- You decide who gets to fall in love.' In this Byliner Original, 'The Getaway Car' is a delightful autobiography-cum-user's guide that appeals to both aspiring writers and anyone who loves a great story.ABOUT THE AUTHORAnn Patchett is the author of eight books, including 'Bel Canto,' which won the PEN/Faulkner Award, England's Orange Prize, and the Book Sense Book of the Year and has been.
- In this Byliner Original, “The Getaway Car” is a delightful autobiography-cum-user’s guide that appeals to both aspiring writers and anyone who loves a great story. ABOUT THE AUTHOR Ann Patchett is the author of eight books, including “Bel Canto,” which won the PEN/Faulkner Award, England’s Orange Prize, and the Book Sense Book of the Year and has been translated into more than thirty languages.
The Getaway Car: A Practical Memoir About Writing and Life. 4.17 Rating details 1,903 ratings 255 reviews. “The journey from the head to the hand is. The Getaway Car: A Practical Memoir About Writing and Life by Ann Patchett. 1,882 ratings, 4.16 average rating, 251 reviews. The Getaway Car Quotes Showing 1-30 of 35. “Art stands on the shoulders of craft, which means that to get to the art, you must master the craft. If you want to write, practice writing.”.
This essay appearsin her collection This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage. Over theyears, she was asked certain questions about her writing process repeatedly,and this essay is her well-honed answer.
The entirecollection is worth reading. Some of the essays are interesting and some arebeautiful; “The Getaway Car” is the most immediately relevant to me.(But the pieces about her dog and her grandmother are moving and memorable.)
Although I canimagine how easily she might have turned this work into a full-length book, Iappreciate her concise and deliberate approach. This is a piece i plan toreread periodically, and its length makes that intention more realistic.
I appreciate itssuccinct reminders about things i already know. “Habits stick, both thegood ones and the bad.” It has taken a lot of work to undo some habitswhich have interfered with my writing. And even though I’m more cautious now,having fallen into traps I have laid in the past many times, and now betterequipped to recognise risks and pitfalls, I can always use reminding.
“This book Ihave not yet written one word of is a thing of indescribable beauty,unpredictable in its patterns, piercing in its color, so wild and loyal in itsnature that my love for this book, and my faith in it as I track its lazyflight, is the single perfect joy in my life. It is the greatest novel in thehistory of literature, and I have thought it up, and all I have to do is put itdown on paper and then everyone can see this beauty that I see.”
This pure affectionfor a work not-yet-begun is immediately recognisable. Sometimes it isparalysing. I have left drafts sitting, unouched, for years, because the gapbetween the imagined and the written was vast.
Ann Patchett, too,has struggled with the gap between the writer she wanted to be and the writershe grew into being. She has worked to adjust the balance.
“When Ithought about the writer I had wanted to be when I was a child, the one who wasnoble and hungry and lived for art, that person was not shallow. I would goback to my better, deeper, self.”
She writes aboutthe importance of fallow periods, about painful periods of growth.
“I am a compostheap, and everything I interact with, every experience I’ve had gets shoveledonto the heap where it eventually mulches down, is digested and excreted byworms, and rots. It’s from the rich, dark humus, the combination of what youencountered, what you know and what you’ve forgotten, that ideas start togrow.”
She considersthe ways in which we work that do not revolve around a printed page.
“There may beno tangible evidence of the work I do in my head, but I’ve done itnevertheless.”
Ultimately, however,she is an experienced writer. “Somewhere in all my years of practice, Idon’t know where exactly, I arrived at the art.”
Nonetheless, thispiece offers useful advice for beginning writers too.
About the need fordedication and work. “If I wanted a better life for myself I was going tohave to write it.”
About the need tounderstand one’s audience and market. “Magazines really do havepersonalities, and you should be able to figure out if your story might fitin.”
And about ambitionand passion. “One more thing to think about when putting a novel together:make it hard. Set your sights on something that you aren’t quite capable ofdoing, whether artistically, emotionally, or intellectually. You can also gofor broke and take on all three.”
The piece which Iintended to find at the core of this reading, the one about her marriage, wasconsidered and articulate. And, of course, ironic. For even if it was happy(and that seems questionable in this accounting), it is now over.
In the end, I wasleft feeling that her true marriage is to words.
Great stuff for writers.
The Getaway Car Ann Patchett Essay
Patchett, Ann. “The Getaway Car” in This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage (HarperCollins, 2011)