A Goodreads user asked Mary L. Tabor:

When you talk about that "dreamlike state" it makes me curious... Do you write in the morning? First thing? How important is time-of-day to the flow of your work?

Mary L. Tabor Are you referring to the fact that I don’t remember what I’ve written? I haven’t talked about the dream-like state here—but that is what it’s like at times when the going is good and why I suspect I don’t recall what I write and can’t quote myself—probably a good thing. Wouldn’t that be kinda awful: repeating one’s work to others as if I were some sort of guru. Ugh.

I do write in the morning and try to write as soon as possible on waking. When the going is good, I’m in a state of “flow”—perhaps like a pianist who has learned all his scales, practiced them, knows how to soften the sound, who understands how the sound board of the piano resonates, who knows how to glide through the piece of music and make it his own.

What I’ve studied from reading all my life since I was a child, what I’ve learned about how good stories get made lies somewhere inside me.

When the story comes, it comes willed by something “other”—and I’m grateful to have been the vessel that brought it to the page. To tell you the new-age-y truth, I’m not even sure I should get the credit for doing it. I’ll take the credit, though, for the editing after it’s cooled off from that heated dreamlike state of invention.

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