Mary Beth Miller

See how our lab puppies have grown!

Biography

    I grew up in Bay City, Michigan best known as the home of Madonna. I didn't know her, and I don't know anyone who did despite coming from a very large family (around 50 first cousins). My family camped all over Michigan and took two cross country trips when I was in sixth and eighth grades. I spent a lot of time walking in the woods and pipe dreaming. I always wanted a horse and even played with paper horses like the heroine of National Velvet. I didn't have a real horse then. I had to visit other people's stables and sneak rides on pregnant Shetland ponies to get my fix.
     I went to Cedar Crest College in Allentown, PA for two years before transferring. I finished my degree in English Lit at Fairfield University in Fairfield, CT. I worked as a waitress, book store clerk, and receptionist to finance my way through school. I never went long without a pet, even during school. I had only one cat back then, and we bought a dog for my oldest son a year after he was born.
   We moved to Coudersport, PA in 1991. We lived there until 2007 when we moved to Texas.

These are my kids. They don't mind having a writer for a mother, although they aren't that interested in what I write. Only my daughter has read one of my books. The boys claim they're going to, but I don't know. I think they're afraid I wrote about them, which I didn't. Lots of people assume that I do, though. They figure that my kids give me ideas for books and scenes. So far, none of my kids is anything like my characters.
In a weird way, my characters are close to me. They're not quite family but more than friends. Because I created them, I probably know more about my characters than I do about my kids, but that's as it should be. I probably don't want to know everything my kids think, but I have to know what my characters think about everything or else they wouldn't seem real. While I'm writing from my character's point of view, I "live" in their heads.

FAQs

1. Where do you get your ideas?

2. How long have you been a writer? When did you decide to be a writer?

3. Did you know anyone who killed themselves?

4. How do you write?

5. Why do you write?

6. I want to be a writer. What do you recommend I do to succeed?

Answers

1. Ideas come from life. Sounds fancy, but I get ideas in the strangest places and for the strangest reasons. Sometimes what flashes through my mind isn't so much an idea as a fragment of an idea. Some part of a book or character occurs to me when I'm sitting in a symphony. Or I realize I've completely forgotten to include a character's dog after the first chapter part way through weeding a garden. Both are true examples of how my brain works and how ideas are pieced together when I'm not writing. I rarely get a good idea by sitting at my desk and staring at my computer screen.

2. I wrote my first story in Mr. Hoyle's fifth grade class. I was so wrapped up in it, I couldn't wait to get home to finish writing it. Between that and the realization when I was about that same age that actual people wrote the books I loved and that I, therefore, being a person, could do so, too, I decided I wanted to write. I began to write "seriously" in 1986 after I graduated college.

3. I did not have a good friend or close relative who committed suicide. Writers use their imagination, feelings, and empathy to create characters. We also use ourselves. There is always a little bit of a writer in every character a writer creates, even if it's only a character's fascination with bees, which the author may have loved when they were young. I have no desire to do more than watch bees pollinate flowers from a safe distance, so that's not a real example.

4. This is answered in greater detail on my Writing Process page. The gist of it is, I plant my butt in my chair and do it. Then I revise a lot, put it away to gain a perspective on it, then I revise even more.

5. I write to amuse myself. I write to amuse others. I write to understand myself and to try to understand others. I write to order the world in a way I can deal with and to answer the questions that plague me. What if . . . ? There are so many "what ifs" in life, yet we can only live our lives one way with only one answer to each question at a time. In a bizarre way, writing a book is like living more than one life and seeing what's down that road not taken.

6. Read everything you can get your hands on. Then go to the library and find something else to read. Try to figure out what you like best about each book and why. Then study the books to see what didn't work and why. Then write—a lot. Don't give up and don't only write one thing, whether it's a book or short story. Have another story idea rattling around in your head and ready to go when you're done working on the first story. Learn to revise, to accept criticism, and to deal with rejection. Learn to live with very little money but with all your friends believing you're richer than Bill Gates (okay, maybe not him, but definitely you will be expected to make as much money as J.K. Rowling). Learn how to believe in yourself and in your work. Know that writers write just as painters paint. Whether you've sold a story to a major magazine is no more relevant to the title of writer than whether a painter has had a major exhibition in the Guggenheim. If you write, you are a writer.