Interview with Nuala O’Connor

I first encountered the writer Nuala O’Connor in 2008 when I dipped my toe into literary blogging. Nuala’s Women Rule Writer blog was and is the go-to Irish lit blog for competitions, news and reviews. Already an accomplished poet and short story writer, she was incredibly generous and helpful to younger writers making their first forays into publishing.

Her third short story collection, Nude (Salt 2009), cemented her reputation as a brilliant chronicler of art, sexuality and the lives of women. It was followed by three publications with New Island: her debut novel You (2010), a fourth story collection Mother America (2012), and the critically acclaimed The Closet of Savage Mementos (2014), which was shortlisted for the Kerry Irish Novel of the Year Award 2015.

This summer saw the publication of her most ambitious novel yet. Miss Emily is about a tumultous year in the life of Emily Dickinson, as told through the poet's perspective and that of her (fictional) maid, Ada Concannon. Miss Emily is available from Penguin USA, Penguin Canada and Sandstone (UK). I spoke to Nuala about Miss Emily, the vagaries of publishing and what it means to be an Irish writer.

I found Miss Emily to be quite a stealthy novel. It begins as a delightful insight into 19th century American life, but there are darker energies thrumming underneath and there were moments later on when I was emotionally floored. I was reminded of Anne Enright on John McGahern’s work – a hand grenade rolled across the kitchen floor.

I don’t think I’m capable of writing too nicey-nice, so even though it’s 1866 in Amherst, Massachusetts and we’re in the genteel home of the upstanding Dickinsons, the old adage for fiction still stands: something must happen. And the something has to be difficult or life-changing in some way. You have to put your character to the pin of their collar and see how they’ll unpin themselves.

They say never meet your hero, so what was it like to inhabit your hero in Miss Emily? Were there aspects of Emily’s character that you identified with? What aspects did you not?

Getting to know her (as much as that’s possible – there are gaps) was an enriching experience. I’ve always loved her poetry, then finding out she loved to bake (as I do) seemed such a homely connection that I began to research her life in earnest, bake her recipes and read the letters and biographies. I identified with her need for seclusion in order to write – all the writer needs is time. Her extreme withdrawal – talking to people from behind closed doors, for example – wouldn’t suit me as, though I’m introverted, I’m sociable too. Also her decision not to marry and have children – motherhood was always on the cards for me. I think I was born maternal.

Can you talk a little about finding Emily’s voice? That balance of poetic but also, this is a real human being.

When you read Emily’s letters her vivacity shines through – she was a giddy, intense correspondent. She loved wordplay, riddles and private jokes and she could be obtuse. It’s possible the people receiving the letters didn’t always understand what she was saying. So, I had to tone down Emily’s voice as we find it in her letters – I simplified her loquacity and bent some of her famous phrases too (the latter partly because of copyright issues). I wanted to write a new language for Emily, while keeping true to her joy in vocabulary. Similarly, I had to tone-up Ada’s voice; the emigrant letters I read were stiff and formal, so I needed her to sound natural to where she was from (County Dublin) but avoid making her sound super-Irish.

I loved the complexity of Emily. At times she’s so vulnerable and shy, at other times she’s quite imposing. I’m thinking especially of the scenes in the cupola where she’s looking down on Amherst with an almost godlike attitude.

In Miss Emily it’s really when the poet is alone that you see her muscular inner world and her strength. There is no doubt that she was happy in her own company but she had a small universe of friends and family that she relied on, and that included the Dickinson domestics. Emily was eccentric but firm in her choice of her vocation as writer, even if she chose (mostly) not to show her poetry to the world.

Emily talks a lot about the joy she gets from words, but she also talks about the ‘relentless press of words’, how it’s an oppressive force. Do you as a writer have that same love/hate relationship?

My friend Tania Hershman described this perfectly to me one day when we were talking about not being able to switch off our (writing) brains. She said, ‘It’s like someone is always shouting at me.’ I love writing, in many ways it’s my sanity, but sometimes I would like my brain to whisper rather than shout; a day off from the spinning of constant narratives would be nice. But maybe if that nonstop whirr in my mind went away, I’d be left with nothing.

The passionate friendship between Emily and her sister-in-law Sue is handled very well. I loved the tension and ambiguity of it. I read your Emily as a Sapphic Emily, or at least an Emily with no interest in men. Were you decided about her sexuality one way or another as you wrote it?

I’m not convinced that Emily was gay, even though her love for Sue was passionate. She was an intense sort of person – all of her friendships were conducted vehemently, with men and women; she was a demanding person to write to and be with. Victorian female friendship differed to the way we conduct friendships today – women often visited each other for weeks at a time, they shared a bed, they touched each other and wrote what can read like love notes. We’re more about ‘space’ these days. There is all sorts of conjecture about Emily’s love life; she certainly had a late relationship with an older man, a friend of her father’s, Judge Otis Lord but she refused his offer of marriage.

Emily is incredibly brave in one respect, living an unconventional life, but Ada is a great counterpoint because that option isn’t available to her. She has to get out there and make a life for herself.

Yes, Emily was a maverick. The Dickinsons were eccentric but well-to-do. Emily’s father was an attorney and so was her brother, Austin. He provided for Emily and her sister Vinnie (or became their ‘guardian’) after the father died. The novel is as much about class as friendship. Ada, the young immigrant maid, gets to lead us around Amherst and beyond – she is the novel’s active figure. She goes to the circus, to nearby Chicopee, to Boston, and we get to travel with her.

When writing historical fiction, how important is it to get in touch with the time and place? Do you get to a point where you have enough research done or is it a continual process throughout the writing of the novel?

It’s important for me to be authentic – I want to know that the Dickinsons ate chestnuts with roast beef, and that Emily grew White Jasmine. I research a little before I begin but most of it is done as I write – I’m too impatient to set aside years for research before writing a word. So I research at night (in bed) and then write in the morning. The mad thing is, even though I finished writing Miss Emily in summer 2013, I am still researching the poet and her life. She becomes addictive once you get to know her and there is a lot to know.

Do you have any news on the film adaptation?

We have a screenwriter attached now and she is someone I respect and admire, so it’s all very exciting. I am hopeful the film will be made, but other writers keep telling me to calm down and try to depress me with their tales of belly-up film adaptations. I’m feeling glass half-full about this, though!

Are you comfortable with the label ‘Irish writer’? Are there any characteristics that come along with it? Is it an advantage or do you feel it comes with baggage?

I’m comfortable with it, I’m kind of resolutely Irish, maybe because I was educated through the Irish language. When we were teenagers my husband and his friends gave me the nickname ‘Peig’, so that says it all, really.

As for characteristics, I guess we Irish are expected to be good talkers and we often are, so that’s okay. Irish people love to spin a story around everything that happens in their day.

I think the baggage aspect might be that as an Irish writer you are expected to write sedate, downbeat, rural family stories – that still seems to be the type of fiction that the UK and American markets want from us. I prefer to explore my own themes: the position of women in society, sex and the body, love lost and broken, the mother-child conundrum.

What kind of themes is Irish writing not addressing, or what would you like to see more of?

More sex, more drugs, more urban stories, more working class characters, more immigrant (to Ireland) stories, more Traveller stories. Some of the younger writers are addressing these issues and that’s good. Ireland is not one place, with one identity; it’s a mish-mash of the modern and the ancient and fiction should reflect that.

What are the advantages and disadvantages of being a female writer of literary fiction, as you see it?

Advantage: There is no formula in literary fiction, you can write anything you want to, any way you want to, so there is freedom in that.

Disadvantages: The pay is, generally, rubbish. The peripherals (teaching, reviewing, mentoring, book-selling etc.) while they pay, are time consuming. Male literary writers are treated like lords when they write the exact same plots as women. They are hailed as ‘sensitive’ while women are dismissed as writing too much from their own experience of ‘womanly’ things.

Did you always know you’d be a writer? Was there a moment when you began to think of yourself as a writer?

Yes and yes. I was always writing poetry as a kid and I came second in a national poetry competition, judged by Michael Hartnett, when I was nine, with a poem in Irish about Traveller children. There are letters from me to my sisters saying ‘When I’m a famous novelist ...’ I’m a novelist, anyway, not so famous. I do remember saying variously as a kid I wanted to be a bus conductor or a nun but, really, I always wanted to write; I just wasn’t convinced it was a career option. I think when my first book came out in 2003, I finally felt I could claim the writer tag.

How have you changed as a writer since your debut, The Wind Across the Grass? Is it strange to be heralded as a new voice when this is your eighth book of fiction?

I have changed, I suppose, in that I am more confident in my construction of the work. I feel like I know what I'm doing, albeit still in a blind-as-a-bat fashion.

It is strange, that ‘new voice’ business. It kind of wears me out. I was on a panel this year for ‘Ones to Watch’ at a literary festival. How long will I be watched?! I’m twelve years a-publishing, eleven years writing full-time. I didn’t have the lucky break early on of making a big UK or USA splash, but I’m well able for all the palaver that goes with it now; I mightn’t have been as able in my late twenties. I don’t have huge or unrealistic expectations now; I’m enjoying the jaunt while it lasts.

Your work often focuses on creative women – Emily Dickinson, Frida Kahlo – and also women who were creative-adjacent, like Assia Wevill and Hemingway’s first wife. Why are you so drawn to these figures?

Because it is so usually all about the men, I love to shine a light on marginalised women, women whose voices have been quashed. I love Hemingway’s writing but I was curious about Hadley (his first wife) so wrote a story about her. Assia Wevill seemed to me the silent voice in the Plath- Hughes tragedy, so I wanted to hear her speak. And Frida is just a goddess – I couldn’t resist writing about her. I love nonconformists who defy everyone and give all to art. I struggle with my own artist vs mother existence and other women’s grapple in that arena interests me hugely.

Can you tell us about your writing process? Do you find it easy or hard to maintain a routine? What has been your most creative period?

Routine is easy for me because I have control-freak tendencies. I want to be at my desk at 9am and anything that interferes with that (school runs, meetings) irritates me. I have five or so hours, Monday to Friday to write. I don’t write for all of those hours, I do other things too: reviews, my mentoring work with the BA in Writing students at NUI Galway, non-fiction articles etc.

When I am writing a novel I set myself modest word count goals: 500 per day or 2000 per week. That’s achievable for me. If I set the bar too high I get annoyed with myself when I can’t get over it.

My most creative period? Well, I never don’t write, really, there is always something on the boil. Even if I’m in a foul mood, I force myself to the desk. Work produced on a cranky day is not so different to work made on a happy day, so it’s important to sit and make myself do it.

Actually, I’m not writing much just now because the PR whirl for Miss Emily is intense – I am writing articles, doing interviews here and abroad, and heading off on a US book tour so there is no time to write.

You’ve said before that you don’t plot, but do you have an ending in mind when you begin?

Nope. I have no interest in plot as a concept. I like story and I write to tell myself one. The starts of novels are written on a tide of giddy optimism – they are often embarrassing by the time you reach the end and need toning down. Everything changes as you write so you have to just get it down to see what happens.

You’re very good at writing about sex and sexuality. What is your process there? How do you avoid clichés and Bad Sex Award-style prose?

I think there’s a lot of dishonesty about sex in literature and on film, a lot of glossing and airbrushing and nonsense. Sex is a very fluid, very individual thing, every time. There is no code for doing it, or for writing it – you have to respond to your own experience, I suppose. So, I try to imagine well and record what I see, remember, feel.

Do you have any ‘drawer novels’, and if so can you talk about them?

Yes. One handwritten one about an Irish woman in the Scottish Highlands (a precursor to The Closet of Savage Mementos, maybe). I hadn’t a breeze what I was doing and it got shelved early on.

Another about the German expressionist artist Paula Modersohn Becker which I wrote and researched for two years but I couldn’t make it ‘live’. I tried changing the POV, the tense and the narrator, but nothing worked so I had to walk away from it. That hurt, after so much work, but I guess I learnt that sticking to the facts too much is death to fiction.

What, in your opinion, is the most important rule of writing?

Make the time to sit and write. It’s the only rule, maybe.

From issue #1: autumn/winter 2015

About the Author
Nuala O’Connor lives in Co. Galway. She is the author of several collections of short stories and poetry. Her novels include You, The Closet of Savage Mementos, Miss Emily and Becoming Belle. Her forthcoming novel is about Nora Barnacle, wife and muse to James Joyce. Nuala is editor at flash e-zine Splonk.