The craft of storytelling with Ann Patchett

Summary

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Podcast Summary: ReThinking with Adam Grant

Episode: The Craft of Storytelling with Ann Patchett

Date: July 7, 2026
Host: Adam Grant
Guest: Ann Patchett

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Overview

In this deeply insightful episode, Adam Grant sits down with acclaimed novelist and bookstore owner Ann Patchett to explore the art and discipline of storytelling. Together, they discuss the intersection of creativity and practice, the influence of personal history, the differences between fiction and nonfiction writing, and the importance of independent bookstores. Ann's reflections offer both pragmatic advice and heartfelt wisdom for writers and readers alike.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Patchett’s Relationship with Books and Bookstores

• [01:08] Ann introduces her belief in the power of reading:

  “Every book is a gateway drug. If you can get people to read and you get them comfortable in a bookstore, then they're going to read other books. If you read nothing, you're always going to read nothing.” ([01:08], Ann Patchett)

• [02:09] On founding Parnassus Books in Nashville:

  "For me, it felt like a civic duty. I don't want to live in a city that doesn't have a bookstore. Therefore, I guess I am the person who is going to open a bookstore." ([02:09], Ann Patchett)

2. Family Influence and Upbringing

• [03:08] Ann describes her LAPD father and being insulated from the darker aspects of his work:

  “He was involved in some high-profile cases... but those cases didn’t define his career. I was a kid and those were names, and that’s what my father did.” ([03:08], Ann Patchett)

• Moved to Tennessee with her mother post-divorce; grew up surrounded by civil servants, shaping a grounded worldview.

3. Early Love of Stories and Becoming a Writer

• [06:36] On lifelong passion:

  "If you were interviewing me when I was 7, I would say, I want to be a writer. And I don't know what that's about, but it's always been where I've landed." ([06:36], Ann Patchett)

• [07:01] Turbulence in childhood led her to storytelling before reading:

  "I couldn't read or write with any fluency, but I could tell a story." ([07:01], Ann Patchett)

4. The Discipline and Practice of Writing

• [08:31] Hard work over talent:

  “The ability to work. The ability to keep showing up. When you have sat in a chair all day long and come up with nothing, to be willing to go back and do it the next day and the next day and the next day... it's much, much more like learning to play the cello.” ([08:31], Ann Patchett)

• [10:15] Emphasizes revision, feedback, and even discarding drafts for growth:

  "The end game is not publication. The end game is becoming a better writer." ([10:15], Ann Patchett)

• Draws inspiration from Elizabeth Gilbert's idea of writing for oneself, not always for publication ([11:44]).

  "I am writing this for the sake of writing it always." ([11:44], Ann Patchett)

• Writing is sustained by “love” and intrinsic motivation, not external pressures.

5. Process vs. Product in Writing Motivation

• [15:07] On loving the process, not just the end result:

  “If you don't love the craft of formulating sentences... then you probably shouldn't be a writer.” ([15:07], Interviewer)

• Insight from her teaching: students driven to write inherently engage better than those writing solely to process trauma or for external success ([15:28]).

6. Fiction vs. Nonfiction

• Fiction offers “God-like” creative freedom but can be daunting; nonfiction “finds” her through real-life occurrences.
• [20:22] On fiction:

  “To be a fiction writer is to be God. You have to make the people, the trees, the leaves... It's a massive undertaking.” ([20:22], Ann Patchett)

• Real-life events sometimes become launching points for fiction or essays, such as the memorable story of the night table ([20:22]).

7. Gender and Genre in Reading

• Men tend towards nonfiction, women towards fiction but Patchett doesn’t concern herself with changing that:

  "I'm happy that people read anytime somebody is reading. I think it's a bonus." ([25:21], Ann Patchett)

8. Transformation Through Bookstore Ownership

• Owning a bookstore forced her out of her introverted shell and fostered community, unexpectedly making her happier and more creative. ([29:07])

9. The Social Nature of Reading and Bookstores

• [30:01]

  “That solitary endeavor has proven to be a means of connection.” ([30:01], Anne Patchett)

• Describes bookstore and book tour experiences as “tent revivals for reading,” rebutting claims that “reading is dead.” ([30:01])

10. On Randomness and Life Paths

• [33:49] Powerful discussion on the role of randomness in life—how a chance encounter steered her to the perfect college and shaped her whole career.

  “A stranger in Alfred, New York, was the person who told me to go [to Sarah Lawrence]. Couldn't be more random. And yet my entire life was built off of that encounter.” ([34:14], Ann Patchett)

11. On Change and Acceptance

• [37:47] Regarding characters who love each other but can’t be together:

  “But there's a sweetness in just acknowledging that I love you. It can't work, but I see you... and I let you go.” ([37:47], Ann Patchett)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On “write what you know”:

  "If you write what you know, you're writing about your mother all the time." ([41:12], Ann Patchett)

• On writing and curiosity:

  “I write what I'm interested in. The very best part of writing is that it means I get to do research.” ([41:12], Ann Patchett)

• On posture and self-care in writing:

  "There is no one truth for writing except that you have to take care of your body... I have written my last two books on a treadmill desk." ([42:02], Ann Patchett)

• Ideal literary dinner party guests:

  "I would invite my friend Lucy Greely... my friend Dorothea Benton Frank... Grace Paley... We'd talk about how beautiful it was to be alive for the course of the evening." ([43:28], Ann Patchett)

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Practical Takeaways for Writers

• Prioritize practice, revision, and honest self-assessment over innate talent or waiting for inspiration.
• Value the intrinsic pleasure of writing and the process itself.
• Be open to pursuing curiosity and interests, not just personal experience, in writing.
• Care for your body and physical space as an essential part of a sustainable writing life.
• Recognize the role of luck and randomness, but also the importance of agency and willingness to seize opportunities.

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Lightning Round & Thoughtful Reflections

[40:50]

• Worst writing advice: “Write what you know.”
• Best writing advice: "Posture is everything—take care of your body."
• Dream bookstore guests: Close friends and mentors, emphasizing the human connection over literary celebrity.

[44:25]

• A recent rethink: How she changed her entire feeling about book tours by intentionally changing her self-talk, leading her to genuinely enjoy them.

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Handling Growth at Parnassus Books

[46:10] Ann seeks Adam's advice on how to resist pressure to expand her thriving bookstore.

• Adam's advice: Only add new endeavors if willing to subtract something else, to prevent unmanageable growth ([47:48]).
• Ann’s stance: Firmly prefers focusing on a single, excellent store over expansion—even as demand and opportunities soar ([48:56]).

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Concluding Remarks

The episode culminates with Ann and Adam sharing mutual admiration, reflecting on the power of storytelling, the joys of reading, and the value of meaningful work. Ann’s presence, humility, and sharp insights provide both inspiration and practical encouragement for anyone engaged with stories or creative pursuits.

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For those who love books, writing, or simply thoughtful conversation, this episode is an absolute must-listen for its generosity, humor, and wisdom from one of contemporary literature’s most wholehearted voices.

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Key Segments by Timestamp

• [01:08] – The gateway power of books
• [02:09] – Opening Parnassus Books: Bookstores as civic duty
• [08:31] – Writing as a discipline, not a mystery
• [11:44] – Writing for the sake of writing
• [20:22] – Fiction vs. nonfiction: creative constraints
• [25:21] – Genre, gender, and reading habits
• [29:07] – The transformative effect of bookstore ownership
• [30:01] – Reading as community
• [34:14] – The serendipity that shapes lives
• [41:09] – Writing advice (good and bad)
• [44:25] – Rethinking book tours with positive self-talk
• [46:10] – Managing deliberate limitations in business growth

Transcript

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[Anne Patchett]

every book is a gateway drug. If you can get people to read and you get them comfortable in a bookstore, then they're going to read other books. If you read nothing, you're always going to read nothing.

[Adam Grant]

Hey everyone, it's Adam Grant. Welcome back to Rethinking My Podcast with Ted on the Science of what Makes Us Tick. I'm an organizational psychologist and I'm taking you inside the minds of fascinating people to explore new thoughts and new ways of thinking. Patchett is a best selling author and award winning novelist. Along with acclaimed nonfiction works, Anne has written 10 novels including the Dutch House, Tom Lake and Bel Canto. But Anne's relationship with literature goes far beyond the page. In case you haven't seen her passionate videos online advocating for indie bookstores, you should know that she actually owns one in Nashville, Tennessee called Parnassus Books, which she opened with a partner in 2011. Before that, Nashville hardly had any indie bookstores.

[Anne Patchett]

For me, it felt like a civic duty. I don't want to live in a city that doesn't have a bookstore. Therefore, I guess I am the person who is going to open a bookstore.

[Adam Grant]

Ann is a firm believer in the power of stories and she's one of the most powerful storytellers of our time. Her fiction is so emotionally honest that people have been asking if her latest novel, Whistler, is autobiographical. Whistler is a moving book about the enduring love of Two people who've been separated for decades. I ended up reading it about three times slower than I normally read, just to savor each line. I'm always curious about how authors draw inspiration from their own lives, so I wanted to start at the beginning with Anne.

[Interviewer (possibly Ted)]

I have to start by asking you about your upbringing, because not many of us grow up with a father who was a police captain arresting serial killers. And I have to know what that was like and how it shaped who you are.

[Anne Patchett]

Well, my father had just about every job in the lapd. He was involved in some high profile cases, but I don't think those cases defined his career. He was one of the first people to interview Manson before they brought him in. And he also was the guy who picked up Sirhan the night he shot Bobby Kennedy and drove him in. That didn't affect my life, I will say, because I was a kid and those were names, and that's what my father did. But I was very young, and my father wasn't somebody who sat around and talked about murderers either. He would not have been interested in that at all.

[Interviewer (possibly Ted)]

That actually maybe answers the next question I was gonna ask you, which is it's so clear throughout both your work, your writing, and the reputation you have that you see the goodness in people. And I often worry that when kids are raised in an environment where you're just acutely aware of the fact that there are bad people in the world, does that skew your worldview? And it sounds like you were shielded from that.

[Anne Patchett]

Well, my parents got divorced when I was 4 or 5, and my mother moved me and my sister from Los Angeles to Tennessee. So I didn't grow up with my father. I saw my father a week a year, which was great sadness. The two things that have gotten cheaper over the course of my lifetime, plane travel and long distance phone calls, which are now free, but were huge defining deal when I was growing up. So it wasn't like my father was coming home at night with blood on his hands. You know, I didn't live in that world. We loved to go to the police academy when we went out to visit. But I just thought of my father as a very popular guy. Everybody came over to the table to pay their respects. I had an uncle who was a career firefighter in Los Angeles and another uncle who was a Prosecutor in the DA's office. So, you know, we were a very civil servant family.

[Interviewer (possibly Ted)]

Okay, let's talk about your mother. She was a nurse before becoming a novelist, which is also my wife Allison's trajectory.

[Anne Patchett]

My mother was 60. She wanted to retire. She didn't have enough money. And I kept saying, write a book, write a book, write a book. You know, I'll help you. I made her do it because I saw it as the best road to retirement. And she was somebody who used to write and I think wanted to be a writer when she was young. Didn't have the self confidence. But by the time I was a writer and I was, you know, moderately successful, I could really set a course for her and push her through.

[Interviewer (possibly Ted)]

There's something very poetic about that, that she brought you into the world and you were able to bring her into your world.

[Anne Patchett]

Yes, absolutely. And, you know, so much of it is just discipline and having somebody to say, I want to see chapter four by the end of the week. You know, mom, get on it. I'm not taking no for an answer. Okay, now I want to see chapter five. And that's really what she needed. She just needed somebody to keep her on track.

[Interviewer (possibly Ted)]

So when did you know that you wanted to be a writer?

[Anne Patchett]

I never knew that I wanted to be anything else. If you were interviewing me when I was 7, I would say, I want to be a writer. And I don't know what that's about, but it's always been where I've landed.

[Interviewer (possibly Ted)]

If you go back to when you were 7, how much of that was. You loved words, you love books, you love stories. What do you trace it to originally?

[Anne Patchett]

I trace it to the fact that I didn't go to school very often. There was a lot of upheaval in my family. My parents had gotten divorced. We had moved across country. We left in November when I was in first grade. And so I was very nominally going to school with some kids we were staying with. And the idea was we were going to go back to Los Angeles. It was just all very sloppy. We moved a lot. I really didn't learn how to read until I was in the third grade.

[Interviewer (possibly Ted)]

Wow.

[Anne Patchett]

Because we just didn't really go to school regularly. I couldn't read or write with any fluency, but I could tell a story. And that became the thing that got me through at the bottom of the class. But I would probably still be in second grade were it not for the fact that I figured out that telling a story was a good skill set to have, and. And I became very loyal to the skill set.

[Interviewer (possibly Ted)]

What was it as a second grader that made you a good storyteller?

[Anne Patchett]

I wasn't a ham. I was a quiet kid. But I could put together little poems. I Could make rhymes. I had a good sense of language. I had a good ear.

[Interviewer (possibly Ted)]

And now. What do you think are the most crucial skills of storytelling?

[Anne Patchett]

The ability to work. The ability to keep showing up. When you have sat in a chair all day long and come up with nothing, to be willing to go back and do it the next day and the next day and the next day. I feel so far away from talent and muse and creativity and those words that seemed so important when I was young. And now I think it's the people who make it are the people who just keep showing up. It's much, much more like learning to play the cello. You're gonna put in the hours a day of practice. People don't tend to think about writing in terms of practice, because we can all write, we can all tell a story. And so then if we sit down and we can't write, we can't get the story in our head onto the paper. We say we're blocked. We're not blocked. We just need to spend more time practicing.

[Interviewer (possibly Ted)]

What does that practice look like for you? Because when I hear practice, I start to think about the psychology of deliberate practice and deliberate play, where there's a skill development component and you have a cycle of. I do a rep, I get some feedback, I make an adjustment, I repeat, and I'm constantly trying to improve. And I think that's a place where people get stuck writing because it's hard to gauge objectively whether you're getting better. You can gauge whether a story has gotten better, whether a sentence has gotten clearer. But did I learn anything from that?

[Adam Grant]

Have my skills grown?

[Interviewer (possibly Ted)]

I don't know. So I don't really know how to practice, I think, is the feeling many people have. You do. Tell us how.

[Anne Patchett]

Well, the willingness to work on a story, revise it, get a friend to read it, figure out how it can be better, revise it, do it again and again. And then when you get to a place where you think it's great, throw it away and take what you've learned and put it into the next story and work on it and revise it and revise it and throw it away and go again to a new story. The idea that I think so many people have is, I'm gonna work on this story and polish it and polish it. And when I'm finished, I'm gonna send it to the New Yorker, and. And that's the end game. The end game is not publication. The end game is becoming a better writer.

[Interviewer (possibly Ted)]

The idea of writing a whole draft, refining it and then throwing it away to start over, I think is foreign to a lot of people. I think it's smart in two ways, at least. One is, I think it overcomes what in psychology, we would think about as anchoring and escalation of commitment biases, where you get stuck in the way that you'd done it before and you don't adjust enough. And two, it's also a chance then to really experience your growth and progress, so that you can take, as you said, all the learning that came from revising the previous draft and start over

[Adam Grant]

fresh at the same time.

[Interviewer (possibly Ted)]

It's really hard for me to imagine just abandoning all the work that I put in. Does that ever bother you?

[Anne Patchett]

Well, it doesn't happen very often anymore, although it does happen. The ability to be honest with yourself, the ability to see your own work clearly, which, if we're serious about writing, we should have. You can read something, or I can read something of my own, and I know if it's any good or not. And I often write things that are bad, and I marvel in a sense, like, wow, I didn't know that I could be 62 years old and at this point in my career and still write something that bad. But also bedrock to all of it is love. I'm doing this because I love to do it, because it's who I am, because it's how I see the world and experience and figure things out. I can think of a couple of great stories. 1. Years and years ago, my friend Elizabeth Gilbert gave me an essay that she had written, and it was just the best thing I had ever read. It was spectacular. And I said, where are you going to publish this? And she said, no, no, no. I wrote this for myself. This is private, and I'm showing it to you. I'm not showing this to anybody else. I said, no, no, no. This is astonishing. You have to. She said, no, this is a private thing. This is a true, private story, and I'm not going to publish it. But I needed to write it because that's what I do. That was a huge lesson for me. So just going into something and saying, I am writing this for the sake of writing it always. And when I'm finished writing it, then I'll decide where it may or may not go in the world, and that is the place that you have to come at writing from. I do this because I love it. I play the cello. Not because I'm going to be Yo Yo Ma in Carnegie hall, but because I can't imagine a whole day without playing the cello.

[Interviewer (possibly Ted)]

And that's how you feel about writing today?

[Anne Patchett]

That's how I feel, yeah. I mean, heaven knows I can go for long periods of time without writing. Although I think about writing all the time. And that's for me, a very similar state. I fall asleep every night thinking about a novel, a story, an idea in my head. The story I tell myself. What's that Joan Didion quote? We tell ourselves stories in order to live. And that is definitely true for me. So, yes, but also it's luck and privilege. And if somebody said, you know what? It's over, you're never going to write another book, I would say, I've had such a great run and I've been so lucky I wouldn't die. It's not air, but it's great.

[Interviewer (possibly Ted)]

That seems like a healthy attitude toward it. I'm reminded of some research suggesting that for people to stay motivated writing, they have to be as interested in the process as they are in the content.

[Anne Patchett]

Absolutely.

[Interviewer (possibly Ted)]

And I think that's what a lot of people miss about writing is you can be fascinated by the topic, but if you don't love the craft of formulating sentences and shaping paragraphs and trying to make ideas and stories and characters come to life, then you probably shouldn't be a writer.

[Anne Patchett]

So years and years, decades ago, I used to teach in a summer program at the Fine Arts Work center in Provincetown. And I would teach with my friend Lucy Greeley. And she taught nonfiction and I taught fiction, and we shared a little apartment together. And at night we would look at the homework that came in. And my students were so much better than her students. And I said, why is this? Why are my students better? She said, because your students want to write. My students have had something horrible happen to them, and they want to figure out a way how to sell it. They're not primarily interested in writing at all. But boy, a lot of people don't understand that. They want to be a writer, but they don't want to write.

[Interviewer (possibly Ted)]

Yeah, it's really unfortunate, I think, you know, it makes me think that we should. We should be careful not to define ourselves by nouns and make sure that the verb of the activity actually resonates with us and is something we would want to do, not just be.

[Anne Patchett]

Yes, exactly. Well said.

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[Interviewer (possibly Ted)]

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[Interviewer (possibly Ted)]

So I'm really curious about your Experiences with fiction versus nonfiction. As a nonfiction writer, there are moments when I say to my wife, who represents more of the fiction side of our house, it would be really nice one day to wake up in the morning and be able to invent a story. Because, you know, oftentimes I'm trying to unpack an idea or explain a study, and I know the narrative arc that I'm looking for for the story that I want to illustrate it, and I can't quite find it, and I have to play journalist for a bunch of weeks, and it just feels like a big diversion. Like, it would be so fun to just be able to have total freedom. And I'm so curious, because you do both, about whether you feel that too, and how you would compare and contrast the joys of fiction writing versus non fiction writing.

[Anne Patchett]

What does your wife say?

[Interviewer (possibly Ted)]

Allison said, yes, it's great to have freedom, and it's also terrible to have freedom because you could take the story anywhere. And she said, at least you have constraints.

[Anne Patchett]

I agree with Allison. So when I am a fiction writer, and I am first and foremost a fiction writer, to be a fiction writer is to be God. You have to make the people, the trees, the leaves. You decide when the day starts, when the day stops, who lives, who dies, who falls in love, who goes on the hero's journey, all of it. And it's a massive undertaking. When I write nonfiction, I don't go looking for nonfiction. Nonfiction finds me. Sometimes something happens, and I just think, wow, you know, the universe has just handed me a perfect essay. Several years ago, on my birthday, PHONE rings, rings, rings. Normally, I don't just pick up the phone without checking caller id, but it was my birthday, and I picked up the phone, and it was a guy whose grandmother had bought a night table in an antique mall. And it turns out that this night table had been my night table in high school, and a bunch of my papers from high school had fallen down the back of the drawers. Poems, photographs of my friends, notes, and an award. This is why the guy tracked me down. It was like an award that I had won from Rotary about an essay I had written on the Pledge of Allegiance. And I'm thinking, this is just like someone is saying, okay, here you go, here's an essay. And where does the essay begin? It begins when the phone starts ringing. Where does the essay stop? It stops when this guy comes to my bookstore with his wife and his baby, and he brings me these papers. And in the middle, I'm thinking about the journey of this piece of furniture and how things can come back to you. That it sounds like a piece of fiction, but it's a completely shaped essay about our relationship to our past and to things. And how what means so much to one person means nothing to another person was a great essay.

[Interviewer (possibly Ted)]

And I imagine, though, you have experiences in fiction that are like that where something happens in your life and it becomes a jumping off point for a story, or you meet somebody and you think, you know what, I could base a character on them.

[Anne Patchett]

Yes, that's true. It doesn't happen as often. I'm kind of clawing around in the dark or squinting. That's what putting a novel together always feels like to me. Squinting, really. Whistler was very different because that was a case in which a friend of mine died. Jim Fox died on his 85th birthday. And I was writing a piece for the New Yorker about a glowworm cave in New Zealand, and there was a little piece in that essay about Jim's death. And I thought, oh, wow, I can really write Jim. And I thought, what if I wrote a novel in which I took all of the love that Jim had for me and all of the love I had for Jim and I made up a story and I put the real love onto made up people in a made up story.

[Capital One Bank Advertiser]

And.

[Anne Patchett]

And it was a very easy and joyful book to write because I had such a sensation of being with my friend.

[Interviewer (possibly Ted)]

Oh, well, you did it beautifully.

[Anne Patchett]

Thank you.

[Interviewer (possibly Ted)]

I could feel the love in the book and I actually read it about half as quickly as I would normally read a book of similar length because I didn't want to miss a sentence.

[Anne Patchett]

Thank you. That's a lovely thing to say.

[Interviewer (possibly Ted)]

No, thank you. It was a delightful experience. And it's not my typical genre as somebody who normally turns to fiction for sci fi, thriller, mystery. And I enjoyed it, I think, all the more because of it.

[Anne Patchett]

That's really fascinating. I was doing an interview recently and the topic of conversation is how do you get men to read literary fiction? And somebody was saying, oh, literary fiction, it's really been taken over by women. And I was like, well, you know, it's. It's not like the writing's been taken over. It's that more women read literary fiction and more men read nonfiction. I own this bookstore and the nonfiction, when you walk in the door is to the right and the fiction is to the left. And it's not 100% true, but the men tend to go to the right and the women tend to go to the left.

[Interviewer (possibly Ted)]

How do you think about changing that because I think we all need to read fiction and nonfiction.

[Anne Patchett]

You know, I don't think about changing it. I'm happy that people read anytime somebody is reading. I think it's a bonus. And I think if you read always in the same genre, someday you might trip over into another genre. So I would never say, well, I just want to make sure that kid grows up and reads literary fiction. I just to want to make sure that kid grows up and reads.

[Adam Grant]

Spot on.

[Interviewer (possibly Ted)]

And we have to talk about your decision to run a bookstore because, you know, when I think about what would compel any writer to own a bookstore, the first thing I think of is discovery. I have such fond memories of being a kid and walking into the library and walking into several bookstores and not knowing what I was going to find.

[Adam Grant]

And that does not happen on the Internet.

[Interviewer (possibly Ted)]

For the most part, I get recommendations that are similar to what I've already read. And so how does that relate to your motivation for doing this?

[Anne Patchett]

You're absolutely right. It's completely true. And it doesn't relate at all to my motivation. So my motivation was the bookstores in Nashville closed. This was 15 years ago. And I waited around. I've never wanted to own a bookstore. That was never my dream. I waited for someone else to do it. No one did it. I met a woman who was a retired sales rep from Random House. She wanted to run a bookstore. We decided to go into business together. Total strangers. So, you know, we just started this thing from nothing because the city has to have a bookstore. You know, you just have to do it.

[Interviewer (possibly Ted)]

Well, some would say also you could easily hand it off and not have such a central role in it. What has kept you so involved?

[Anne Patchett]

Well, to a large extent, I have handed it off. I hire people I really love and trust, and they run it. And the main thing I do in that bookstore is we have a first editions club, which I like to say is like fruit of the month club that doesn't rot. So I'm always picking a book. Six months, five months out. It absolutely destroys my life because this is what I'm doing constantly. I'm just on the hamster wheel. People are sending me galleys night and day because they want me to pick their book. And yet, even as it drives me out of my mind, I have read so many fabulous books that I would never have found otherwise. And that's been great. The other thing I do, I interview authors who come to visit for the store. So that's an amazing opportunity. I just interviewed Douglas Stewart about His new book, John of John, which is one of the best books of the year. He wrote Shuggie Bain and won the Booker several years ago. But as I was going home that night, I thought, if I didn't own this store and Douglas Stewart was coming to, say, Vanderbilt to do an event, would I have gone? I don't know. It was like one of the greatest nights of my life to meet this guy and sit there and be in conversation with him. It was holy. It was absolutely amazing for everyone in the room. And I could have missed it had I not been the person who was interviewing the author.

[Interviewer (possibly Ted)]

Well, I think it's safe to say that you love people much more than the stereotypical writer does.

[Anne Patchett]

Well, if you had interviewed me before I opened a bookstore, I think I would have seemed much more like the stereotypical writer because I was always protecting my privacy. My idea of myself is I am a shy, quiet introvert who wants to stay home and write fiction. But for 15 years I've owned a bookstore and now I am the national spokesperson for all things independent books, authors. And constantly being pushed out of my comfort zone has made me a happier and more productive person.

[Interviewer (possibly Ted)]

It does track with the evidence that even we introverts get energy from interacting with other people.

[Anne Patchett]

Yes.

[Interviewer (possibly Ted)]

You spoke to this in your recent TED Talk when you said reading that

[Anne Patchett]

solitary endeavor has proven to be a means of connection. Yes. And that's what I see in the bookstore, and that's what I see when I go out on book tour. And a thousand people come here in a city and they want to talk about my book, but they want to talk about reading. They want to talk about everything they're reading. They want recommendations, they want to meet each other in the signing line, who's sitting next to me in the audience and talk about books. It's like a tent revival for reading. And so when people say to me, reading's dead, books are dying, this is all over, I'm like, maybe it is in your world. But every morning when we unlock the doors at Parnassus, there are lines of people who want to come in and buy a book and talk about books. So my evidence is different.

[Interviewer (possibly Ted)]

We need more of that in the world, I think.

[Anne Patchett]

Yes, absolutely.

[Interviewer (possibly Ted)]

So let's talk a little bit about Whistler. I don't want to spoil any plot points, but there were a few themes that jumped out at me that I thought would be interesting to ask you to riff on. You are not particularly kind to a self help author who's peddling positivity. In this book. And there were two, I thought, hilarious lines that came out of one of the books that he was well known for. Bounce on your toes while brushing your teeth. Feel the positivity radiating up from your ankles. I want to know why were you so eager to poke fun at that? Have you been bothered by toxic positivity in the world and the Pollyanna sense that people are pressured to be upbeat and optimistic at all times? Like, what's, what's behind this?

[Anne Patchett]

I like the idea of a really grumpy guy pushing positivity as a unit of sales. You know, this is how he has figured out how he is going to make his money. So also, I will say, and I hadn't thought about this before, I. Throughout the course of my career and in my life, I get a lot of grief from people because I am a positive person and people call me a Pollyanna and unrealistic. And I always say, you know, why would it be more realistic if I wrote books about serial killers? You don't know any serial killers. I don't know any serial killers. I know plenty of nice people. You know plenty of nice people. Why do we take the darkest parts of our nature to be somehow more credible and true? And I don't believe that. I believe in what I see and what I see in my life in my bookstore, my house, my neighborhood, the people that I interact with. If I'm in the airport, if I'm in a restaurant, I just see people, by and large being really kind to one another. And now, granted, these are the eyes that I have in my head, and I looked at the world through my eyes, and I am by my nature a positive, cheerful person. And I have been ever since I was a child. No virtue in that whatsoever. I was born this way. And if you have a cheerful, sunny affect, people tend to meet you in a cheerful, sunny way.

[Interviewer (possibly Ted)]

Yeah, I don't think anyone who's ever interacted with you would doubt it for a second. Um, so another thing that, that I was so curious to hear your reaction to is you have a line about randomness, a paragraph about randomness. I'll just read you a bit.

[Adam Grant]

You say there's so much randomness to youth.

[Interviewer (possibly Ted)]

The person assigned to share your room becomes your friend. The girl you pass on your way out the door becomes your wife. And from these random encounters, our entire lives are built. There are 10 grandchildren now, 10 new people who in part, owe their lives on Earth to a series essentially of random events. How do you feel about that? Does it delight you? Does it bother you?

[Anne Patchett]

I believe it. I would say it neither delights me nor bothers me, but I think it's true. When I was looking at colleges, I had gone to a Catholic girls school for 12 years and we did not have a guidance counselor. And my parents weren't particularly interested in my going to college. I mean, they wanted me to go to college, but it was not a group activity. It was just something that I was going to figure out and I didn't know what I was doing. And the schools that I applied to were just wildly random because I didn't have any idea what I was doing. And one of the schools I applied to was Alfred in New York. I went up to interview at Alfred, and as I was walking around the art department, there was one girl there painting. She said, what do you want to do? And I said, I want to write, but I'm also interested in painting. She said, oh, if you want to write, you should go to Sarah Lawrence. And I did. That was the sum total of collegiate advice I received. A stranger said, that's where the writers go. Oh, okay, thanks very much. At Sarah Lawrence, I studied for a year each with Alan Gerganis, Russell Banks and Grace Paley. You couldn't go to Harvard and get that lineup in classes where there were 12 students in the class. You stayed with that teacher all year and you met with them individually once a week. There could not have been a better, more life shaping education for me. And a stranger in Alfred, New York, was the person who told me to go there. Couldn't be more random. And yet my entire life was built off of that encounter.

[Interviewer (possibly Ted)]

I mean, it's such a great example of what bothers me about the randomness or used to bother me, which is

[Adam Grant]

I wonder how many of those moments we miss.

[Anne Patchett]

Oh, sure.

[Interviewer (possibly Ted)]

Because you know what? If you had arrived a minute later or a minute earlier. Right. That chance encounter might never have occurred. We might not get to read you. It's possible.

[Adam Grant]

Right.

[Interviewer (possibly Ted)]

And that, I think, would be a great travesty. On the other hand, I think, okay, we have to also then be extra grateful for all the random connections that do get made. And at some level, it's not the fact that the random event occurred. It's the fact that then you took the initiative to take that advice to heart, to follow it, and then to make the most of the experience you

[Adam Grant]

had at Sarah Lawrence.

[Interviewer (possibly Ted)]

And so I think, I guess that tells me there's still a role for human agency and proactivity in the process.

[Anne Patchett]

Yes.

[Interviewer (possibly Ted)]

This relates to another moment in Whistler that I wanted to ask you about, which is. It's toward the end you wrote it had been one possible scenario, Eddie and Abigail, which could have worked had every single thing about them been different. Yeah, it was such a striking line for me, because if every single thing about them had been different, they wouldn't have been who they were.

[Adam Grant]

And yet.

[Anne Patchett]

You know what I meant.

[Adam Grant]

You're inviting the reader to consider the

[Interviewer (possibly Ted)]

possibility that they could change much more dramatically than we normally assume. And I wanted to hear you talk about that.

[Anne Patchett]

They couldn't have changed. It could not have worked. But they still loved each other and it took them their whole life, maybe, to be able to get to a place where they could look back and see, oh, that would never have worked because we are who we are. But there's a sweetness in just acknowledging that I love you. It can't work, but I see you and I know you and I love you and I let you go.

[Adam Grant]

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[Interviewer (possibly Ted)]

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[Anne Patchett]

of 45 for three months, $90 for six months or 180 or 12 month plan required $15 per month equivalent taxes and fees Extra initial plan term only greater than 50 gigabytes. Me slow when network is busy. See terms.

[Interviewer (possibly Ted)]

Okay, time for a lightning round.

[Anne Patchett]

Oh boy. All right.

[Interviewer (possibly Ted)]

So you can pause in between, of course, if you wish.

[Anne Patchett]

If I'm not fast enough for the

[Interviewer (possibly Ted)]

lightning round, no one is, it turns out. Okay, so let me ask you first, what is the worst writing advice that you hear people give regularly?

[Anne Patchett]

Write what you know.

[Interviewer (possibly Ted)]

And you hate that because.

[Anne Patchett]

Well, I mean, I don't hate it, but there are all sorts of things that I don't know anything about that I write about. I write what I'm interested in. The very best part of writing is that it means that I get to do research. I wrote a book about ichthyology. I went to the Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology and hung out with all of those dead fish. That was not writing about what I know. That was writing about what was interesting to me and how lucky that I got to hang out there. If you write what you know, you're writing about your mother all the time.

[Interviewer (possibly Ted)]

Yeah. I think writing about your curiosity is much more compelling than writing about just your experience or your knowledge. All right, what's your favorite writing tip that you don't hear? Given often,

[Anne Patchett]

Posture is everything. There is no one truth for writing except that you have to take care of your body. And there is nothing in the world that I like more than sitting cross legged on a sofa with a sofa cushion in my lap and my laptop on the sofa cushion and writing. And guess what? That isn't gonna work. I had a friend who wrote a whole book that way and had two hips replaced at the end. So you have to figure out how you can keep your body in a good place. And if that means you stop every 25 minutes and jump around. I have a treadmill desk. I have written my last two books on a treadmill desk because it helps me stay physically pain free and in

[Interviewer (possibly Ted)]

the game and leads to more creative ideas. According to a series of experiments, I

[Anne Patchett]

absolutely have found that to be true.

[Interviewer (possibly Ted)]

Normally, this is a dinner party question, but I'm going to modify it and make it a bookstore question for you.

[Anne Patchett]

Okay?

[Interviewer (possibly Ted)]

You get to host Arnassus. Any writers you want, living or dead. For a conversation about anything you choose, who are you inviting and what are they talking about?

[Anne Patchett]

Okay, so first off, I would invite my friend Lucy Greely, who was my best friend from college and graduate school, who died when we were 39. I would invite my friend Dorothea Benton Frank, who died before COVID I would just want to see people that I love and use writing as an excuse. You know, I don't need to call up Shakespeare and Dickens. I would just like to see the people who I haven't seen in a while. Grace Paley. Let's invite Grace Paley, too. Oh, I loved her and she was such a wonderful teacher. And what would we talk about at that dinner party? I imagine we would talk about how beautiful it was to be alive for the course of the evening and how happy we were to be together.

[Interviewer (possibly Ted)]

Wow. That is unlike any answer I've heard to this question. Tell me something you've rethought lately.

[Anne Patchett]

Okay. Book tour. So I have spent the majority of my career hating book tour. And I have dug deeply into my hatred. I don't get any food. I don't sleep well. I've twice cracked my head on the wall in the middle of the night when I've gotten up to find the bathroom. I don't like the airports, the travel. And I have bitched and complained about going on book tour enough. And several years ago, before Tom Lake, which was my last book, I did an experiment. I decided to pursue right speech. I stopped swearing. And I decided that if I dropped a glass, I was not going to say, you idiot. I was going to say, nice glass. That was a great glass. It so changed my life to make those adjustments in my speech and thought that I thought, I'm going to do this for book tour. And when people say, how do you feel about book tour? I'm going to say, I'm really excited. I'm looking forward to meeting the readers. I'm looking forward to seeing my friends. Who work in those bookstores that I go and visit. I feel really lucky that I get to go on book tour. I did not believe it, but I kept saying it and I kept saying it and it became true. And I changed completely my mind about book tour. And I'm going on book tour and I am feeling good about it.

[Interviewer (possibly Ted)]

I'm delighted to hear that. And many of your readers, I'm sure, are thrilled too, that you've changed your stance. Okay, office hours, time. This is the point where I turn over the mic to you. Do you have a question for me?

[Anne Patchett]

So the question is about my bookstore. Every year we've been in business, we have topped the previous year. It is booming, this bookstore. The thing is, we don't want to grow. And I understand that there is no such thing as stasis, but everybody's always saying, oh, open another location here or there, this building, that building. And I'm like, no, no, no, no. We want to do this one thing really well. But it keeps getting bigger. What do we do?

[Interviewer (possibly Ted)]

Well, that's such a great problem to have.

[Anne Patchett]

Yes, isn't it?

[Interviewer (possibly Ted)]

Yeah. I think. I mean, normally growth is not something you have to fight. Normally you're trying everything you can to make it happen. I was actually thinking earlier about Hemingway and how he wrote that every writer needs a built in shockproof shit detector. And what I took away from that was just being ruthless about rejecting bad material and bad ideas. And I think that running a business is the same thing. Right. I think Jim Collins would describe it as the undisciplined pursuit of more being something that gets people in trouble. And I see this happen in companies all the time. I think, you know, in a thriving bookstore, I think that the answer to how not to grow is to default to no and to only say yes if you have something that is irresistible that you've already tried to refuse multiple times and you keep coming back to it. But then to have a simple math rule, which is if we're going to add something, we also have to subtract. And I've had to learn to do this with my calendar. Why do I keep getting over committed? If I'm going to take on a new project, I need to finish or

[Adam Grant]

end an old project.

[Interviewer (possibly Ted)]

And I think that running an organization is the exact same way. So no addition unless you subtract.

[Adam Grant]

How's that?

[Anne Patchett]

Well, okay, so we turn down over 800 event requests a year.

[Adam Grant]

Wow.

[Anne Patchett]

And we do well over 350 events a year off site and in store. So we're Good at saying no.

[Interviewer (possibly Ted)]

Well, I guess then maybe an interesting solution for you, if you haven't already tried it, is. Okay, so you're going to have this temptation to grow because of all the demand you've created and all the energy there. Every time something new comes and you do it, can it then be spun off to be its own entity?

[Anne Patchett]

Give me an example.

[Interviewer (possibly Ted)]

An example would be, so let's say, for example, you wanted to do another hundred events, but you can't. Can you then spin off an events business that kind of runs on its own?

[Anne Patchett]

No, no, no, no. Because then that's just massive growth and more businesses. You know what I think of is romance. When we started, we had no romance. Nobody cared about romance. Romance is huge now. It takes up a big chunk of store, and everybody's like, we should open a romance bookstore. Let the romance and the fantasy and the romantasy and the dragons and the princesses go to another building. But no, because then it's just another store. It's bigger, it's bigger, it's bigger. I just want this one store.

[Interviewer (possibly Ted)]

I guess I was thinking about a slightly different model, kind of like a startup incubator where founders are allowed to come in for a period of time and then they build something and they go off and grow it themselves. You don't want that?

[Anne Patchett]

No. I'm 62 and I want to write novels.

[Interviewer (possibly Ted)]

Well, then that's what you should do.

[Adam Grant]

And there's your answer.

[Interviewer (possibly Ted)]

Don't say yes to anything that would stand in the way of your writing.

[Anne Patchett]

Oh, everything stands in the way of my writing. But every time something stands in the way and I say yes, it goes to that whole heart open. It makes you a bigger, better, happier person and more expansive, which makes you a better writer. La, la la.

[Interviewer (possibly Ted)]

This is the best problem to have. You know what? Esther Perel would remind me at this point that this is not a problem to solve. It's a paradox to manage.

[Anne Patchett]

Okay. I love that. I'm just gonna have to grow up and deal with it. That's what the answer is.

[Interviewer (possibly Ted)]

I think you can handle it.

[Anne Patchett]

And my dog has come home. I can hear him now scratching on the door.

[Interviewer (possibly Ted)]

Well, Anne, thank you. I have to tell you, sometimes I approach meeting writers I admire and adore with a little bit of trepidation, because it's almost impossible to like them as much as I like their stories and their characters. And you're the opposite of a never meet your heroes person. Everything that's on the page when I read you just leaps out of you as a person. And that is a real, real rare gift. Thank you.

[Anne Patchett]

That is incredibly kind. I've loved this conversation, so thank you.

[Adam Grant]

Rethinking is hosted by me, Adam Grann. The show is produced by Ted with Cosmic Stand. Our producer is Jessica Glaser. Our editor is Alejandra Salazar, our engineer is Asia Pilar Simpson, our technical director is Jacob Winick, and our fact checker is Paul Durbin. Our team includes Eliza Smith, Roxanne hi, Lash Ban Chang, Julia Dickerson, Tansika Sung Manivong and Whitney Pennington Rogers. Original music by Hans Dale Su and Alison Layton Brown

[Anne Patchett]

Score Adam Grant said I could have a dinner party and invite my dead friends. Guys, come back quick.

[Adam Grant]

Quick.

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