writer
"The novel is an art form that has never come that easily to me. It is a big lumbering an animal. It takes years out of our lives. I have often said that if a short story is a fling a novel is a marriage, years of good days and bad, but always ending hopefully with the divorce we call publication. But the writing of the novel, the shape of it can be an elusive thing. I am in awe of anyone who undertakes and especially of those who succeed.
Perhaps because I grew up among architects I have often felt that writing your first novel or any novel for that matter is a little like building a skyscraper except you haven't spent years in school learning the principles of engineering, of supports and crossbeams, and even if you had the truth is it probably wouldn't do you much good anyway.
Telling a story at its onset is an intuitive thing. But the shaping of it which can take years is another. " from "The Muse and the Miner: Inspiration and Drudgery in the Shaping of the Novel" - a craft talk by Mary Morris, delivered at the Squaw Valley Community of Writers, August 2003.
As a writer, Mary Morris is available to give humorous, yet useful, talks on the craft of writing and to read from her numerous stories and novels.
- Anita Shreve"I loved it. The writing is superb, and the tension Morris creates between Andrea and Loretta keeps the reader anxious - a beautiful example of the thread of literary suspense."
- Jodi Picoult"The River Queen is my new favorite book. I wish I'd been the one to write something so flawless, so honest and so resonant."
author of
My Sister's Keeper