Literary Birthday – 14 August – Michelle Huneven

Happy Birthday, Michelle Huneven, born on 14 August 1953.

Michelle Huneven Quotes

1. Reviewing restaurants was, in fact, the perfect job for a struggling novelist: It kept me fed, it got me dressed and out of the house, and it insured I had a social life. And it didn’t steal too much psychic juice from my fiction writing.
2. The food writer works with a short deck: of all the senses, taste has the fewest descriptors.
3. The trouble with writing is that it’s awfully like having baby after baby all by yourself.
4. Writing is difficult. Writing is difficult in the beginning, difficult in the middle, and difficult at the end. And then, when you’ve finished, there is a whole new raft of difficulties having to do with publication.
5. I said, ‘I write about people who get into trouble and then get themselves out of trouble.’ Of course, that describes a great many books, but it strikes me that this also describes my writing process.
6. The trouble with writing says the historian who lives next door to me, is that no matter how many times you do it, you start out every time with the sick sense that you don’t know what you’re doing.
7. The trouble with writing says a novelist friend, is that it never gets any easier. If anything, it gets harder. And if it starts to get easier, you’re probably slacking off or repeating yourself.
8. Writing is a solitary occupation requiring intense concentration, large blocks of time, and all of one’s mental capacities. The trouble is, there are frequent interruptions and constant distractions.
9. Writing requires an investment of time and thought and the self. In making this investment, we can’t help but kick up a few hopes concerning the returns this investment might give us.
10. When it’s going well, there is little to match it. Creation is a mighty power–you might even call it divine.

Source for quotes 1-2: Lithub and quotes 3-10: The Millions

Michelle Huneven is an American novelist and journalist. For many years her ‘day job’ was reviewing restaurants and writing about food for the Los Angeles Times, the LA Weekly and other publications. She has written six novels: Round Rock, Jamesland, Blame, Off Course, Search, and Bug Hollow. Her awards include a Whiting Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a James Beard Award, and a Literature Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She received her master’s in fine arts from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Michelle teaches creative writing at UCLA.

Source for photograph: Napa Valley

by Amanda Patterson
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