Mariah Proctor
Memoir, Fiction, and Screenwriter.
Received a Master's in Creative Writing
University of Oxford, 2017
Associate Editor
The professional does not wait for inspiration; he acts in anticipation of it. --Steven Pressfield
Writers Who Inspire Me:
C.S. Lewis, Louisa May Alcott, Thomas Hardy, Khaled Hosseini, Candice Millard, Arthur Miller, Maya Angelou.
A Bit About Me
March 24, 1990. A baby is born. Two scientists, the child’s uncle and grandfather, eagerly timed and logged the sequence of labor. It was nearly a spectator sport before the main event had even arrived, but she must have sensed the build-up and desiring to understand story structure even then, brought a culmination that did not disappoint. The party was gathered around waiting for a first cry, but their perked ears were met instead by a mew like a cat, then a chirp, and finally a bark. Contrary to initial assumptions, she was not unaware of the species to which she had been born, she merely had a flare for the theatrical from the very first moment of her life.
They gave her the first name Mariah, after the sacred mount in the Holy Land. No middle name. An oversight she would complain about constantly until the third grade, and then realize how much fun it was to engage people in a futile guessing game. Her surname was Proctor, which gave people lifelong license to suggest she was in the right place any time she went to take a test. She bears the name boldly and eventually did learn to cry, and then laugh, and then speak, and then write.
Sample Passages
"They Call Me Mama"
Motherhood Memoir, Current Project
"At Night in This Valley"
Master's Thesis, Novel
"A New Meaning for the Rooster that Marked Peter’s Denial"
Published Article, Meridian Magazine
Don Bluth– Drawing from His Imagination
Exclusive Interview, Meridian Magazine
Finally, I awoke one morning—seven days after my ever-consistent period should’ve arrived—and decided to start thinking of myself as a pregnant lady. I didn’t want to be the person so afraid of disappointment that I never allowed myself to be excited. My husband and I wanted a family and we’d decided together that now was the time to begin and though I was never one to be baby hungry or crave those future domestic days—I was a little exhilarated at the thought of who that little poppy seed inside me might become. There may have even been a little extra bounce in my step as I walked on the treadmill and eyed myself in a nearby mirror wondering what my growing belly would soon look like. I was a pregnant lady, officially. I was going to be embrace it.
And then I began to bleed.
And the bleeding wouldn’t stop.
And the nurse from the OB/GYN said positive tests are rarely false—even faint ones, and I probably had been pregnant. But I wasn’t anymore. And I brushed it off like it was basically a late period and I wouldn’t have even known the difference if it weren’t for the test. But as each trip to the bathroom saw more scarlet, clotted hope drained away, I couldn’t help but cry and cry.
When we were first dropped off at GG’s, I expected we’d only be there a few months. On the drive up from Las Vegas, Mom had said she had a job to do and she’d be moving around too much to take us with. Three months, that’s what I expected it would be. She had a big calendar that she would write all of her auditions and gigs on in red, green and blue marking pens. It came with us from apartment to apartment and she’d let Meg and I take turns being the one to rip off the past month when it was time for a new one. Pilot season was three rips, summer stock was three rips, I assumed she’d be back in three rips.
But summer ended and I did start 4th grade with GG’s help. I spent the fall practicing long division in the window seat in the front, hoping I’d be first to hear Mom’s tires crunching up the gravel drive. In the winter, I was in the church road show called, “I’ve Been Working on the Railroad.” I didn’t have a big role, but I thought maybe she’d hear about it and come. I played a railroad track. I looked out sideways at every audience while trying to lay perfectly still, but I never saw her. What kept me up on Christmas Eve was not thoughts of Santa, but thoughts of Mom. Surely she’ll come on Christmas, or call.
It would be eight months before we heard her voice again and a year before we saw her. And even then, she didn’t come to take us back.
Perhaps Peter didn’t understand how far short he could fall until that night when the Son of living God needed his loyalty most and he failed to give it. But in finding where he fell, he could finally be humbled enough to truly stand in the testimony of Jesus. Perhaps before that he believed too much in his own strength, perhaps all the miracles he’d witnessed made him believe he too was something more than just a man.
But the cock crew and he remembered that he wasn’t.
Walt himself was often absent from the studio during Don’s first year at Disney, spending his time instead in Anaheim, trying to scrape together the resources to construct the happiest place on earth,’ a project “no one believed would be anything.” Don mentally planned out how it would be if he ever met his boyhood idol, the man who had so influenced his life’s direction. He thought through how he would react and what he would say, all that remained was to find an opportunity to let his plans play out and catch a glimpse of the elusive Walt.
Some of the animators would go out to the vacant lot next to the studio at noon to play volleyball, despite the persistent heat of the midday, Burbank sun. They would get hot and sweaty, but there were showers in the basement of the animation building where they could clean up before going back to work. One day when they had finished a game and were tossing the ball around on their way back inside, Don caught the ball and began to run as he turned when suddenly he bumped into somebody and was knocked to the ground. He looked up to see who it was, but the sun was shining brightly silhouetting the face of the man in front of him. Intent squinting brought him to the realization that it was Walt and clearly their first meeting would not be the suave and impressive interaction Don had once hoped for.
“It reminded me of that scene in Bambi where the great stag is standing there looking at the little deer and the little deer is trying to say something and finally he doesn’t get a chance. He doesn’t say anything at all, the stag turns and walks away. But Walt did say something; he just simply said, 'if you slow down, you’ll go farther,’ then he just walked on.”
She didn’t remember ever being told that she was to arrive at the Area 89 café at precisely 17:15 and leave at precisely 17:45, but she’d been doing it as long as she could remember. They all had.
She saw the tall man in his worn cap reach up and touch the awning with his right hand as he passed under it, just as he always did. That woman with her tight curls had already rushed ahead of the others, per her usual. MX didn’t know their letters, but she was accustomed to their faces and their habits in a way that reminded her of something she’d read about in her assignments: family. She’d read about families eating together. There was something warm and pleasant about the thought, though she understood clearly why she was never to include references to such in her completed texts.
Family meant that sometimes people would leave the task at hand for the sake of somebody else. There was no consistency, no efficiency in that. Besides, sometimes fathers weren’t there or mothers failed to raise obedient children. Family meant disappointed expectations and conflict. No, the Bureau was the best caretaker. With the Bureau as both mother and father, there would be no distress, no poverty.
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