Mary Miller lives in Mississippi with her husband and dog. You can find her stories online in Barrelhouse, elimae, Vestal Review, SmokeLong Quarterly, Storyglossia, and FRiGG. In print, she has work forthcoming in Swink, KNOCK, and NOÖ Journal.

You’re currently working on a novel. How is the process going so far? Can you divulge anything about the story?

I’m sort of stalled, actually, in this place where I’ve decided it’s rambling and going nowhere and lost, but then I’ll sit down at my computer and open it up to a random page and like what I read, so I just need to get over myself. I’m in my way, but I hope to change that soon. I honestly have no idea what it’s about. It’s about nothing, really, and chock-full of insights about nothing. Lately I’ve realized that I write around the story a lot, which doesn’t really bother me all that much, but perhaps there’s a small audience for an entire novel that avoids itself.

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Recently, you finished a manuscript of short fiction, titled “We Are Very Blessed.” What types of stories are included in the collection, and what are your plans for it?

My plans are to get it published. How, I don’t know yet, but I really like it. I’ve basically written the stories I want to read. The narrators are mostly depressed and disconnected and they make me feel better about myself.

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You’re a talented and prolific writer of flash fiction. Every time I blink, it seems you’ve come up with something new and provocative. How do you constantly churn out quality work at the pace you do? Is there some secret hidden within your writing routine?

Thanks. Writing is all-consuming for me. I’m always looking for the next story, thinking about things that have happened. Writing helps me figure things out. Often I’ll write something I didn’t know I knew, which has to be one of the greatest feelings in the world. And I’m jobless, which helps. I’ve actually never had a job which compensated me adequately, no matter how much money I earned. I’m not suited for work, really. I have trouble shaving my legs and returning phone calls and I end up with all these psychosomatic problems.

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What is your writing routine like, and where do you write? Are you frantic and messy? Exact and controlled? Are you one of those people who can write anywhere? With music on?

My routine is morning, evening, whenever. I go to sleep at nine o’clock, though. My mother never had to tell me to get in bed. I’m a perfectionist, will work on a sentence for hours. Sometimes I listen to music. I write at a junky desk.

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You are a self-professed flash fiction junkie. What is it about flash that has you hooked?

For me, flash fiction has the best qualities of poetry—precise, musical, efficient—plus a story. And I love stories. I wish there were more full length collections of flash. There are so few of them, and you have to really go looking for the ones that are out there. I can’t wait for the day when I can walk into a bookstore and buy flash collections by Kathy Fish and Kim Chinquee and Robert Bradley and Jeff Landon, among so many other amazing flash writers.

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Who are some of your favorite writers of short fiction? Which literary magazines do you regularly turn to?

I read everything—novels, memoir, poetry, flash, short stories, travel/fashion/feminist/ literary magazines—so I often feel like I read nothing. I should focus, but there are so many books out there and I’m a book junkie. I could fill a whole house. That being said, I love Mary Gaitskill and Amy Hempel and Larry Brown. My favorite literary magazines are Open City, Swink, Land-Grant College Review, and Tin House, but basically I just like words on a page. If someone’s bothered to write them down I feel like I should read them.

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I’d like to be able to say that if I read your story “South Dakota,” which was published in elimae, without your byline attached to it, I’d be able to say: Now that’s a Mary Miller piece. It has a certain lilt that I’ve come to associate with your writing, and these really cool lines like: “She was pregnant, which made her look less shiny.” Plus, there is a sexiness to it, which, to me, is also very Mary Miller-ish. Which part of this story do you think is most “you”?

Oh, thanks. This story has a lot of things people would call mistakes. For example, the table is wearing tennis shoes, and there are all these extraneous words (like all those likes in the second sentence), but these are the things I find interesting about this piece.

What is most me? I’d like to say that my writing provides insights into the way we act and why, or that’s my goal. Why does the narrator befriend the fat girl, encourage her delusion, and then end up wanting to be just like her? Humans are so complicated and damaged and I love them so much.

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Carson McCullers once said this about the South: “The South has always been a section apart from the rest of the United States, having interests and a personality distinctly its own… Southerner[s]… have certain recognizable and national psychological traits. Hedonistic, imaginative, lazy, and emotional…” Living in Mississippi, do you think Carson McCullers was right, or have the years changed the South? Do you consider yourself a “Southern” writer?

I find it difficult to answer this question, regarding the traits of Southerners. I’ve never lived anywhere but Mississippi (save for a six-month stint in Austin), so it’s hard for me to say this is what we’re like, and how it differs from those in, say, Denver or Chicago. It’s also hard for me to say whether the years have changed the South. I’m 29, so I learned about Mississippi’s past in school books, like everybody else. That being said, I feel like the South, and Mississippi in particular, gets a bad rap. It’s a livable state, with great weather and nice people and a low cost of living. And racism is not limited to the South, or to the United States, and never has been.

I’ve just recently begun to think of myself as a Southern writer, but then I’m branching out lately. My stories, for a long time, were all about boys and girls and how they failed, over and over again, to connect, but now I’m writing about all sorts of things and some of them strike me as distinctly Southern. The fathers hunt and drink whiskey and don’t know what to do with their daughters, and the aunts and mothers are all passive- aggressive in their matching pantsuits.

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I must admit, I know very little about you. You’re like that mysterious girl in the back of the classroom, the one you’re dying to talk to, but don’t know what to say. How would you describe yourself?

I keep to myself unless I know you well and then I tend toward loud and crass. I like to read books, figure things out. I live in a pretty small world.

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The last I knew, you were in graduate school and working at a children’s shelter part-time. Is this still the case? If not, what are you up to now?

Just writing, right now. Reading, going to the gym, hanging out with my parents, meeting my husband for lunch. I got my teaching license but I’m trying my best not to use it. So far, so good.

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If you look ten years into the future, what do you see?

I try not to look too far ahead. I don’t know if I’m a novelist, though. I’d like to believe that there’s a place for those of us writing flash and short stories.

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Contact Mary

Read:

Go Fish
published by Barrelhouse

Angel
published by Vestal Review

A Blind Dog Named Killer and a Colony of Bees
published my SmokeLong Quarterly

Rain or Shine
published by SmokeLong Quarterly

A Detached Observer
published by Storyglossia

My Old Lady
published by Storyglossia

A Game of Pool
published by FRiGG

Hunger
published by FRiGG

Boyfriend
published by FRiGG

Dislocation
published by FRiGG

Debutante
published by FRiGG


Filed Under: The Writer Profile Project |