Ann Patchett has revealed that her “only dream” was to be able to pay her bills with writing. The 62-year-old American author, who has published 10 novels including the Pulitzer and Women’s Prize for Fiction nominated The Dutch House, shared her lifelong goal on BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs with host Lauren Laverne.
“My greatest dream in life was to be able to pay my bills with writing. That’s the only dream I ever had,” she said. “I didn’t want to be rich or famous or wanted to buy a house. I just thought that one day I wanted to be able to have a tiny apartment that was mine and that I could pay for by writing. Mostly I made my living as a writer and that’s all I wanted and I never revised that, ever.”
On the idea that everyone has a book in them
Patchett said she does not believe that every person has a book idea within them. “Oh I don’t believe that, any more than I believe any more that I believe that everyone has one mathematical proof in them, or one perfectly prepared pot roast. I mean, if somebody said to you that everybody has one perfect symphony in them, you would say that is ridiculous,” she said. “But there is something about the notion that because we can all write and tell stories, we all have a book in us. We all have something in us, but it’s not necessarily a book.”
The author also detailed spending seven months writing her debut novel The Patron Saint Of Liars, released in 1992. “I had been thinking about the story for a long time – about a year – and I started writing and I was about three days in when I thought: ‘This is the worst idea for a novel and I need to come up with a completely different idea,’” she said.
Advice that changed her writing journey
After calling a friend and fellow writer, Patchett said she was encouraged to push through. Her friend told her: “You are absolutely allowed to come up with a new idea when you are finished writing this novel.” She described this as the “Voice of God. That was the single best advice anyone has ever given me.”
Patchett called finishing the book the “proudest and most meaningful moment” of her life. “It was the fulfilment of a contract I had made myself. I had always wanted to write a novel, and I had done it,” she added. She recalled receiving 30,000 dollars for her novel and wanting to fix her car’s air conditioning, which had been out for five years. “I went to get it fixed, and it was out of coolant and cost 17 dollars. I cried. To think I’d spent five years in a boiling hot car with no air conditioning,” she said.
Awards and career highlights
In the interview, Patchett called being awarded the National Humanities Medal by then-US president Joe Biden the “dearest moment”. “When I was there standing on the stage and he put a medal around my neck and was holding my hand and he said: ‘Good work kiddo’ and I thought I was going to burst into tears. It was the dearest moment of my life,” she said.
Patchett spent nearly a decade writing for Seventeen magazine, with work later published in The New Yorker, Elle, GQ and Vogue. Her debut novel was turned into a television movie six years after publication. She has written 10 novels, four works of nonfiction, and three children’s picture books. Her best-known novels include Taft, The Magician’s Assistant, Bel Canto, Commonwealth, The Dutch House and Whistler, the latter released this year. She has won the Pen/Faulkner Award and the Women’s Prize for Fiction, and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for The Dutch House. Patchett won the Orange Prize for Fiction for Bel Canto in 2002, and her work has been translated into more than 30 languages. Desert Island Discs can be heard on BBC Radio 4 and Sounds from 10am on Sunday.
