Author Birthday – 19 October – Tracy Chevalier

Happy Birthday, Tracy Chevalier, born on 19 October 1962.

Tracy Chevalier Quotes

1. Much of the joy of writing historical novels comes from doing the research: holed up at the library reading about 19th-century techniques for grafting apple trees, or medieval plant symbolism, or the journals of gold rush miners.
2. Research is what gives me ideas, what helps me make up characters and plots.
3. Research is easy. It’s sitting down to write that’s hard. It’s hard partly because it’s often dull. The most productive writing happens when I have a boring life and a clear run of days – nothing in the diary, no trips or meetings or coffees with friends.
4. It takes me hours of circling each day to finally ‘land’ on the writing.
5. Where I’m writing this, in fact – is the British Library. I lock my phone away, I bring my notebook or manuscript, and sit in the concentrated silence of the reading rooms there, the others around me focused, intent. There is nothing so galvanising as being around other people already in the zone.
6. I write one sentence, then the next, then the next. Paper and pen first (pencil in the British Library) – computer is for later. Surprisingly quickly, I accumulate 1,000 words, the empty pages that terrify me every day are filled and I’m done – for that day.
7. I am performing a magic trick that still surprises me. I am in this world, at my desk or kitchen table, but I am simultaneously holding in my head another world full of people I have never physically met but know to their core. That world and those people pour out through my pen: rough – often very rough – but insistent.
8. My first four novels were mainly told in first person, whereas my more recent novels have been in third person. I found first person much easier to pull off, as you can characterize someone with their voice and what they choose to see or not see. I always thought writing in third person is much harder, for the more ‘mature’ writer, as you have three things to cope with: the characters, the narrator, and yourself the author.
9. I also learned it’s important that once you start writing, you keep going, writing consistently so that the momentum is maintained. Readers can feel that momentum when they read; conversely, they can also feel if there’s a gap when I’ve stopped writing. So once I start, I keep going till I finish the draft.
10. Then I redraft, and redraft, and again and again until I don’t know what more to do to make the book better. That’s when I hand it to my editors, and they tell me what’s wrong and make suggestions. And then more redrafting starts.

Source for quotes 1-7: The Guardian and 8-10: A Writer Of History

Tracy Chevalier is an American-British novelist best known for her historical fiction. She moved to England at the age of 22 and worked as a reference book editor before earning an MA in Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia in 1994. She is the New York Times bestselling author of 11 novels, including Girl with a Pearl Earring. The novel has been translated into 45 languages and adapted into an Oscar-nominated film, a play, and an opera. Chevalier researches her novels in depth, as they are often set in different times and places. She also likes to try the activities her characters enjoy. While writing Girl with a Pearl Earring, she tried painting; for The Last Runaway, she explored quilting; and for A Single Thread, she learnt needlepoint. For her latest novel, The Glassmaker, she worked with glass beads. Chevalier has served as a trustee of the British Library, the Society of Authors, the Royal Literary Fund, and the Dorset Museum & Art Gallery. In 2008, she became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. You can follow her on Instagram.

Source for photograph: Author’s website

by Amanda Patterson
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