Wednesday, September 27, 2006

No time for dillydallying - a writer's primer

"How can Ayelet Waldman be so calm?" asks Andrea Hoag of Seattle Post-Intelligerncer of this author and mother of four whom she meets on a book tour in support of her seventh Mommy Track mystery, Bye-Bye, Black Sheep (Berkley Prime Crime). Her husband is Pulitzer Prize-winning author, Michael Chabon.

"We both stick to very strict schedules," she tells Andrea Hoag "I drop the kids off, and then I work. Every weekday. I have no time for dillydallying; I can't wait for the muse to show up. I write 1,000 to 1,500 words every day, and I don't believe in writer's block. You can always write something, even if it's bad."

"Fame is so fleeting. I was a public persona for 11 minutes, then I went back to being a woman driving too many kids in a too dirty minivan."

"I hate reading a book that has details sort of casually wrong. I make mistakes all the time, many of them stupid, but I do try to get things right," she insisted.

Ayelet Wadman is the author of five novels about apart-time sleuth who is also a full-time mother of three. The author never attended a formal writing program.

She worries, "... about people going to writing programs in lieu of reading. Far too many young writers I know say they don't read. Beyond the obvious problem with that, who do they imagine will buy their books if they themselves don't read?"

Another quote, "... people like to read about misery. What's interesting about a happy marriage?"

Read the whole story here.