'Write because you love it'

 

“I think people become consumed with selling a book when they need to be consumed with writing it.    Write because you love the art and the discipline, not because you're looking to sell something.” – Ann Patchett

A multi-award winner for such books as Bel Canto and The Magician's Assistant, she won both the PEN/Faulkner Award and The Orange Prize, one of Great Britain’s most prestigious writing awards given annually to a female author of any nationality (she is American).

The daughter of novelist Jeanne Ray and longtime L.A. police officer Frank Patchett, she was born on this date in 1963 and was first published 

in the prestigious Paris Review when she was just 20 years 

old.  After working for Seventeen magazine for 9 years, she began her creative writing career with the novel  The Patron Saint of Liars, which had modest sales but hit it big as a movie adaptation.

Also the editor of a short story collection (for other aspiring writers), she opened her own bookstore in her hometown of Nashville, Tenn., when other stores were closing down and leaving few outlets for writers’ work.  In 2012 she was named by Time magazine as one of the "100 Most Influential People in the World."  

 

In this season of giving, Patchett advocates the gift of a book.  “No matter how much we love a book,” she said, “the experience of reading it isn't complete until we can give it to someone who will love it as much as we do”