American - Novelist | June 12, 1953 -
Because my dad's Chinese-American, and they're very concrete, he said, 'There's no money to be made in literature.' So he told me to go into the sciences. And I was a good girl. And I did what Daddy said. And that's how I ended up being a doctor. But you know, you just can't stamp out that desire to tell stories.
Tess Gerritsen
GoodGirlMoneyMeDoctorYou
Because I never plan anything out ahead of time, I'm always in the process of learning about my characters. Without a biographical sketch to guide me, I discover things about my heroines as the stories unfold. Only in 'Body Double' did I discover that Maura's mother was a serial killer.
LearningMotherTimeMePlanBody
I raised two sons, and I know that even though they're bigger and stronger than I am, they're still little boys inside. They still cry, they still hurt. So whenever I write a male character, no matter how 'heroic' he may be, I think of my sons. And I remember that every man was once a little boy.
CharacterManI AmThinkHurtKnow
There is no better test of character than when you're tossed into crisis. That's when we see one's true colors shine through. So I try my best to make my characters personally involved in the plot, in a way that stresses them and tests them.
CharacterBestShineColorsBetter
I'm trained in science, believe in logic, and like to think there's an explanation for everything. And I'm truly not really at ease with other people.
SciencePeopleBelieveThinkLogic
I think what medical training does is it gives you the language, the tools to look up facts. I think medical training gives you a sense of how to approach a problem, how to look at symptoms and go down the list of what it might be.
TrainingMedicalThinkLanguageLook
Writing is very much an emotional process; it requires you to be very in touch with your feelings. That is the opposite of what you're taught as a medical doctor. We're supposed to be detached and logical. Maybe because I started off as a writer and then became a doctor, I'm able to integrate those two.
MedicalWritingDoctorProcessYou
I think that, for physicians who want to become writers, they have the material, the smarts, they have the logic, they know the stories; it's just a matter of being able to connect with their emotional sides - that's the key to writing good fiction.
GoodWritingThinkKeyLogicKnow
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