A Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
I write from real life. I am an unrepentant eavesdropper and a collector of stories. I record bits of overheard dialogue.
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My biggest bits of advice are, write as much as you can, finish what you start, get a thick skin, don't take crap from anyone, but also live your life and have fun. The stereotype of a writer holed up alone all day is really unhelpful. You can't write real people and real emotion if you don't let yourself experience them.
With dialogue, people say a lot of things they don't mean. I like dialogue when it's used in a way when the body language says the complete opposite. But I love great dialogue... I think expositional dialogue is quite crass and not like real life.
Sometimes I am a collector of data, and only a collector, and am likely to be gross and miserly, piling up notes, pleased with merely numerically adding to my stores.
I download, like, forty songs a day, I'm a big music collector and a big record collector.
I have difficulty putting words in peoples' mouths. The best dialogue is very, very thin dialogue; you let people improvise and then basically you record what they've improvised and then write it down.
I write because I am alone and move through the world alone. No one will know what has passed through me... I write because there are stories that people have forgotten to tell, because I am a woman trying to stand up in my life... I write out of hurt and how to make hurt okay; how to make myself strong and come home, and it may be the only real home I'll ever have.
But it's hard for me to pinpoint where all my characters and dialogue come from - imagination or real life. My memoir, of course, was all about my past, and many of the short stories cleave very closely to my life, but the more stories I wrote in the collection, the more that seemed to be invented, but who knows... I think I'm writing about a young woman with acne who shoplifts, but I'm really writing about myself.
I write because I have an innate need to. I write because I can't do normal work. I write because I want to read books like the ones I write. I write because I am angry at everyone. I write because I love sitting in a room all day writing. I write because I can partake of real life only by changing it.
I am a collector of dolls and doll parts. I'm rarely creeped out by most dolls, either in real life or in literature, but I know many people who are.
It's not enough simply to record the way people actually talk. The dialogue must be concentrated, shaped, dramatically moving, in a way that real-life conversation seldom is.
It wasn't like we cut songs out; we cut bits of songs, bits of action or bits of whatever. So we would have to go back in get a full orchestra re-orchestrate it, re-score it, re-record it. It's a massive job. But, if there's a demand we can always discuss it.
I might not write fiction in the literary sense. But I write very well. My characters are good. My dialogue is good. And my stories are really involving.
I'm a collector. I was born a collector. I came out of the womb a collector. I can trace it back to childhood - collecting used keys.
I think when you're 17 and you're angry, you're angry about very short-term things. And there's nothing wrong about writing that record. It's a very real record to write; it's the realest record I could write when I was 17. The problem is, when you're 28, it's not the same thing; it can be a put-on.
I am an incorrigible eavesdropper, so I am very much influenced by what I hear.
If you want to write what the world is about, you have to write details...real life is in the dishes. Real life is pushing strollers up the street, folding T-shirts, the alarm clock going off early and you dropping into bed exhausted every night. That's real life.
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