A Goodreads user
asked
Mary L. Tabor:
Once again, reading your bio, I am so inspired by you, Mary. Just wanted to thank you for...being you! But okay, a question. How do you overcome those times when you are discouraged about your writing? Or ARE you ever discouraged about your writing or the business of writing?
Mary L. Tabor
Once again, reading your bio, I am so inspired by you, Mary. Just wanted to thank you for...being you! But okay, a question. How do you overcome those times when you are discouraged about your writing? Or ARE you ever discouraged about your writing or the business of writing?
Thank you, Shelley, for the kind words. In answer to another question, I say below that the blank page is the mystery that reveals what it knows without my full understanding. That blank page is daunting. How to start? —when, as I don’t write formula stories, I’m not sure how I did what I’ve done. So sure, I get discouraged, don’t think the work is good enough. And, probably like any working artist, I struggle with self-criticism and doubt.
As to “the business of writing,” I’ve never thought of writing as a business. If I had, I’d have given up long ago because the financial rewards for original art are so rare. Instead I think of writing as a process of discovery and every now and then am gifted with the luck of revelation. Eudora Welty in _One Writer’s Beginnings_, explains more eloquently: “The events in our lives happen in a sequence in time, but in their significance to ourselves they find their own order, a timetable not necessarily—perhaps not possibly—chronological. The time as we know it subjectively is often the chronology that stories and novels follow: it is the continuous thread of revelation.”
Thank you, Shelley, for the kind words. In answer to another question, I say below that the blank page is the mystery that reveals what it knows without my full understanding. That blank page is daunting. How to start? —when, as I don’t write formula stories, I’m not sure how I did what I’ve done. So sure, I get discouraged, don’t think the work is good enough. And, probably like any working artist, I struggle with self-criticism and doubt.
As to “the business of writing,” I’ve never thought of writing as a business. If I had, I’d have given up long ago because the financial rewards for original art are so rare. Instead I think of writing as a process of discovery and every now and then am gifted with the luck of revelation. Eudora Welty in _One Writer’s Beginnings_, explains more eloquently: “The events in our lives happen in a sequence in time, but in their significance to ourselves they find their own order, a timetable not necessarily—perhaps not possibly—chronological. The time as we know it subjectively is often the chronology that stories and novels follow: it is the continuous thread of revelation.”
More Answered Questions
A Goodreads user
asked
Mary L. Tabor:
My first question, Mary, has to do with personhood. The feeling that I get by reading you is that the person that you are informs the style of your prose. If prose could be said to have values, to what degree are your prose's values also the values of Mary L. Tabor the person?
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