MARLY YOUMANS,
Interview by Benjamin Francis Miller
16 February 2012
When did you first know
you wanted to write for a living?
My mother says she knew I would be a writer when I was in second
grade. I don’t remember ever wanting to be much else, though I was also a
professor for a while and enjoyed looking at poetry and fiction with my
students.
What kind of writing do
you usually do? Academic, business, literature etc.?
Novels – I tend to not do the same thing twice, so my novels are
quite varied.
Short stories – Most of these I do as a response to requests from
anthologists.
Poetry – formal poems of various sorts—lyric, monologue,
narrative. One epic!
How long have you been
writing?
I was a passionate reader before I was a passionate writer, but
words have always been a vocation for me. As a child, reading was my vocation
and far ahead of school in importance. I read under my desk, in the tub, in the bed by
flashlight…
Has any of your work
been published?
Little Jordan – novella – David R. Godine, Publisher, 1995
Catherwood – novel – Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1996
The Wolf Pit – novel – Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2001 The Michael Shaara Award
Claire – poetry – Louisiana State University Press, 2003
The Curse of the Raven Mocker – Southern fantasy novel for children, FSG,
2003
Ingledove – Southern fantasy novel for young adults, FSG, 2005
Val/Orson – novel – UK: P. S. Publishing, 2009
The Throne of Psyche – poetry – Mercer University Press, 2011
A Death at the White
Camellia Orphanage – novel – Mercer
University Press,
March 2012 The Ferrol Sams Award in Fiction
Forthcoming—
Thaliad – epic poem – Phoenicia Publishing of Montreal
The Foliate Head – poetry – UK: Stanza Press
Maze of Blood – novel – Mercer University Press
Glimmerglass – novel – Mercer University Press
And I have oodles of poetry and fiction in magazines and
anthologies…
You can find out more about me at my blog/website,
http://www.thepalaceat2.blogspot.com.
What are some of your
stronger points as a writer?
My manuscripts are said to be very “clean” and so not much trouble
for an editor.
I never have writer’s block and am productive.
I have joy in spilling words on the page.
I also have been lucky enough to collaborate in special projects
with some important visual artists like Makoto Fujimura and Clive Hicks-Jenkins
and currently am collaborating with composer Paul Digby and painter Lynn Diby
in one project and on others with English painter Graham Ward and Clive
Hicks-Jenkins of Wales.
How long does it usually
take to complete your work?
I am quite fast with a rough draft. However, I would add that
length of time is meaningless. The muse’s gifts are unfair—some take forever to
do what others accomplish with careless ease.
What are some of the
things which get in your way when writing?
House drudgery. Mountains of laundry. Children’s needs. Bills.
Taxes. Appointments. Volunteering. The person from Porlock. Life! But life and people always come
first—without life, there is no writing, no love, no sap in paper veins, no source
material.
Do you have any quirks
or problems you find in your writing which annoy you?
I wish to be tidier in my writing room!
When writing about
places you haven't been, how much work do you put into researching them? What
are some of your tactics while researching?
I never over-research places, particularly places in the past. You
should be careful not to burden your prose with research—the same amount of the
world should be visible as if you were writing about your own sphere.
What one needs seems to magically appear when you’re working on a
book—things that would pass unnoticed normally are all lit up and shiny with
importance. When I wrote The Wolf Pit,
I managed to please historians of the Civil War by using only primary
materials—therefore it was impossible for me to do what, say, Kaye Gibbons did
in her Civil War book and have people jaunting around on railroads when the
tracks had already been destroyed.
What have been some of
the most significant influences on your writing?
A deep, passionate engagement with books and poetry while a child
and teen is essential to the writer I am. Lewis Carroll, Dickens, Wilkie
Collins, Yeats, Keats, Anglo-Saxon, the Bronte sisters, the Gawain poet, Herbert,
Marvell, Donne, Fielding, Austen, Stevens, Blake, Dickinson, Melville,
Hawthorne, Whitman, Faulkner, etc. in English, plus much modern and contemporary
writing and work in translation.
What was your most
challenging written work? Why?
Novels are all a challenge, each in its own way, because with a
novel one is always beginning again with no clear path through an invisible
labyrinth. And novels are long.
As for poetry, I once typed my then-long hair around the patten of
a typewriter—so retrieving my hair after drafting a poem called “Snow House
Stories” was a bit arduous…
My main difficulty with poetry was coming to the understanding
that I was bored with free verse and simple lyric and needed muscular,
demanding form and an infusion of story and voices. I was too influenced by
other writers around me for a long time, and I threw away most of my poetry. Writing fiction showed me what I desired
in many ways, and it also taught me that I wanted poetry to be as unlike
fiction as it could be.
Do you have any insight
for young aspiring authors?
Read books old and new. Buy books.
Scribble in the margins! Soak up the word. Spend time with great masters of the
word, not feeble or trendy writers. The company you keep in books will mark
you, so be careful what company you choose.
Write a manifesto for yourself now
and then!
Don’t let anyone pronounce your
fate for good or ill as a young writer.
If you have the requisite tools
and skills, dive in and practice the art. Nobody can say what the vagaries of
life—the intense grief and joy of youth, the losses that come to all—and the
exercise of the heart and mind and soul will do to you by the age of 30. They
may just make a writer of you.
On the other hand, don’t set your longings
on some outside validation because “success” is often fool’s gold and a fool’s
goal and can break your precious heart. Write because you love words and
stories or aspire to the song-like heights of poetry. Write because moving words on the page is a
thrill and a kick and makes you glad.
