Chelsea Cain Quotes
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No matter what fabulous place I visit, I don't feel like I'm on vacation unless I'm dehydrated and covered with sunscreen.
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I grew up in Washington State and then eventually found my way back to Iowa City for grad school.
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I'm usually too shy to write on planes because I assume that everyone on board is as nosy as I am and will look over my shoulder and read what I'm writing.
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Memory is a fiction we tell ourselves: just a piece of the truth.
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Don't let your characters tell you what to do. They can be pushy. Some writers say that they create characters and then just sort of follow them around through the narrative. I think that these writers are out of their minds.
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Every year, I give my dad an advance copy of my latest book. He reads it over the next several nights and says something incredibly supportive. Then he clears his throat nervously and changes the subject.
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I often keep my eyes open for bodies. I do. Ever since I was a kid. I think I read too many 'Nancy Drew' books.
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There's something about the Pacific Northwest, the scale of it, and the fact that not so long ago people came here and died getting here, and then died the first winter they were here. There's this breathtaking beauty, just a little bit of moss on the tree, just this little thread of danger, and the sinister. And I really like that.
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I was a library rat and a bookworm. I read all the time. I walked to school reading books. I read under my desk.
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I'd lived in Portland on and off for a decade before I'd even heard of Vanport. It was this town of 20,000 people that washed away from north Portland.
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I know that there's a cultural expectation that women be nurturing, delicate flowers. And I am. So delicate. But that doesn't mean I can't write a good, gory murder scene.
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I am a control freak, but not when I travel. For some reason when I travel, I am able to surrender more than in my real life. I am able to let go. I think it's why I like it so much.
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People come to Portland, many of them for the quality of life. They love the physical space here. And yet every year, people climbing the mountain get killed by avalanches.
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Somehow, having an office that I had to go to made me want to work from home, which is easier to do if you don't have a boss waiting for you at the office, even a very blue office.
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I was born in Iowa City and spent my early childhood on a hippie commune just outside of town.
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I guess people might be surprised to know I read comic books. I'm a Marvel girl, as opposed to DC.
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When I say that I went to grad school in Iowa City, people often assume that I went to the famed writers' workshop MFA program at the University of Iowa. I didn't. I got a master's in journalism.
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I used to write travel essays, and I was struck by how the fact of writing about a place would change my relationship with it. I would make completely different choices, do things I wouldn't have normally, because I had to fill this narrative shape.
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Writing tips are like mini skirts. Sometimes they fit perfectly, sometimes they make you cry, and sometimes you can reuse the material and sew yourself a pillow or something.
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People read stuff over your shoulder when you're in public, and when you write the kind of stuff I do, and people read it over your shoulder, it makes you a little self-conscious.
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As a seven-year-old, I remember when Etan Patz disappeared and was immortalized as the first missing-child face on a milk carton.
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I love to write just about more than anything, but there are times I have to force myself to sit down and work. I want to play with my daughter or watch a movie with my husband or go outside on the nicest day of the year. But if writing is going to be your job, you have to treat it like a job.
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You know what I hate? I hate people who give me plants. The whole giving someone plants - it's like giving someone a pet. I'm giving you responsibility, I'm giving you a thing that you now have to take care of for, like, a year until it dies, and then I'm giving you sadness and guilt.
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I'm a sucker for a screwed-up protagonist. We all have issues.