Do you want to do this thing? Sit down and do it.

Ann Patchett is a Pulitzer Prize finalist, a PEN/Faulkner Award winner, and a bookstore owner, and was named one of the world’s most influential people by “TIME” magazine in 2012. It’s no wonder that the author of such complex and luminous novels as “Bel Canto,” “State of Wonder,” “Commonwealth,” and “The Dutch House” claims in her memoir “The Getaway Car” that, “as far as I’m concerned, writer’s block is a myth.” The bestselling author describes the hard work of writing a novel as “like channel swimming: a slow and steady stroke over a long distance in a cold, dark sea.” Patchett pulls no punches in her no-nonsense advice here to aspiring writers — “sit down and do it” — reminding us that the difference between a dream and an accomplishment is the work we bring to it.