logo

Say thanks by supporting us!

Our website is made possible by displaying online advertisement to our visitors. Please consider supporting to us by disabling your ad blocker.

Processing...

Writing is a solitary occupation; we don't really have any colleagues.

- Chris Pavone
logo
Author:
Chris Pavone
Tags:
Colleagues
Writing
Solitary
Related Quote
Show all

I try to construct each of my novels around one central theme - core tensions shared by the characters.

If you can't figure out how to make the beginning of your book compelling, you're probably not writing a compelling book.

Eventually, I realised that I wanted to try to create something myself, and that's what writing novels is. Not because I wanted to put myself in front of the world, but because I wanted to create something that would go out into the world.

As an unpublished, nonprofessional writer working on my first novel, I nevertheless had access to extremely talented people who would help make my manuscript better, people who've made careers out of providing careful, constructive criticism to writers. I'm tremendously grateful to them.

There's always something at least a little smug about self-reference - magazine articles about idealistic journalists, TV shows about TV actors, ironic films within ironic-er films: all this meta-media populated by thinly disguised characters making oblique inside jokes.

Whatever's good about your book should be good on page 1, or very few editors are going to get to page 2.

Nearly all of us work, a lot: many people spend more waking hours working than doing all other things combined. And nearly all of us spend our lifetimes working for someone other than ourselves.

I'd sometimes go to Paris by myself - it was an easy two-hour train ride - to get a break from the everyday grind, to walk around a big city, ride a subway, feel the energy of a world capital.

Having 'The Expats' not be 'wholesale-y' rejected by the world made it possible for me to write the second book and have a publisher buy it before it was entirely written. And it made it easier for me and my publisher to get 'The Accident' out into the world without trying to convince people to pay attention to it the way you do for a first novel.

Showcase
Show all

Writing is a solitary occupation; we don't really have any colleagues.

Writing is a solitary occupation; we don't really have any colleagues.

Writing is a solitary occupation; we don't really have any colleagues.

Writing is a solitary occupation; we don't really have any colleagues.

Writing is a solitary occupation; we don't really have any colleagues.

Writing is a solitary occupation; we don't really have any colleagues.

Writing is a solitary occupation; we don't really have any colleagues.

Writing is a solitary occupation; we don't really have any colleagues.

Writing is a solitary occupation; we don't really have any colleagues.

Writing is a solitary occupation; we don't really have any colleagues.

Writing is a solitary occupation; we don't really have any colleagues.

Writing is a solitary occupation; we don't really have any colleagues.

Writing is a solitary occupation; we don't really have any colleagues.

Writing is a solitary occupation; we don't really have any colleagues.

Writing is a solitary occupation; we don't really have any colleagues.