Just 'telling them a story'

“I just want to be told a story, and I want to believe I'm living that story, and I don't give a thought to influences or method or any other writerly concerns.”  – Anne Tyler

  

Born on this date in 1942, Minneapolis-based author Anne Tyler is best known for her novels Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant, The Accidental Tourist, and Breathing Lessons, all finalists for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction with Breathing Lessons winning the award.   She is well known in the cinematic world with 7 of her 20 novels being made into movies.

Also a writer of dozens of short stories, Tyler has earned the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize, the Ambassador Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and The Sunday Times’ Award for Literary Excellence (in 2012).       

                              Noted for her attention to detail and character development, Tyler primarily focuses her writing on everyday Americans and the ordinary details of their lives, putting us – her readers – deep into those lives and the trials and tribulations we all face.   “I don’t think of my work in terms of themes," she said.   "I’m just trying to tell a story.”

Her advise to new writers is simple:  “I would advise any beginning writer to write the first drafts as if no one else will ever read them - without a thought about publication - and only in the last draft to consider how the work will look from the outside.”

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