Edan Lepucki Quotes & Sayings

There is a moment, when a woman's foolishness slips into delusion. The former is forgivable, the latter isn't. You will never live it down. Remember that. — Edan Lepucki

I am always worried that over-planning and outlining will kill the magic of writing; most of the world I created in 'California' occurred via good old sexy sentence-making. — Edan Lepucki

The thing Lady didn't get, or the thing she'd forgotten, was that being a child was painful too. She was so wrapped up in losing Seth, the treacheries of him growing up, that she couldn't remember what it felt like to be on the other side. The burden of that. Sure, Seth had left her womb and never returned, but he was the one who had to do the leaving. — Edan Lepucki

The ending changes everything that came before it. — Edan Lepucki

With my students, I don't offer any simple tips like that, maybe because my own process is pretty messy, but when we workshop we talk a lot about the deeper subject, which is what the story or novel is about. I think defining a narrative's themes can lay bare a narrative's tensions. — Edan Lepucki

I tossed off a mention of the pirates early on. And they became integral to the backstory. Sometimes now I imagine them in the woods. They scare me. All men. Dirty and wearing red. — Edan Lepucki

My signature is like a squished spider. — Edan Lepucki

The jugness of the jug was how he explained Heidegger to Cal, as if that explained anything at all. — Edan Lepucki

The imagined Internet is so much better than the real one. — Edan Lepucki

I am not sure I knew what I was doing, writing an "apocalypse" novel, when I started this book. Now that the book is done, I can own that I have in fact written an apocalypse novel, one that speculates on a dark, dark future. Why I did it, I really don't know - every time people read my work they comment on its darkness, its sadness. — Edan Lepucki

I am glad it's [California novel] resonated with people because, for me, most apocalyptic novels aren't scary, because they feel so very far off. — Edan Lepucki

I imagined swinging from the punching bag of his uvula. — Edan Lepucki

I still can't believe that I went on 'The Colbert Report' myself; for the appearance I wore a lot of makeup, my hair was curled like a poodle's, and I could barely breathe in my Spanx undergarments. But, hey - an authoress has to lean in, right? — Edan Lepucki

Before my book, 'California,' came out, I had modest hopes for it. Or, let's put it this way - I had the same hopes that every literary fiction writer in America has: I wanted the novel to be well-received, critically. As for sales? I didn't want it to disappoint, but I didn't expect it to be a best-seller, either. — Edan Lepucki

The issue is that my book, and so many others, are not available for pre-order from Amazon. I hadn't realized how much that mattered for new authors. And how much Amazon is hurting us. — Edan Lepucki

Time moved forward, but the mind was restless and stubborn, and it skipped to wherever it pleased, often to the past: backward, always backward. — Edan Lepucki

Men were stupid to forget what good sleuths women could be. — Edan Lepucki

I am not sure how a novel changes the world. I think it alters a reader's perspective by asking him or her to see the world through another consciousness. That can perhaps cause people to see their own lives differently. Or just give a single day, a single moment, a slightly different sheen. — Edan Lepucki

I did a lot of this through writing flashbacks. Many of the flashbacks took place at Cal's school and I eventually cut them because they didn't seem essential and they slowed the pace of the story in the first third of the book. They were essential to me, though, in that I learned about my characters. — Edan Lepucki

Girls who want to be warriors can't afford to be so careless. And: Girls will bleed, and they will cry. — Edan Lepucki

You think you know how a story begins, or how it's going to turn out, especially when it's your own. You don't. — Edan Lepucki

If you don't ponder the end of the world on a regular basis, I don't think you're really human. — Edan Lepucki

California seemed to me to be all about secrets and the need for safety. And this leads to this thematic messiness I'm still trying to figure out what to do with. I mean, when it comes to the themes, this is nothing like an Atwood novel. — Edan Lepucki

I'm a mother of a three-year-old, but when I started 'California,' my son wasn't even a twinkle in my eye. Because the book took as long as it did, I wrote it before I was pregnant, while I was pregnant, and as a new mother - so I enjoyed a diversity of experiences while creating this world. — Edan Lepucki

The messiness [in my books] is nothing like an Atwood novel. For me, the deeper subjects are secrets versus intimacy, and how both beget safety but also threaten it. And there is a lot for me about loss, too. — Edan Lepucki

With 'California,' editors were reading it, and fast, and others were emailing my agent to request it. Ultimately, there were a few editors interested in the book, and it sold at auction about two weeks after the submission process started. I couldn't believe it! — Edan Lepucki

I'm married. And pregnant. — Edan Lepucki

I have a darker imagination than most people. — Edan Lepucki

I think that sharpens the intention of a scene and clarifies a story's arc. Of course, I don't seek the questions until after I've written a scene - or maybe after I've daydreamed it. — Edan Lepucki

I'm always looking for complicated characters in fiction about whom I can feel a dozen feelings at once - in the space of a single paragraph, even. — Edan Lepucki

How impossible, though, to turn one's back on all the horrors in the world; there had to be another way to live. — Edan Lepucki

I suppose that it's my impulse to mine, as a writer, these scary parts of ourselves and the world. — Edan Lepucki

There's nothing more tragic than a man who gains weight like a woman does. — Edan Lepucki

I recognize that I'm probably the luckiest novelist in recent memory, because Sherman Alexie, a writer I greatly admire, raved about my book on 'The Colbert Report,' and then Mr. Colbert himself urged his viewers to buy it - on his show and on Twitter. — Edan Lepucki

At Ucross I learned that I am capable of focusing deeply for long periods of time. I love to write. I don't think I would have said that before this trip. — Edan Lepucki

Once the bell is rung, you can't unring it. — Edan Lepucki

It's a bit scary to see my book come true: the recent (if minor) LA earthquakes, Hurricane Sandy, the Boston bomber, and so on - much of it stoppable, I think, and yet I, too, am also guilty of passivity. — Edan Lepucki

For me, even when I was pregnant, I wondered, Should we even have children if we're bringing them into this horrible, scary world? But I did have a child, despite these fears - or because of them - and these fears are both contemporary and as old as time. — Edan Lepucki

I was interested in writing about gender in this future world where progress has not only halted but turned backward. On another note, sometimes the personal is not so politically correct, and what we are turned on by can't be made to behave. — Edan Lepucki

Have a much harder time writing stories than novels. I need the expansiveness of a novel and the propulsive energy it provides. When I think about scene - and when I teach scene writing - I'm thinking about questions. What questions are raised by a scene? What questions are answered? What questions persist from scene to scene to scene? — Edan Lepucki

Oh how I wish I could be as obsessive as Carrie from 'Homeland' when I'm writing a book! That would save me a lot of trouble during the revision process. — Edan Lepucki

It's funny: when I set out to create the world of 'California,' I didn't give the type of apocalypse much thought ... I simply set my two characters, Cal and Frida, in a depleted world and moved through it intuitively. — Edan Lepucki

I wish I wasn't so in love, wasn't so interested, in the Internet. I wish I spent less time online and more time outside and in my head. Writing requires solitude and deep, deep daydreaming, and the Internet just kills that - its lure is toward the external; it asks you to flit from place to place. — Edan Lepucki

A Bereavement? Franzen's posthumous novel? — Edan Lepucki

Amazon is such a big player in publishing, but a lot of authors feel this connection to their publishing house and their editors who helped them get their books out there, so their loyalties tend to go that way. — Edan Lepucki

I love how easy it is to run my business, Writing Workshops Los Angeles, with the help of email and my website. I love that I don't have to use cuneiform, a quill, or a typewriter to write my novels - I love to write on my laptop! — Edan Lepucki

Amazon has historically been a bully, and I don't shop there. But I love Goodreads. For the record. — Edan Lepucki

This is what she'd always wanted. A painless life. — Edan Lepucki

All crises, once averted, become jokes. — Edan Lepucki