Jason Howell

Jason Howell asked Mary L. Tabor:

If you could design the ideal reader for your work, what tools and sensibilities would you want that reader to bring to bear? What would your work be asking of him or her?

Mary L. Tabor My ideal reader loves narrative that dares to discover, that risks it all, heart and soul on the page. That reader understands that art does not follow a formula but instead unfolds in the search for meaning—and that the search matters.

More Answered Questions

A Goodreads user

A Goodreads user asked Mary L. Tabor:

In (Re)Making Love there is a passage that begins:| "When my mother was seventy years old, shortly before her stroke, I was applying her make-up for her birthday. She and I were looking in the mirror at her aged face. She said, 'I still see the nineteen-year-old girl.' Can you talk about this passage some, and what it meant to you to write it?

A Goodreads user

A Goodreads user asked Mary L. Tabor:

With so much fiction being published these days it makes sense for authors to turn to the multi-novel series more and more. The idea being that Book 1 gets the reader "hooked" and guarantees the purchase of Books 2 thru 6 (or what have you). In your own work Mary, to what extent do you consider "hooking" the reader to be a part of the job?

A Goodreads user

A Goodreads user asked Mary L. Tabor:

How might you go about aiding an emerging writer who finds "not knowing" frightening? Say, for example, this writer feels it safer to remain loyal to preformed ideas and her writing process is to transcribe those ideas. Yet at the same time she finds her writing is not quite making it into that higher register, and so she becomes cross-footed and frustrated. Is this a situation you have come across in your teaching?

All answers from Mary L. Tabor…

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