Interview with Mary Ann Taylor-Hall and Marcia Hurlow’s Beginning Fiction Writing Class at Asbury College

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Sarabande Books: Welcome to the Sarabande in Education Chatroom! Today, author Mary Ann Taylor-Hall will be chatting with Marcia Hurlow's Beginning Fiction Writing Class.

mary ann taylor-hall: just logged on.

SarabandeBooks: Good afternoon, Mary Ann. How are you?

Marcia: just logged on.

SarabandeBooks: Hi, Marcia! Mary Ann and I are both here.

Marcia: Hi, Mary Ann! How's things in Sadieville?

SarabandeBooks: Marcia, Mary Ann seems to be taking a while to respond. I'll send her an e-mail to see if everything is okay.

Marcia: Your characters are rounded and intriguing, even minor ones. Are they mostly painted from life, composites of real people or purely fictional?

SarabandeBooks: Mary Ann, are you still there?

mary ann taylor-hall: Hello everyone--I'm sorry--I was waiting for a message to appear on my screen. It just occurred to me to hit the update button. To answer your question, Marcia--Most of my characters have some
toehold on my own sensibility and experience. But that changes as I write. In the case of Undella, in the Yo-Yo story--she just showed up in her pith helmet on the edge of the crowd, and kept coming on.

SarabandeBooks: Marcia, I'm not quite sure what the problem is here. I just chatted online with Mary Ann yesterday afternoon and things were fine... She did log on, so she should be here...

Marcia: It's been said that all writing is autobiographical to some degree. How much of yourself is in the central characters in this collection of stories and how do you deal with autobiography in your stories--do you start out with autobiographical elments and fictionalize them, or do you start with fictional elements and add shadings and details from your own life. (this and previous question from Dave Hoovler)

Marcia: How did Undella "keep coming on"--do you recall how she revealed herself to you?

mary ann taylor-hall: I'm going to answer Dave Hoovler's question more completely while I wait--What I generally start with, insofar as I can reconstruct the process, is a strong feeling, attachment, for a place.
The characters start, then, in my own response to that place, but quickly change, as the dramatic situation becomes clear to me. a e

Marcia: Mary Ann, we have four native kentuckian here, and they (really, all of us) were excited about how you use the Central Kentucky landscape in your stories. Is having this particular landscape important to you; does the landscape inspire the plot.

mary ann taylor-hall: I had a very strong visual image of her, almost as though I had dreamed her. I could draw her right now, she was so particular to me--but before she showed up, of course, Slip Finnigan was walking the dog. She came in response to the obvious need, if I meant to construct a story, for Slip to come up against someone or something. But Undella, of course, owns this story--she's the one who learns, changes. Slip is the agent of that change. And he also came out of nowhere--I'd seen a yo-yo salesman when I was about twelve years old, in my rural
school in central Florida. I guess I remembered him.

SarabandeBooks: While Mary Ann is responding, let me remind all of you that if you register in the Discussion Area of the site sometime this afternoon, I will make sure to get you a copy of this chat.

Marcia: Several of the students (I had them write out questions ahead--spontaneity are us) wanted to know about your writing process, such as when, where and how long per day do you write. Do you have a certain routine?

Marcia: Some of my students saw a yo-yo salesman in San Francisco when they did their Route 66 trip over spring break.

mary ann taylor-hall: To the four native Kentuckians--the landscape that surrounds me out here in Harrison County, has always spoken to me very strongly--I'm not a native Kentuckian myself. I came here from a life of
much travel, and a childhood in Florida, which was when I grew up there changing, growing, in ways that Kentucky is only beginning to grow now. I've lived here now for over twenty years, and for about fifteen of those, this world seemed fairly unchanging. I love the landscape here, it has some voice for me. I almost would say that these hills and narrow valleys have a kind of music coming out of them for me. And I can imagine the people who lived here before me. I feel at home here, as I think a writer must feel about the place she feels drawn to write about.


Marcia: Elizabeth Dickens asked, "All of your heroines, with the possible exception of Jana in "Advanced Beginners," seem very unhappy about their liberation. What would make these women happy? Or am I
incorrect to perceive them as unahppy?"

mary ann taylor-hall: Route 66! Far Out! Well, I've got a feeling San Francisco is where all the yo-yo salesmen must end up. There or Sing -Sing.

Marcia: Hi! I'm just chatting while you write. Did Greg tell you or Jim that Jorie got a Corgie puppy? Greg said that you got one.

mary ann taylor-hall: Elizabeth Dickens--I don't perceive them as unhappy about their liberation. I'm trying to think about them one at a time--I don't like generalizations. Undella's unhappy that Slip has stolen her truck and that she let herself in for it, but I surely don't think that ending is unhappy--she's got herself in motion, she's on her
way. I just think, well, she's got a way to think about her life now, she knows a little more than she did. When she says she's a born athlete. I believe her. Rosa's at the end of her life, and of course her situation is much less retrievable, but even she, at the end, has that vision of the child screaming for joy. I believe that the heroines of
"Todo El Mundo" and "The World's Room" are not innocent any longer--that's what they've had to give up--but I think they are both moving toward what they need to fulfill themselves.ti, t

Marcia: Mary Ann Nestman writes, "How do you know when a piece is finished, that you don't want to revise it any more?"

Marcia: Pascha Wenz asked, "Do you ever write from a man's perspective?"

Marcia: Katie Moore (of Versailles, KY) writes, "You seem to prefer isolated settings. What purpose do they serve you in your stories?"

SarabandeBooks: Marcia, I wouldn't send more than a few questions at a time, it might get a little too overwhelming.

mary ann taylor-hall: Sometimes I know a piece is finished because it tells me so, very clearly--Jana looking out the window and seeing the snow and telling herself it would be all right, that seemed to me where
the story was headed, and I felt when I came to that as though I'd hit the major finishing chord. In the case of "H ow She Knows..." I was so mistaken about the story that I published it in what I thought was its finished form, only to realize three months later that it was WRONG. So I had to re-write it, to make myself happy. I'm more inclined to make the mistake of thinking a story is finished when it isn't than of going on beyond the natural resting place for it.

Marcia: The students want to know where "How She Knows What She Know..." ended before, or was it very different overall. They're also impressed that you rewrote it after it was published. (So am I!)

mary ann taylor-hall: Pascha: I've written part of a novel from a man's perspective. And I'm working on a screenplay now whose point of view (if you can call it that in a script) is divided between a young Kentucky
farmer and a black jockey before the Civil War. I like that experience--I'm glad to know I can do it. But my fiction is almost always, at least till now, either first-person, or very limited, deep third-person penetration of a woman's psyche. That's what the areas of experience I seem drawn to write about have led me to. I'm hoping someday to try for that kind of depth in writing from the point of view of a man

Marcia: Nickole, are we still connected?

mary ann taylor-hall: Let me answer Katie's question about isolated settings before I tell you about what happened with "How She Knows...." I wasn't aware that I choose isolated settings--you may be right. Let's
see. Well, Banana Boats takes place in a regular neighborhood in Florida, with backflashes to a fairly intense childhood in Chicago. I guess "Todo El Mundo" is sort of isolated, the farm where Leila lives--but,, given the neighbors, probably not isolated enough to suit Leila. But you're right about Advanced Beginners and The World's
Room--as I said, it's usually the place that speaks to me first, and both those places had a very powerful hold on my imagination. So the heroines got plunked down there because I wanted to write about them there. I'll post this, then come back and answer the other question, okay?

SarabandeBooks: There are just a fifteen minutes or so remaining. Do you or your class have any final comments for Mary Ann?

mary ann taylor-hall: The story, in its original form, let old Slip off the hook--he DIDN'T steal Undella's truck! He only thought about it--she found it with the keys in the ignition and that lei around the rear view mirror. But after its publication, I got to thinking, if he doesn't steal the truck, then he's the one who changes--she changes him, and he doesn't, can't, do what he set out to do. He leaves, of course, but leaves her her truck. It seemed to me that that interrupted the trajectory, the arch, that the story was meant to have, to complete itself. Undella had to learn something--I'm not here to say what it is she learned, I don't think I could. But it can't be learned if she isn't forced up against the outermost limits of her character, I don't think.

Marcia: Nickole, I think we've asked all of our questions. Mary Ann is giving us great, thoughtful answers. Thanks so much, Mary Ann! We really appreciate your ideas and time. Sarah and David and Pascha, and Kelly:
"We want to be you, except us!" I think this says it all.

Marcia: Nickole, can you save this in some form for us?

mary ann taylor-hall: .....just logged off!

SarabandeBooks: Yes. As I said before, I will be sending a copy of this interview to you and to all the students who register in this discussion area.

SarabandeBooks: Thank you very much for your participation!