Tracy Chevalier

thumb|Tracy Chevalier (2007) Tracy Rose Chevalier (born October 19, 1962) is an American-British historical novelist and Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. Quotes I have huge respect for short stories—I just find them much harder to get right than a novel. A novel is a lot baggier and it gives you more leeway to go on for too long or to make mistakes. Whereas in a short story, every sentence, every word, matters—and that’s very hard. I think it’s easier to write too much than it is to write exactly the right thing. On how she compares short story writing to novel writing in “An Interview with Tracy Chevalier” in Fiction Writers Review (2019 Sep 23) Usually, I take great pleasure in finding a notebook that’s going to match the subject matter. And this time, for some reason, I was in a hurry. I hadn’t found the right one, I had started my research, and I couldn’t wait for the perfect notebook. So, I just grabbed one that I had. It’s the first time though, and it felt a little sad. On choosing a notebook for each novel that she writes in “An Interview with Tracy Chevalier” in Fiction Writers Review (2019 Sep 23) I live with them for a long time in my head. When I first start writing about a character, I don’t know them that well. It’s through the process of writing of putting them in scenes, and contemplating them—when I’ve spent more time with them—that they take on more flesh. When I start writing, I have a lot of characters that I’m not sure what their place in the novel will be…And some characters recede as I put more flesh on them. I think I don’t really need them; they’re not giving me anything. Or they’re there for a particular effect, and that’s it. On how she formulates her characters in “An Interview with Tracy Chevalier” in Fiction Writers Review (2019 Sep 23) Dialogue is always tricky. Authenticity is almost impossible, and you always end up sounding too olde worlde. What I do is to strip the words back, so I get the dialogue to sound timeless… On how she composes character dialogue in “Tracy Chevalier: 'Slavery has to be raised until it's put to bed'” in The Guardian (2013 Mar 16) There are times when I'm hoping the reader will feel slightly sympathetic. She's in a marriage she should never have made and she's kind of stuck in this swamp. And she is, yes, self-centered and a terrible mother; but she also is misunderstood, I think, at times, and frustrated... On her character Sadie Goodenough from her novel At the Edge of the Orchard in “'I Ate A Lot Of Apples': Tracy Chevalier On Writing Her 'Orchard' Novel” in NPR (2016 Mar 12) External links Tracy Chevalier Category:1962 births Category:Living people Category:Women academics from the United States Category:Novelists from the United States Category:Historical novelists Category:Women authors from the United States Category:People from Washington, D.C. Category:Women born in the 1960s Category:Women authors from England Category:Novelists from England Category:Immigrants to the United Kingdom