Louisiana State University

Building Character

For Olympia Vernon, writing a compelling story is as simple as listening to her characters. Though they are appreciated, her interests do not lie in accolades and awards, but in giving each of her characters a space and a voice in the world.

For an author who has not fully celebrated her success, she has achieved much of it. Her first novel, Eden, was written while at LSU. The book was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, one of the literary world's highest honors, and received the American Academy of Arts and Letters Richard and Hinda Rosenthal Foundation Award in 2004. She has since gone on to write two more novels and is working on her fourth.

We visited Olympia recently to get a glimpse into her process and to hear about the characters who keep her up at night.

Q: Did you always want to be a writer and at what age did you start writing?
One is born a writer. You are born a writer, an artist, I think, in the womb. I don't think you have any choice in whether you want to be a writer or not…My first memories were actually of pictures. I always see pictures. So I think I saw them both, the images and language, when I was born.

Q: What is your preferred writing environment? Do you listen to music? Do you like it quiet?
Music. And I have to write in my room. I've had offers to colonies, but I just can’t write around other people. I have to write in my room because my process is very nasty. I don't eat. I don't sleep for hours. I drink tons of coffee...It's almost always at night. And, the music can range. I cannot write without music.

Q: When you start writing a piece, do you know what's going to happen from start to finish or does it just develop as you go?
A great writer should never know what's going to happen. You're sitting down, you're listening to a story for the first time, you're experiencing a story for the first time, and you're meeting the characters for the first time. You have no idea how the story is going to end. You shouldn't.

Q: How did you feel when you found out your first novel was going to be published? How did that come about?
I became a writer sort of by accident, a published writer, because I was working on this independent study and I couldn't get these words out of my head and I wound up writing a novel.

I haven't celebrated yet. I don't know if it's because it's something that's so natural to me that I kind of feel almost guilty and awkward for celebrating something-it's like you can't celebrate every time you go get a drink of water because you're thirsty all the time, right? That's why I think it's almost impossible for me to celebrate all the time because it's something I just naturally have. I can't get arrogant about something that was given to me. I can't do it.

Q: What is the most important lesson you would hope to teach young writers?
If they are insecure as a young writer and they're holding a pen, their insecurities are going to enter the pen, they're going to enter the paper, the page, the characters, and nothing is going to come out. They're going to get frustrated. They're going to be upset. But what they need to understand is that they never need to intervene with the process of the characters' feelings, whatever they may be…And stay away from professors who don't understand that characters are real people.

Q: So when you say that characters are real people, do you mean that their voices are coming from a source somewhere in the universe?
Their feelings are real. They're real people to us. And when you're listening to their voices, they have to be real to you too; their feelings have to be real to you.

Q: What would you say to people that were born with a gift for writing but are too scared or reluctant to fulfill it?
You have to always treat [your characters] as if they are real, as if their feelings are real, and you have to approach them with great respect for their voices, for what they've been through, for the story that they have come to share with you…and don't think. If you think too much-if you outline, if you plan-you're going to lose them. You're going to lose everything: their story, their voices. You're going to lose it all.

I always think that it's like being in the company of someone who has views that differ from your own, maybe even values that differ, and maybe he or she expresses himself in a way in which you may not agree, but you always have to remember it is none of your business who they are. Your business is simply to write their story and to follow them wherever they may lead you. If they are alcoholics, then you have to drive the car. If they smoke, then you just have to bear with it.

Very often, I will write from the perspective of characters that I do not agree with at all. My third novel, A Killing in this Town, of course, was about Klansmen. What the [Ku Klux] Klan members in that novel taught me is that they really are real people who have been programmed to hate. I had to understand that. And I had to write that book in respect of their voices, regardless of the fact that we disagreed. Tough to do, but you have to do it. For the sake of the story, you have to do it.

Q: What has been your proudest career moment thus far?
If I could choose one, it was when I won the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award because when I won that award, I was going through so much spiritually. I would have to say it would be that one.

Creative Writing Program:
http://www.english.lsu.edu