A Quote by Sara Paretsky

Around the time I turned 30, I wanted to publish a novel. — © Sara Paretsky
Around the time I turned 30, I wanted to publish a novel.
Around the time I turned 30, I wanted to publish a novel
I worked in the book publishing business for nearly two decades before I turned my attention to writing, first with a couple ghostwriting projects, plus a crappy novel that absolutely no one wanted to publish. Then I moved to Luxembourg for my wife's job and found the inspiration for 'The Expats.'
Actually, I think that turning 29 was more difficult, because once I turned 29, I anticipated 30 for the whole year, so by the time 30 came around it really wasn't that bad.
I think it was around the time of doing those shorts. [Producer] Christine Vachon, I had a meeting with her, and she mentioned the short, this AOL short, and asked if I wanted to do one. And then the next step was the "30 for 30," and again that boosted my confidence enough to decide I'm going to do a feature narrative. And I was supported by my agency, and [producer] Jane Rosenthal has been an exceptional friend, and she produced "All We Had," she encouraged me to do the "30 for 30."
I was talking to my dad, who's a neurosurgeon. He had this academic paper he wanted to publish. Journals take about 18 months to publish a paper, and he just wanted to get things up there.
Am I worried people will say I'm repeating myself? Sure. One thought I had was to publish it as a novel but eventually I just decided to do what I wanted to do.
An important factor to note is that it's rare for anyone to sell a first novel written before they turned 30-35; long-format fiction tends to require a bunch of experience of human life that takes time to acquire. So your average mid-career novelist is in their forties to fifties!
Music has always been something I wanted to do. I think just the idea of performing and entertaining and being in the studio is really what I wanted to know how that felt. I started to get into it around the same time I got into acting, but it turned into a side project because my movies were taking up most of my time.
I've wanted to be with you since the first time you turned me down. I've just been waiting for you to come around.
I am pretty sick with myself! It seemed a pretty good idea at the time. Around the time I turned 30, I started to feel very creative, more creative than I had been before which is good and I like that.
If I'm writing a novel, I'll probably get up in the morning, do email, perhaps blog, deal with emergencies, and then be off novel-writing around 1.00pm and stop around 6.00pm. And I'll be writing in longhand, a safe distance from my computer. If I'm not writing a novel, there is no schedule, and scripts and introductions and whatnot can find themselves being written at any time and on anything.
I didn't really want to be an actor when I was growing up - I wanted to be whatever I was reading about or seeing at the time. When I read The Firm I wanted to be a lawyer; when I saw Top Gun, I wanted to be a fighter pilot. So that's why acting probably turned out to be a good thing for me because I get to be people for five minutes or 90 minutes. I'd be curious to see if I had the attention span to be like those guys on 30 Rock and play the same character season after season.
When you're 22 or 23, you think the world revolves around you, and I felt that way for a long time. But I just turned 30, and I love it! You realize, 'Whoa, baby, you ain't all that.' And you're not! You're just a woman out there doing something she loves.
I thought that I would have a huge literary novel coming out when I was, like, 29. I quit my banking job, and I was halfway through my second novel - and I will never publish it, because it's very mediocre.
As an editor, I read Charlotte Rogan's amazing debut novel, 'The Lifeboat,' when it was still in manuscript. I read it in one night, and I really wanted my company to publish it, but we lost it to another house. It's such a wonderful combination of beautiful writing and suspenseful storytelling.
Send it to someone who can publish it. And if they won't publish it, send it to someone else who can publish it! And keep sending it! Of course, if no one will publish it, at that point you might want to think about doing something other than writing.
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