One True Loves (36 page)

It took me until I was about twenty-five to realize I wanted to be a writer and until [I was]about twenty-eight to admit it to people out loud. I floated around from job to job, attracted to various different elements of the work I was doing. And it wasn't until it occurred to me to try to write fiction that I realized being an author was exactly the thing I had been searching for. When I added up all of the elements of the other jobs I'd been doing, it hit me that writing fiction was my dream job.

It came as such a relief, honestly. To finally have that
direction. I knew it was a long shot but I also finally had a target to aim for.

You've also written for television and for film. How is this type of writing different from crafting a novel? How has your work as a novelist influenced your work as a screenwriter?

Writing for books, film, and TV are somehow all completely different and all essentially the same. In every medium, your goal is to connect with an audience, to bring them into a story, to thrill them, to make them feel. So the underlying skills are identical. How do I make this world seem real? How do I make this character someone people feel passionately about?

But of course there are different formulas for each one and different strengths to each. Part of what is the most fun about working in all three is coming up with an idea and then deciding how it will work best. Is this a book that could also be a TV show? Is it a book that would make a great film? Is it an idea that is really best only as a movie?

I've never painted or sculpted a day in my life but I'd imagine it's similar to having a vision of a woman in your head and trying to decide if she should be made out of paint, marble, or clay. Again, we're talking about the conception phase of a story—where you get to start making decisions about what it will be
someday.
And that is—and will forever be—the very thing that drives me.

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Also by Taylor Jenkins Reid

Forever, Interrupted

After I Do

Maybe in Another Life

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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author's imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2016 by Taylor Jenkins Reid

Cover design by Laywan Kwan

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First Washington Square Press trade paperback edition June 2016

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