Darnell Arnoult is the author of a collection of poetry, What Travels With Us, and her novel Sufficient Grace. She lives in Brush Creek, Tennessee with “my ideal husband and our three horses, two goats, two cats, and five dogs, including a Great Pyrenees who thinks he's a lapdog and a gun-shy Walker Coonhound.” Arnoult did not write an autobiographical novel; however her mother (“who makes a cameo appearance as Violet”) was diagnosed with late onset schizophrenia when the author was only eight. Arnoult says, “At that time she [her mother] did draw a large picture of Jesus at the foot of my bed. Later, I went to live with my grandmother when I was about ten. In my thirties, I worried about heredity and Mother's illness. Fortunately, I'm about as balanced as a writer can hope to be.”
R&T: You have published a book of poetry, What Travels With Us, and a novel Sufficient Grace. Do you have a preference between poetry and prose? And, is the feeling you get while writing the two different?
Arnoult: Poetry is so concentrated and a novel is so expansive, but in both cases I’m trying to reveal or discover something, and I approach big ideas through small concrete things. Poetry requires a different mindset than fiction, but, in my case, one form of writing feeds the other. I enjoy developing and recognizing narrative threads and voice. As a fiction writer, I look for the story in the poem. As a poet, I search for just the right word or phrase for the fiction, and I rejoice in the unexpected ways language and image get my characters and my scenes across.
R&T: Tell us about the process of publishing Sufficient Grace.
Arnoult: I revised the manuscript several times before sending SG out to agents. I was fortunate to have personal referrals to agents from other writers, so I sent the manuscript out to each of those agents one at a time. The third agent I sent the manuscript to wanted to represent it. I was prepared to send it out many more times, if I’d had to. My agent made some suggestions for another limited revision. Her suggestions felt right to me, so I followed them. She then sent the manuscript out to several editors at once. A few were interested, and in the end Free Press made an offer and we accepted. I have a wonderful editor at Free Press. She gave me some very thoughtful feedback and guidance as I wrote the revision based on her comments. If she wanted me to cut something that I really thought needed to stay, she would ask me why it needed to be there. Then she would have me revise to make a better case for that element or scene or character. As a result, I wrote a better book.
I’ve come to see the vital nature of a writer’s collaboration with a good editor. And every relationship a writer has with the professionals at his or her publishing house should be seen as collaboration. If they are good at their job, they have a body of knowledge you don’t have and concerns that have never occurred to you as a writer. My first experience of getting a novel published has felt charmed. I’m extremely lucky.
R&T: What mistakes do you see writers making in the publishing process?
Arnoult: The three most common mistakes I see are writers who 1) send their manuscript out before it’s ready, 2) writers who don’t understand the large postage budget they may need to find an agent or editor interested in their manuscript, and 3) writers who give up too easily. Agent and former editor Noah Lukeman said at a workshop on finding an agent that a writer shouldn’t even get dismayed until he’s tried at least 50 agents.
Being published is a gift, it’s gravy. You don’t have to be published to be a writer. A writer writes.
R&T: How long did it take for you to complete Sufficient Grace?
Arnoult: If you look all the way back to the very first time I started writing about Gracie (whose name then was Alva) and Ed, it was eighteen years ago, but the novel changed drastically from the original version. It started as a short story about a woman leaving her husband, until all these other characters showed up. In those early days of the idea of Sufficient Grace (which is actually a late stage title) I was a single mother, working hard and trying to find time to write. I wrote in fits and starts. When I got married in April of 2000, my husband gave me the freedom to write full-time. I spent the first year getting WTWU ready to submit to LSU Press. Then I began work on the novel in earnest. From that point until I submitted the book to an agent was about two years.
R&T: When did you begin writing seriously for publication? And, when did you write just because you wanted to?
Arnoult: I’ve always written because I wanted to. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t care about being published. But I started writing fiction when I was eighteen. I was in my thirties when my first poem and my first short story were published. I had faith that I would get published, but if I was still an unpublished author, I’d still be writing. Even though a blank page can be intimidating, and sometimes I procrastinate going to that blank page to lay down a row of words, I can’t imagine a life where I didn’t have some story idea or character working its way to the surface, creating an urgent need to put words on a page. I am fifty, and my first two books have finally been published. I’m still writing because it’s what I love to do and what I’m compelled to do. And I’m still hoping someone will want to publish what I write next. But if they don’t, I’ll write the next thing that bubbles up.
R&T: Do you have a favorite author, and/or do you cross-genres when you read for pleasure? Are there authors that you read for insights into your own writing?
Arnoult: I don’t read a lot of genre fiction, even though I have a great deal of respect for writers who write in those specific traditions. The exception is Stephen King. I love Stephen King, who, in fact, resists being typed by virtue of the broad nature of his work. I get my genre fix from movies. My favorite writers are often southern, and more specifically southern Appalachian, and their work resonates beyond geography and is often considered literary fiction. But I read other authors who don’t have anything to do with the South too. Some of my favorites, and this list isn’t exhaustive by any means, include: Lee Smith, Larry Brown, Clyde Edgerton, Alan Gurganus, Robert Morgan, Kathryn Stripling Byer, Wendell Berry, Lewis Nordan, Harry Crews, Michael Parker, Larry McMurtry, Kaye Gibbons, Isabel Zuber, Michael Lee West, Judy Goldman, Nick Arvin, Tim O’Brien, Jill McCorkle, Janice Daugharty, Tamara Baxter, Lewis W. Green, Janet Kauffman, Mary Hood, Dale Ray Philips, Sena Jeter Naslund, Barbara Kingsolver, Pamela Duncan, Lynn York, Abigail DeWitt, Catherine McCall, Claudia Emerson, Ted Kooser, Michael Chitwood, Nathanial Hawthorne, Eudora Welty, and the list goes on. I rely on these writers to feed my need for stories and to show me how to use a good image and a character’s experience to reveal something important about a character, a place, a situation. Sometimes I crack a novel or story collection or book of poetry the way some people crack the Bible. I read a good sentence or a good paragraph, and then I’ve set the bar for what I want to accomplish with words. The only way to become a good writer is to read really good writing and then write. I’m always trying to become a really good writer. If that stops, I’ve lost something important.
R&T: What is the writing life to you, and how important is it to your sense of well-being? For example, if you made number one on best sellers lists, then made a cool million or two, would you “kick back” and take a non-writing vacation?
Arnoult: I would love for my novel to make the number one slot on the best sellers list and make a cool million or two from it. I could wave my bank account balance in a few faces and go “na-na-na” and that would feel pretty good. I could afford health insurance. I wouldn’t have to worry again about the utilities being awfully close to their cut off date. Lots of good things would come out of that scenario, I’m sure. And I could take my time finding the story and structure of my next book. But I’d still be looking—always looking—writing toward what book or story or poem comes next.
R&T: Do you have advice for how writers can manage their time, for example— how do you get started? Do you ever have difficulty, and if so, how do you motivate yourself?
Arnoult: Most writers are time challenged, I bet, either scattered in their attention or hyper focused to the exclusion of all else, including the stove being on fire. It's more useful to tell a would-be writer how to grab time rather than manage it. Writing for ten to fifteen minutes a day is better than writing for two hours only on a Saturday. Two hours on Saturday is still good, but it will be more productive and more engaging for the writer to put in the ten to fifteen minutes a day. I used to write rough drafts of poems in my car before I went in to clean a client’s house. Now I have a book of poetry. Several of the poems in that collection began in my car. A page a day at the end of a year’s time is 365 pages, to quote Clyde Edgerton.
Even though I don’t have a full-time job other than writing, I have a hard time making my writing time a priority. And when I’m promoting the book that’s just been published, it is very difficult to make writing a new book a priority. As I’ve traveled to promote SG, I’ve met a lot of writers. We often discuss organizing our day, how to write while trying to promote our published books, how to stay focused on the work. I’ve noted some good models, but in the end it’s a more sophisticated version of the old beginner’s question: Do you write with a pencil or a pen, on a note pad or a keyboard? What each writer has to do is find his or her own rhythm of energy and use it to his or her advantage, and be mindful of priorities.
I'm most productive when I can get up and go straight to the computer or when I write something at night right before I go to bed—a scene or a short assignment I’ve given myself or found in a book on writing with exercises. I need my subconscious to be close for at least part of my writing day, and that happens most consistently right after or right before sleep. Then, when I’m alone and have a good level of energy, I pull up pieces I started when I was half asleep, and pull and push and stretch and pluck at them and manipulate them and see what’s there, what questions they lead me to ask. I’m not an organized person, and time is always a challenge for me, at least during the early stages of a story or poem. It can be too easy to pick up my car keys and procrastinate on the writing, I can write in my pajamas, and revise in my street clothes.
Now, having said all that, what is my goal for the core of a writing day? I try to start shortly after my husband leaves for work about 6:00 AM and stay with it until lunch time. Then I try to go back to the work later, most likely the afternoon, which might be reading what I’ve written already, doing research, or reading through my notebook. The important thing, as my friend and author Michael Lee West says, is to touch your novel or story every day. When I’m able to pull off an ideal writing day like that, I celebrate.
R&T: What other insights can you give new writers trying to break in?
Arnoult: A person can almost always learn to be a better writer. What is hard to teach is how to recognize a good story when it’s right in front of you. If you need a day job, get one that will put lots of other peoples’ stories at your disposal. A writer is a story vampire. Think about some of the great writers of our time—they were doctors, lawyers, nurses, teachers, social workers, journalists. That doesn’t mean they stole their stories whole cloth, but you can overhear a conversation, or see an interaction, or watch a nervous person deal with their anxiety in a physical way and you imagine the rest. Your own stories will get you only so far, so keep the well replenished, and always, always be willing to be a better writer. The minute you think you have nothing to learn about writing a better sentence or a better understanding of the nature of plot and structure, you’ve blown your own big toe away.
R&T: Do you ever get the so-called “writer’s block,” and if so, what do you do to overcome it so you can move ahead?
Arnoult: The wonderful writer and poet William Stafford had the best advice for writer’s block: lower your standards. If you are blocked, make yourself write something bad. As long as you are willing to write badly, you should never have writer’s block.
R&T: What are you working on now?
Arnoult: I’m working on a novel that started out being one thing and has become something else. Right now it is about a young woman living in Paris, Tennessee, near Camp Tyson, during WWII. I try to write five pages a day because if I do, my husband won’t smoke, and he needs to quit smoking. (What ever works!) Most days much of what I write isn’t very good, but some days it is, and some of what isn’t may lead me someplace or it may become good later with revision. Writing is an act of faith.
I’m also writing poems about middle age that I hope will culminate in another collection.
R&T: With your publishing success, do you feel validated as a writer?
Arnoult: The simple answer is, yes. It is validating to have an agent, an editor, and a publisher, a couple of books with my name on the spine and cover, and readers who respond positively to the work. But learning to write your first novel doesn’t really help that much with writing the second novel. By the time you finish and sell and promote the first novel, you’ve forgotten what a rocky start it had. So when you start your second novel, you are at ground zero. If you want validation from an outside source that you’re not a one hit wonder, you have a long way to go to get it. It’s no wonder so many writers are insecure!
R&T: When your reader turns the last page and closes the cover of Sufficient Grace, what do you want to imagine they are feeling, or what they will take away from the experience?
Arnoult: First I want them to feel a certain kind of satisfaction, and to feel like the characters were real people and that they will live on past the book’s end. Then I want them to say, “Damn, that was a good book,” and to tell someone else to read it so they can talk about it together. That is the sign of a good book to me—to want to talk to someone about it. Or I think it’s so good I want to be like a Gideon and hand the book out to people on the corner because I think they ought to read it.
I also want readers to get from SG in particular that sometimes our greatest handicaps or our greatest obstacles or disappointments point us to our best selves and our best lives. That mental illness doesn’t make someone a pariah. That people with mental illness can still say and do profound things and have a profound impact on people in small ways. I want the reader to understand Toot’s philosophy that everything is always at least two things.
R&T: Which character in Sufficient Grace acted in an unexpected way?
Arnoult: They all surprised me, but I have to say Ed was the one who surprised me the most and became my favorite character in the book. I began the novel thinking Ed was having an affair with Estelle. And I found out that, not only was he faithful to Gracie up to the point she left him, he was really hungry and needed to teach himself to cook—and to feed himself in a variety of ways. That surprise, that revelation gave me my novel.
R&T: Thank you, Darnell.
For more on Darnell Arnoult and her work, visit her website.
Read a review of Sufficient Grace and other books reviewed by The Rose and Thorn at Roses and Thorns book review blog.
Kathryn Magendie left behind her beloved moss-filled grandfather oak trees in South Louisiana and escaped to her mountain fiction world in North Carolina where she spins tales, drinks Deep Creek Blend coffee, an occasional glass of wine, an even more occasional glass of vodka tonic with lime, and contemplates the glow of old Moon. She is the author of three novels, numerous short stories, and a few hopeful poems.
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