An Interview with Ron Rash

Interviewer: Marann Mincey

In researching his latest novel, Serena, Ron Rash sought out a raptor expert so involved in his field he knew of a pair of Mongolian Eagles who attacked a Snow Leopard. Rash advocates seeking out such fanatics to not only enhance the authenticity of the story, but also because the details they share can open new possibilities for story. After speaking with Rash, I also suspect his attraction stems from being somewhat of a fanatical breed himself: characterized by extreme zeal. He writes with unwavering consistency and dedication, adhering to his daily writing sessions as ardently as some folks to their morning coffee. He produces an ever-growing amount of material, across the forms of poetry, short story and novel. His work tends to be rich with place, honoring his Appalachian roots while exploring themes of loss and redemption common to humanity. Rash has produced three other novels: One Foot in Eden (2002), Saints at the River (2004), and The World Made Straight (2006). He’s published three volumes of poetry and three short story collections as well as a children’s book. His short story “Speckled Trout” was included in the 2005 O. Henry Prize Stories, and Chemistry and Other Stories (2007) was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award. The New Yorker noted Serena and stated, “Rash’s evocative rendering of the blighted landscape and the tough characters who inhabit it recalls both John Steinbeck and Cormac McCarthy.”
(Photo courtesy of Mark Haskett)

Some people consider the forms of poetry and prose exclusive, yet you publish both. How do the genres compliment each other? Are you still writing poetry?

Writing poetry, I hope, makes my prose more vivid and concise. I think it teaches concision of language, and writing prose is helpful because it helps ground my poetry. Poetry can get sometimes too esoteric, but there are elements that we have in fiction, particularly narrative, that can work in poetry as well.

I haven’t written any new poems recently, but I do have another book of poetry I’m working on. I’ve definitely been more focused on fiction the last three years.

You are often characterized as an Appalachian writer. In what ways is this appropriate? Is it limiting?

It’s certainly appropriate, my family has lived in the North Carolina Mountains for about 250 years, so I am of the region and the region is my spirit country, I guess you could say. But though there is no doubt I’m very proud to be Appalachian, I am sometimes worried that when we put adjectives in front of “writer” there’s a sense that he or she is only that. If my work only appeals to people in the region, then I’ve failed as a writer because I think what we want to do is what Eudora Welty said: “One place understood helps us understand all other places better.” So by writing about a particular place, I also hope I’m writing about all other places as well.

You often speak of your sustained work ethic, writing not only for many, many years, but also for long periods of time each day. How is this important to your success as an author? How do you do it?

I think it is crucial to make writing a natural part of the rhythm of the day. Days when I don’t write I feel, not necessarily guilty, but just a little unsettled because it is a part of my day the same way I might feel if I didn’t exercise or didn’t have my coffee. One thing I’ve learned about writing: it’s the days that you write when you don’t want to that make you a writer. It’s easy when you’re inspired, when you have a great idea. It’s the days that you slog through and work hard and something finally comes that are most important. You have to come to work every day. I definitely have certain rituals. I sharpen several pencils and put them beside my desk, I get a huge cup of tea that I’ll sip on. That sense of ritual does help, but also there are days when not much comes. I might feel that I’m not up to it, I’ll work for 30-40 minutes and finally something will come. Maybe even just a sentence or an image. There are days when I don’t get much written down, but I’m still thinking about what I’m working on and thinking some things through.

At a recent conference (North Carolina Writer’s Network in Raleigh, NC) you spoke of seeking out fanatics in your research. Explain this, and how it enhances your writing.

When I do research, I want to give the reader a sense, or at least the illusion, that I know what I’m talking about. Anytime we write about something we don’t know that well ourselves, we are going to miss a few things but I want to miss as few as possible. What I’ve found particularly with people who are fanatical about a particular area, whether it’s hunting with an eagle or the history of train engines, they will always give you something more than you would have ever thought to ask. It might be an anecdote that you would not have even imagined possible. For example, when I was doing my research for Serena, I talked to a guy because I wanted Serena to have an eagle to hunt with. He told me a story about a pair of eagles in Mongolia attacking a Snow Leopard and that just really stunned me, brought home the possibilities of what I could do with that eagle.

So your research actually created new possibilities for your novel?

Exactly. It opened up possibilities that I would never have thought of, and that was wonderful because I need all the help I can get and am grateful for anybody who can help me out.

Serena has been called an epic, Macbeth-like. How is it relevant in contemporary society?

Oh, I think it’s very much about the kinds of questions we are asking today around environmental issues: whether we want to drill in the Artic, the questions of power and who has it and what can be done with it. Because it’s about the Smoky Mountains National Park, it reflects a common fight between people as far as how land should be used. Actually, when I started writing the book three years ago, I felt I was writing more about today than 1929 or 1930.

You describe your writing process as usually beginning with an image. For Serena, you visualized an almost ethereal, bold woman on a white horse. Explain how that single image evolved into a work of Serena’s depth.

It’s mysterious to me. With every novel I’ve written I’ve had what I’d call a compelling image. It’s an image that comes to me and I can’t get rid of it. It becomes almost like something that solidifies inside of me. I can’t forget about it, I think about it constantly. Ultimately, I think about it enough that a story in a sense starts to take place around that image. I get a lot of images, obviously, but what’s interesting to me is I can tell when it’s one of these, it’s almost like getting a fever.

Well, I’ve wondered about that because some of your short stories, like “Speckled Trout” and “Pemberton’s Bride” have become parts of a novel. Do they begin in your mind as short stories and evolve, or do you think of them all along as pieces of a longer work?

I’ve done both. “Pemberton’s Bride” I took out of Serena as I was working on it. I cut out a chunk and wanted it to work as a story. “Speckled Trout” continued to evolve. What has happened several times is that I would get that image and think, well this is a poem, and I’d actually write the poem. I did that with “One Foot in Eden.” But then, that image won’t leave me so I write a short story. Still, that image continues to trouble me, or feels incomplete as if I haven’t done it justice, and that’s when I have to go to a novel.

In your novels, you go to a great deal of trouble to detail place and the authentic material things of that place. Why is this important?

Very often, for the reader to buy into the “big lie,” which is what a novel is, the reader has to believe in the small things. As I say, we always miss something or get a few things wrong in our research. But if we can get enough things right, I think it allows the reader to stay in the dream. That’s what reading a novel is like to me—entering a dream. Very specific, authentic details allow the reader to believe everything else that is being made up.

Are you more focused on the character development or on how a place can shape the character of the person who lives there?

Wow. I think both equally. One thing I’m fascinated with is how landscape affects our psychology. I have a line in my novel, The World Made Straight: “Landscape is destiny.” I just have a sense that they’re intertwined, they work equally. So I think for me, landscape is a character. I hope the reader feels that way, that the landscape is out there, has an influence and a kind of palpability.

Serena has received high acclaim and national reviews. How is this attention affecting you personally? Does it have an effect on your writing?

It’s still just as hard to write, I still have the same frustrations, it doesn’t make the next book any easier. However, I certainly worked harder on Serena than I have any other novel, and I feel like it’s my best so it is kind of nice that a few other people agree. I worked on Serena for three years, pretty much 4-5 hours a day, some days much longer, six days a week. It took a lot out of me so I think in some ways I’m in recovery mode, though I am working on a book of short stories that will be the next thing I’m putting out.

Describe the transition from your introverted process of writing, to the public process of promotion.

It’s almost schizophrenic because I’m an introvert anyway. One thing that saves me is I’m a teacher so I’m used to getting in front of people and babbling. It’s almost a type of performance. Maybe that’s too strong a word, but you play the extrovert for a period of time, or try to, then you go back. It can be disconcerting, but at the same time I feel very lucky and fortunate that there are people who want to hear me at all.

Some writers’ describe their writing as a rush of story, with a long revision process. Others write more slowly with less need for revision. How do you describe your process?

I just throw it out on the page. To me a first draft is like being a potter—getting a big lump of clay is how I see a first draft. I don’t worry too much about how vivid the language is, I just want to get something down to work with, to mold. It’s when I go through the drafts—I did twelve full drafts on Serena—that I really start looking more and more at language, finding places I got lazy. I agree with Hemingway who said “the only real writing is re-writing.”

Talk about endings. How do you know when your story is finished?

That’s always a problem, knowing when to stop. It just feels right. It’s always intuitive, similar to everything I do in writing since I don’t outline or plot.

Your characters tend to be resilient, strong-willed, even stubborn, but this persona is often built over fragility (Serena, Travis, Billy). Do you recognize this in yourself? Does it uniquely reflect the Appalachian experience or just a general human condition?

You’re right, I think my characters very often tend to be wounded. To me, what’s interesting is how someone in life responds to these wounds. Both Serena and Rachel respond in particular ways to what has happened in their lives. I guess somewhat because I’ve grown up in a rural, Western North Carolina society where people are resilient and are expected to be. I see, especially in my older Appalachian relatives, a kind of fatalism, that life is hard but that is just the way it is and you go on and endure. But I also think it’s true of most people, all people have their wounds. One thing about being human is you’re going to lose people you love, you are going to have bad things happen in your life, and I think most people do the best they can with the cards they’ve been dealt. The Appalachian region hasn’t been prosperous. It’s tough to live there and a harsh landscape to live in so I’m sure that has influenced me.  

How does teaching influence you as a novelist, and vice versa?

I hope the fact that I’m struggling with my own work every day helps me to have a sense of what my own students are going through. They know I’m writing every day and working through problems, and I hope this encourages them. One of the best things is that sometimes I’ll recognize something in my student’s work that will help me realize something in my own. It helps me be more aware of my own writing. It’s been a good experience for me; I enjoy teaching and hope to keep doing it.

You often give new writers the advice to be patient and allow their skill to develop. How have you seen yourself evolve as a writer?

It’s been a very slow process. I look back on some of the things I wrote in my twenties and they’re horrible. Anyone who saw my writing back then wouldn’t have thought I could ever be a writer. There is just a certain amount of hard work to put in to learn how to write. The most underrated virtue for a writer is that ability to stick with it, a belief in yourself even when there seems to be no reason for it.

Your first novel, One Foot in Eden, was published by the small, regional press of Novello. Now that you’ve also worked with larger publishers, speak to us about those different experiences.

Sometimes that is how you have to break in. You start with a smaller press that believes in you, they get your book out there and you hope a few people notice it and go from there. Ironically, some of the New York houses that turned down One Foot in Eden when I was first trying to sell it bid on the paperback rights after Novello took it and it had gotten some good reviews.

Is there something that came up during the interview, or anything else you'd like to discuss?

No, I think we've covered plenty, thank you.

Thanks very much for speaking with me, and best of luck.