Words of Advice from Ann Patchett

I fell in love with Ann Patchett's writing when I read her amazing, PEN/Faulkner Award-winning novel Bel Canto. She is the author of many other novels including Run, The Patron Saint of Liars, and most recently State of Wonder.

I was thrilled to read an interview with her in a recent email newsletter from the literary magazine One Story. Here are some snippets of advice from Ann that I think all writers can hold dear:

• Show kindness whenever possible. Show it to the people in front of you, the people coming up behind you, and the people with whom you are running neck and neck. It will vastly improve the quality of your own life, the lives of others, and the state of the world.

• Buy your books at independent bookstores and tell your friends to do the same because if we don’t take the lead, no one else will. 

• [My mentor] Allan Gurganus taught me how to write, which was extremely helpful. I tried to follow his example of hard work, though never came close to matching his sense of elegance and style. He is a very generous soul. I didn’t match him there either but he taught me a great deal.

• My favorite piece of Gurganus advice was that I must always steer the ship of my own career and not assume anyone else was looking after things as I would. If my name was on the book then I must agree with every aspect of it. This has been hugely important to me.

Yann Martel on "Combating Indifference" Through the Arts

There is wonderful interview in Writer's Digest with Yann Martel, author of the Booker Prize-winning novel Life of Pi and most recently Beatrice and Virgil. One of the final questions the interviewer asked was, "Through your actions as well as the themes of your stories, it's clearly very important to you to combat indifference. Can you explain why?"

Here is Martel's beautiful response:


I think indifference in itself is not a good thing, in any field really, but especially in the arts. Art is the greatest tool for thinking about your life, for examining your life. It's a whole-person thing. And it permeates our life. People who say they don't care about the arts, it's not true. The way you dress, the way you eat, the language you speak, these are all cultural emanations. To be indifferent to the arts, to never read a book, never see a play, never read a poem, never see a movie that isn't a conventional Hollywood blockbuster, all that basically means you're shutting down your appreciation of the human experience.


Art is partly to entertain, but partly also to upset. You need those two. That's vital to keep our society alive. As a writer I'm just part of that, and I think every writer does the same. I think every writer, in one way or another, is trying to just push people a little bit and say, "Hey, have you thought about this, or have you realized this, or have you felt this?"


You can read the entire interview in the July/August 2010
issue of Writer's Digest.

Yann Martel's books are available in major bookstores everywhere.