QUESTIONS TAKEN FROM A RECENT PHONE AUTHOR CHAT
from
a book group in the Detroit area --a fun, fun event that produced some
thought-provoking discussion:
QUESTION: To what extent are your characters in TIME in a Garden
modeled on real people?
ANSWER: Good question and one that my buddies on the Bay View
[Michigan] Memorial Garden crew asked me also. Obviously, an author
writes from what they know. On the garden crew in summer, we have some
amazing discussions about life, death, children, retirement, our pasts
and our futures.
I have come to believe that community gardening is
one of the most exciting activities in which a person can participate,
especially working to maintain a memorial garden where there is an
intense sense of being close to what it means to "live" and "grow" and
"be in community". That said, while I owe my colleagues a great debt
in how honestly and freely they have shared their collective life
truths, the actual characters in TIAG and the entire situation in the
story is fiction.
Among the closer-to-life scenes in the book was the
description of the magnificent lace panel Eve received from Adam for
her birthday, with the words "Time began in a garden" woven into the
design. Such a panel was a genuine gift to me from a dear friend on
the garden crew—a loving act that, it turns out, inspired the book in
the first place. I was actually working on VOX at the time and after
looking at that panel in the window above my computer for about a
month, I closed the file on VOX for the time being and spent the next
three years writing TIAG.
QUESTION: What is your favorite time of day to write?
ANSWER: Writing is addictive. When my 4 daughters were still young, I
found myself staying up nights a lot, whenever the mood struck,
although they still lovingly complain about my "zoning out" from time
to time when I just had to get something down on paper. The very worst
was the time I took my laptop out on our sailboat—not good.
I have a
very patient husband, so nowadays I just pretty much write all day
long on-and-off between my music and my weaving. When I occasionally
have prolonged bouts of "writer’s insomnia", he threatens to keep a
rubber mallet alongside the bed!
Author Mary Agria fields questions from a senior
citizen garden club in Greenport, Long Island, NY–and invites book
groups to arrange conference call "chats" discussing her work.
