Writing well is hard. Really hard.
“I hate and fear writing,” she said. “Every day, I sit down and say, ‘What fresh hell is this?’”
Patchett chimed in about her long power walks — all a way to put off having to write. Laughter filled the room. They must not be writers, I thought.
Quindlen also shared some of her tricks of the trade.
“I never knock off at the end of a chapter, or the end of a paragraph or even the end of a sentence,” she said. Why? Well, she always figures she can finish at least one decent sentence the next time.
When she reads what she’s written the next day, she said, she always thinks, “This is not what I meant. This is not what I need. This is not very good. Then I keep going.”
She makes a point of taking paper galleys with her editor’s changes on them when she speaks to high school and college writing classes. She wants young writers to understand how much editing and rewriting getting published takes, so they don’t get discouraged.
But the most authentic moment, at least for me, was when a young woman stood up in the back and timidly shared that she had an idea for a novel. “Do you have any advice about writing a novel?” she asked.
“Butt in seat,” Quindlen said. “Butt in seat.”
Sit down and write. There’s really no other way.
As an extra treat, here are a few of Anna Quindlen’s book recommendations, March 2024.
Safe and Sound, by Laura McHugh
The Forsyte Saga, by John Galsworthy
The Cazalet Chronicles, by Elizabeth Jane Howard
Away, Amy Bloom
The Patron Saint of Liars, Ann Patchett
Let me know if you read any of them and what you think. Also: Which of Anna’s books is your favorite?
Adding these to my list!
Now I can't wait to read my first Quindlen! Thanks for sharing <3