Word: pattersons
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...Patterson probably outsells Toni Morrison 10 books to 1, but his success comes at a price. He will never get respect from the literati. Most reviewers ignore him. In a culture that values high style over storytelling, pretty prose over popularity and pulse-pounding plots, he's at the extreme wrong end of the spectrum, and he knows it. And, yes, it irks him a little. "That's probably my biggest frustration," he admits. "There's something going on here that's significant, and it's not easy to do. If it was easy to do, a lot of people...
...Patterson still wasn't done. He wanted to re-engineer his own creative process. He's never had a problem with writer's block, but there were just too many ideas piling up in his head. So when he and journalist Peter de Jonge came up with an idea for a golf novel, Miracle on the 17th Green, he thought, Why not just write it together? "Peter's a much better stylist than I am, and I'm a much better storyteller than he is. It's another way to do things...
Since then Patterson has co-written eight of his novels. He'll whip up a detailed outline, then ship it off to his collaborator for a first draft. "I may talk to them on a couple-week basis," he says. "And then at a certain point I'll just take it over and write as many as seven drafts. There were a couple of them that really were a mess," he adds ruefully. "At least twice it's been, 'I wish that I just started this thing myself.'" It's rare for big-name authors to use co-writers...
...collaborator, Andrew Gross, used to run the sports-equipment company Head, but his dream was to write novels, and he couldn't get any traction with publishers. One day he got a call: Patterson had seen his manuscript and wanted to have breakfast. "Basically what he said was, I've got a lot of stories to tell, and nobody has the resources to tell 'em all, and would I like to talk about a project with him?" That was the beginning of a seven-year partnership, a highly educational one for Gross--he jokes that it's the equivalent...
...easy, nor is it easy to put down, but it isn't quite art either. The fact is, Patterson is an affront to every Romantic myth of the artist we have. He's not tortured. He's not poor. He doesn't work alone, and he's way too unsentimental about his work. Of The 5th Horseman, he shrugs, saying, "I don't think it's terribly worth reading, honestly. I think it's fine for that kind of series." But maybe it's time to let go of a few Romantic myths. There's something to be said...