Mary J. Miller Quotes

#1. It's also obsessiveness. I'll spend a lot of time working on a single sentence, debating over a dash or a colon, etc. I want things to be perfect. I know nothing will ever be as perfect as I want it, and this is very sad, but sometimes I can get close.

Mary J. Miller

#2. I can't remember who said it - I think it was Allan Gurganus when he was visiting the Michener Center - but he told us to "spend [our] gold," meaning, put everything you have into a story. Other "gold" will be waiting for you for your next project.

Mary J. Miller

#3. I wish I knew exactly who I was. I was talking to a friend earlier about the advice people give each other, advice like "just be yourself," and how this is particularly awful because it presumes we know who we are. As if people are static and unchanging.

Mary J. Miller

#4. Making all of those words work together is difficult. It took a lot of cleaning up, a lot of rewriting scenes in order to make them more vivid. I used everything - every oddity I've ever seen on the side of the road, every interesting memory I could make relevant.

Mary J. Miller

#5. I've learned so much from my professors and have been fortunate to have had so many good ones, including Frederick and Steven Barthelme, Edward Carey, Jim Magnuson, and Elizabeth McCracken.

Mary J. Miller

#6. I want to be able to discuss craft but I also want to teach writers to trust their instincts and learn to listen to themselves above all others.

Mary J. Miller

#7. I think there simply comes a point at which you're beating your head against the wall with revision, when you're making something different but not better. For me, revision usually has more to do with making the language prettier, finding clearer images, using more active verbs.

Mary J. Miller

#8. There's definitely a magical quality to writing that can't be explained. I can write something I love in two days, or I can work on a story every day for months and it never comes together.

Mary J. Miller

#9. There are many stories I've wanted to write that I'm simply not able to - sometimes I haven't found the way in yet, and it doesn't matter how hard I try.

Mary J. Miller

#10. Some of the things I liked in my years as a student in workshops: the occasional in-class prompt; discussions about what it means to be a writer in the world; professors who are brutally honest and encouraging at the same time (this is a tough one).

Mary J. Miller

#11. You don't need a dead father to explain a character's sadness. And impressing yourself with wit/cleverness often feels like what it is - authorial intrusion.

Mary J. Miller

#12. It's difficult for me to imagine any scene differently because I've read the book so many times. The book, as a whole, seems like a document that wouldn't withstand any changes at this point. Or perhaps I simply can't imagine having to revise it again.

Mary J. Miller

#13. Perhaps adding a line or two of dialogue to try to better capture an emotion. But I've found that if the story isn't there in the beginning, right from the start, I generally can't beat it into shape no matter how much rewriting I do.

Mary J. Miller

#14. Sometimes the way comes later, when I'm not working or thinking about it at all. When stories don't work, you try to convince yourself that all of that time and energy wasn't wasted, that it will make you a better writer, if nothing else.

Mary J. Miller

#15. I haven't taught creative writing all that much (my CW teaching consists of a few summer workshops for elementary school children and an eight-week class for older adults), and I don't really know what my teaching style is yet.

Mary J. Miller

#16. A story works when there's momentum, life behind the words. Some stories have this and others don't, and it's difficult to say why this is. If all stories "worked," though, writing wouldn't be much of a challenge; it wouldn't be art.

Mary J. Miller