Ask the Author: Mary Mackey
Answered Questions (10)
Mary Mackey
Great question! I had to really think about it for a minute. I think the honest answer is that I do a great deal of research on the period I'm writing about before I sit down to create my characters. I read like crazy: history, fiction, memoirs, anything I can get my hands on. I visit museums, look at drawings of fashions, consult old photographs, visit the locations of my novels.
All during this period, I am constantly trying to put myself in the minds and bodies of the characters I am about bring to life. What did they see? What did they think? What did they smell? How were they different than we are now? What did they believe that we don't believe?
No detail is too small; no detail is unimportant. Did 17th century women have trouble doing up the buttons on the backs of their dresses? Did they even have buttons?
I have long had it as a basic principle that I will not write a novel until I can imagine the main characters speaking to me. So often, I close my eyes and see if I can hear a dialogue taking place between us: "Who are you?" I ask. "What do you want?" "Is this plot I've come up with going to work for us?" "Do you have any suggestions?"
Once I can hear the characters, I have some final decisions to make: will I have them speak in the language of their own era (say 19th century) or will I make the language more contemporary for the benefit of contemporary reader? Usually, I end up compromising by taking the stiffness out of their sentences but still using words from the specific period.
I try to remind myself that people speaking to one another in any era hear what they are saying as normal conversation. The stiffness or strangeness we may perceive, is an effect of the time that has passed between us and them. They might have said: "Thy breech is foule be-torne;" but what they were actually hearing is "you have a hole in your pants."
All during this period, I am constantly trying to put myself in the minds and bodies of the characters I am about bring to life. What did they see? What did they think? What did they smell? How were they different than we are now? What did they believe that we don't believe?
No detail is too small; no detail is unimportant. Did 17th century women have trouble doing up the buttons on the backs of their dresses? Did they even have buttons?
I have long had it as a basic principle that I will not write a novel until I can imagine the main characters speaking to me. So often, I close my eyes and see if I can hear a dialogue taking place between us: "Who are you?" I ask. "What do you want?" "Is this plot I've come up with going to work for us?" "Do you have any suggestions?"
Once I can hear the characters, I have some final decisions to make: will I have them speak in the language of their own era (say 19th century) or will I make the language more contemporary for the benefit of contemporary reader? Usually, I end up compromising by taking the stiffness out of their sentences but still using words from the specific period.
I try to remind myself that people speaking to one another in any era hear what they are saying as normal conversation. The stiffness or strangeness we may perceive, is an effect of the time that has passed between us and them. They might have said: "Thy breech is foule be-torne;" but what they were actually hearing is "you have a hole in your pants."
Mary Mackey
For the first 10 years of my writing career, I was known almost exclusively as a poet. During that time, Shameless Hussy Press published my first novel "Immersion" but it too was written like a long prose poem and like so many of my poems, it gave a lyrical vision of the tropical rainforests.
Since my novel "McCarthy's List" was published by Doubleday in 1979, I've been known primarily as a novelist and have written 13 novels.This is all to say that I haven't so much branched out into writing poetry as gone back to my first love.
Actually, I love writing poetry and novels equally because each offers me a different experience. II write all my novels on my computer and all my poems out in longhand in a special notebook. Novels are more public. Poems are more personal.
Novels take a long time to research write--a year, two years,sometimes more. They are long projects that absorb you every day. They're complex--you have to keep track of thousands of details and make thousands of decisions. You create characters, fall in love with them, hate to leave them when the novel is finished. You get to tell stories, entertain yourself and other people.
Writing poetry is different. Poems come to me in a single burst, as if a voice were speaking in my head.. I can finish the first draft of a poem in a single sitting. I'll have to revise it many times, but in the space of a few hours, I can have it in front of me, from beginning to end. Poems engage more of my emotions. They're more personal even when they aren't autobiographical. They touch my inner, spiritual core: my feelings and ideas about life and death, about the ambiguity of the human experience. They allow me to play with words and metaphors, to twist language, reform it, even invent it.
So I guess the simple answer to your question "why do you do both" is that prose gives me a kind of creative pleasure that poetry can't, and poetry gives me a kind of creative pleasure that prose can't provide.
Since my novel "McCarthy's List" was published by Doubleday in 1979, I've been known primarily as a novelist and have written 13 novels.This is all to say that I haven't so much branched out into writing poetry as gone back to my first love.
Actually, I love writing poetry and novels equally because each offers me a different experience. II write all my novels on my computer and all my poems out in longhand in a special notebook. Novels are more public. Poems are more personal.
Novels take a long time to research write--a year, two years,sometimes more. They are long projects that absorb you every day. They're complex--you have to keep track of thousands of details and make thousands of decisions. You create characters, fall in love with them, hate to leave them when the novel is finished. You get to tell stories, entertain yourself and other people.
Writing poetry is different. Poems come to me in a single burst, as if a voice were speaking in my head.. I can finish the first draft of a poem in a single sitting. I'll have to revise it many times, but in the space of a few hours, I can have it in front of me, from beginning to end. Poems engage more of my emotions. They're more personal even when they aren't autobiographical. They touch my inner, spiritual core: my feelings and ideas about life and death, about the ambiguity of the human experience. They allow me to play with words and metaphors, to twist language, reform it, even invent it.
So I guess the simple answer to your question "why do you do both" is that prose gives me a kind of creative pleasure that poetry can't, and poetry gives me a kind of creative pleasure that prose can't provide.
Mary Mackey
My most recent book is "Travelers With No Ticket Home," a series of poems many of which are set in the jungles of the amazon and the big cities of Brazil. I've been going to Brazil with my husband for the past 25 years, but the truth is, these poems come out of all the experiences of my life: real, visionary, spiritual, imaginary, coming from all ages, all the times I've been alive, all the places I've been. There is nothing you do or experience--no joy, no trauma, no moment--that can't become part of a poem.
Mary Mackey
I don't actually need to be inspired to write because I love to write even more than I love to eat chocolate. However I get inspired--that is to say I get ideas--in the oddest places at the oddest moments. For example, I came up with the idea for my New York Times best-seller "A Grand Passion" (a novel about 3 generations of women involved in ballet) while standing in the shower. The entire plot just popped into my head.
I got inspired to write "The Last Warrior Queen" by randomly pulling a book off a library shelf when I was grading freshman compositions, opening it, and finding myself reading "History Begins At Sumer" by the great historian Samuel Noah Kramer.
The idea for all the novels in "The Year The Horses Came" series, including the prequel I'm working on now, came from being given the manuscript of archaeologist Marija Gimbutas's great study of the goddess-worshiping cultures of Neolithic Europe "The Language of the Goddess." I took one look at it and said to myself:"These cultures possessed a message of peace and harmony that the world needs to hear about. I am going to raise up those people, put flesh on their bones, and make them real again."
I got inspired to write "The Last Warrior Queen" by randomly pulling a book off a library shelf when I was grading freshman compositions, opening it, and finding myself reading "History Begins At Sumer" by the great historian Samuel Noah Kramer.
The idea for all the novels in "The Year The Horses Came" series, including the prequel I'm working on now, came from being given the manuscript of archaeologist Marija Gimbutas's great study of the goddess-worshiping cultures of Neolithic Europe "The Language of the Goddess." I took one look at it and said to myself:"These cultures possessed a message of peace and harmony that the world needs to hear about. I am going to raise up those people, put flesh on their bones, and make them real again."
Mary Mackey
I'm currently working on a prequel to my best-selling "Year The Horses Came" trilogy (also known as "The Earthsong Trilogy"). It's exciting for me to return to the Goddess-worshiping cultures of Neolithic Europe. A lot has happened since I've been away.
Mary Mackey
Never give up. Keep on writing. Some of the greatest writers had a hard time getting published. Don't make publication a measure of how good you are. Create your own standards; constantly improve your craft; polish, polish, polish. My first conventionally published novel "McCarthy's List" was rejected by 250 publishers--perhaps every publisher in the world at the time. I took it back and revised it 12 times on a typewriter.The next time I submitted it, 12 publishers bid for it, and Doubleday published it. It was reviewed in the New York Times, sold well, and got me a movie deal with Warner Brothers. In short: keep clicking those keys and never give up.
Mary Mackey
The best thing about being a writer is writing. At least that's the best part of it for me. I love to write. I've loved to write since I was a small child. I'm never so happy as when I am sitting quietly in my study writing, creating something, moving into the world of imagination and possibility. My imagination takes me all over the world, through different times, to places possible and impossible. My great joy is offering you a chance to come with me by writing it all down.
Mary Mackey
As a university professor who teaches creative writing, I've counseled a lot of students about how to deal with writer's block. This is such a common question, that I've posted detailed answers to it on my website at www.marymackey.com. The short answer is that you need to forget the outside word: forget about that critic who sits on your shoulder and tell him to take a hike; forget about whether what you are writing will be published or not published; forget about what members of your family or people you care about will think when they read what you've written; even forget about grammar, spelling, and making sense. Just write. Write fast, write without thinking too much. Once you have something down on paper, you can always revise it. There's nothing that can't be fixed. For a longer, more detailed discussion the secrets for dealing with writer's block plus additional tips, please see:
The First Secret To Overcoming Writer's Block
http://marymackey.com/the-first-secre...
The Second Secret To Overcoming Writer's Block
http://marymackey.com/the-second-secr...
The Third Secret To Overcoming Writer's Block
http://marymackey.com/the-third-secre...
You are warmly invited to ask questions on my website about specific posts or to offer comments. I'm always happy to share my knowledge with other writers.
The First Secret To Overcoming Writer's Block
http://marymackey.com/the-first-secre...
The Second Secret To Overcoming Writer's Block
http://marymackey.com/the-second-secr...
The Third Secret To Overcoming Writer's Block
http://marymackey.com/the-third-secre...
You are warmly invited to ask questions on my website about specific posts or to offer comments. I'm always happy to share my knowledge with other writers.
Mary Mackey
Those are great questions, Ellen. The inspiration for novels and poems comes from the same source, but the process and enjoyment and results are different. I write all my novels on my laptop. It takes me from 8 months to two years to research and complete a novel because I do a lot of polishing and revising. So, with novels, the process is long and the rewards are postponed. Also, novels demand a great deal of rational attention because you have to create a coherent narrative for your story and remember thousands--maybe hundreds of thousands of details.
In contrast, when I write poetry, I always do the first draft in longhand in a notebook. The writing takes place in absolute silence with no computer interface between me and the poem. Poetry, at least the kind of poetry I write, carries a powerful emotional charge even when it's not autobiographical. Often I write an entire poem in one sitting--something you could never do if you were writing a novel. I then go back and revise meticulously, sometimes not letting any one else see the poem for years until I feel it's polished and ready.
I love the emotional punch, the mystical vision, the inspiration of poetry that comes like a burst of light in my brain. I also love the long, great, complex game of writing a novel. It's all play for me at the highest level. As for determining whether to write a poem or a novel: I have no control over that except for setting aside the time I need. The ideas themselves just come to me, sometimes in dreams, sometimes as thoughts, sometimes because I've read a great book or an article about something. When the ideas come, they are already poems or novel ideas. All I can do is chose which I want to work on at any given moment.
In contrast, when I write poetry, I always do the first draft in longhand in a notebook. The writing takes place in absolute silence with no computer interface between me and the poem. Poetry, at least the kind of poetry I write, carries a powerful emotional charge even when it's not autobiographical. Often I write an entire poem in one sitting--something you could never do if you were writing a novel. I then go back and revise meticulously, sometimes not letting any one else see the poem for years until I feel it's polished and ready.
I love the emotional punch, the mystical vision, the inspiration of poetry that comes like a burst of light in my brain. I also love the long, great, complex game of writing a novel. It's all play for me at the highest level. As for determining whether to write a poem or a novel: I have no control over that except for setting aside the time I need. The ideas themselves just come to me, sometimes in dreams, sometimes as thoughts, sometimes because I've read a great book or an article about something. When the ideas come, they are already poems or novel ideas. All I can do is chose which I want to work on at any given moment.
Mary Mackey
Research is definitely a big part of the fun of writing historical fiction. One of the best things I have to do is travel to interesting places to scout locations. My novels have taken me to Paris, Russia, London, Berlin, Borneo, India, Nepal, Rio de Janeiro, and remote places in the Amazon rainforest. When I was writing "The Year The Horses Came," which is about the Goddess-worshiping cultures of Neolithic Europe, I took a research trip to Romania and Bulgaria to look at ancient goddess sculptures and stare at the great gold hoards of the nomad invaders. I could go on an on about how much fun it is to do historical research. You are always learning something new, and you never get bored.
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