Anne Tyler

OK, reading.

I've been reading a lot of Ann Tyler.

Wow.

Such an incredible writer.

great okay ralph

yeah i mean there was spoilers everywhere there ross i don't know now i know what happens in starfish i'm not sure i can watch it um also blue related by uncanny coincidence uh i have been reading a spool of blue threads by anne tyler and i was very prolific and i wouldn't call myself a fan but once every five years For some reason, I've come across an Anne Tyler novel and it's just exactly the right level of gentle, but nicely turned, tells a good story.

I mean, if only people are familiar with Anne Tyler's work, it's just, it's the usual thing.

There's an American kind of middle-class family with its own dramas and dysfunctions.

And by telling that story, it gives you a little window onto some aspects of American life and culture.

We can.

You know, at about that time, Ann Tyler wrote a book called The Accidental Tourist.

And I felt that this was the accidental book.

I had no intention of writing this book.

American.

Anne Tyler.

Tyler, well done.

You're brilliant.

And so we were just like, oh, here's another one.

And but you weren't, you know, you know, Anne Tyler, you were just like me, you were just starting out.

And that, I really felt connected to that.

Also, I just remember Xander running around the museum and looking at all the Turner paintings and talking a mile a minute, you know?

Basketball Hall of Famer Bob Knight is 78.

Pop singer Helen Reddy is 77, and so is author Ann Tyler.

Rock singer John Anderson from Yes is 74, so is political strategist James Carville, and so is singer Taffy Danoff from Starland Vocal Band.

Rock musician Glenn Tipton from Judas Priest is 71.

And this book was such a brilliant examination of lives that feel known, just feel very real.

You know, that's what Patchett does too, Anne Tyler, like, Sue Monk Kidd.

Like, there's so many.

I am seeing women authors are on a roll.

And the last one I read was More Than Enough, and that came out this year, 2026.

Another author is Anne Tyler, and the first one that I read of hers was called Back When We Were Grownups in 2001.

And she is still very much in the author scene.

And the last one I read was Three Days in June.

... that, that, you know, that if you, uh, don't have the time or the skills or, or whatever to create a book, that you shouldn't be in there having a go.

But the point is that writing should not be easy, because in striving for excellence, that's where we get those brilliant books by people like Elizabeth Strout and, um, Ann Patchett and Anne Tyler, and those really, those, those books that you go, "Oh my God, how did this ever get written?" Like, how, this is such an amazing thing.

And if we're not, if we're just feeding crap into a machine and saying, "Give me an idea for, give me a plot point for this"-

this"-How are we ever gonna reach that? I, I just, I don't know.

I am teaching a workshop Sunday morning from 10:00 to 12:00 for writers that is on balancing plot and theme.

So we'll be looking at macro structures and plot and theme in macro structure, and I have done a full three-act structural breakdown of "Three Days in June" by Anne Tyler.

So I will be providing that to all participants of that workshop.

We'll be talking through it.