Notice: ob_end_flush(): Failed to delete and flush buffer. No buffer to delete or flush in /home1/ntptuqmy/public_html/quotes/includes/header_html.php on line 6 Chelsea Cain Quotes - IQDb - Internet Quotes Database
I love to write just about more than anything, but there are times I have to force myself to sit down and work. I want to play with my daughter or watch a movie with my husband or go outside on the nicest day of the year. But if writing is going to be your job, you have to treat it like a job.
I'd lived in Portland on and off for a decade before I'd even heard of Vanport. It was this town of 20,000 people that washed away from north Portland.
I used to write travel essays, and I was struck by how the fact of writing about a place would change my relationship with it. I would make completely different choices, do things I wouldn't have normally, because I had to fill this narrative shape.
I'm usually too shy to write on planes because I assume that everyone on board is as nosy as I am and will look over my shoulder and read what I'm writing.
People come to Portland, many of them for the quality of life. They love the physical space here. And yet every year, people climbing the mountain get killed by avalanches.
People read stuff over your shoulder when you're in public, and when you write the kind of stuff I do, and people read it over your shoulder, it makes you a little self-conscious.
Somehow, having an office that I had to go to made me want to work from home, which is easier to do if you don't have a boss waiting for you at the office, even a very blue office.
When I say that I went to grad school in Iowa City, people often assume that I went to the famed writers' workshop MFA program at the University of Iowa. I didn't. I got a master's in journalism.
I've written books for awhile, but always on a pretty small scale and always pretty self-indulgent. I chose projects that I thought would be really fun to work on and found friends to work on them with me, and it was all about the process.
I think of it as the lasagna approach to writing because I'm always adding layers. I'll sometimes do it layer by layer, with dialogue, attribution, action, objects in the scene, setting... It can be sometimes that delineated.
I like signing books for a living; I do. But you have no idea the panic that sets in. I am not a very good speller. Put me in a stresser situation, and I lose all capacity to recall how to spell the most simple names.
I know that there's a cultural expectation that women be nurturing, delicate flowers. And I am. So delicate. But that doesn't mean I can't write a good, gory murder scene.
I have traveled a fair amount, and I have visited some great cities. I love architecture and museums and castles and ruins and central markets and even double-decker bus tours. But, I am a sucker for a tropical beach.
I am a control freak, but not when I travel. For some reason when I travel, I am able to surrender more than in my real life. I am able to let go. I think it's why I like it so much.
Every year, I give my dad an advance copy of my latest book. He reads it over the next several nights and says something incredibly supportive. Then he clears his throat nervously and changes the subject.
Don't let your characters tell you what to do. They can be pushy. Some writers say that they create characters and then just sort of follow them around through the narrative. I think that these writers are out of their minds.
