Laura Carew
Here at the Guild, we love finding success stories from fellow writers hailing from the Chippewa Valley. Darci Schummer, novelist and assistant professor at Colorado State University, is thriving more than ever with her most recent book, The Ballad of Two Sisters. Released in August this year, this book follows a story about Stella and Helen, two sisters who die on the same day.
I had the pleasure of hopping on the phone with this UW-Eau Claire alum to get the inside scoop on The Ballad of Two Sisters, the Midwest’s literary merit, and her relationship with the publishing world.
Laura Carew: First off, I wanted to extend my own congratulations on your newest book, which came out in August of this year, The Ballad of Two Sisters.
Darci Schummer: Thank you.
LC: For our readers who might be largely unfamiliar with your book, would you mind giving a brief look into what it’s all about? What did you mean for readers to take from (the book)? What’s at the heart of this story?
DS: For me, the heart of the story is really the relationship between two sisters over time, and how it changes and flows when people go in and out of their lives. I just wanted to get at that relationship and how special and important that relationship between sisters can be and how strong the bond can be between two sisters. I also think it’s a lot about loneliness and, you know, striving for things and not getting them. Or about what happens when things don’t really turn out the way that you thought they would.
LC: I’m always curious to hear about where writers get their ideas from. Do you find yourself drawing from personal experience? What’s your creative process, if you’re willing to share?
DS: It can be a lot of different things. In this book, for instance, the two main characters are named after my great-aunts. The novel begins with the sisters having passed away. My aunts died within 24 hours of each other, and I didn’t really know them, but the fact that they lived together for a very long time and then they passed away so close to one another was really interesting, and I couldn’t stop thinking about it. That’s really where the kernel for this novel came from. It’s fiction, so these people are invented, but that first inkling of telling this story was inspired by that event. I would say, as a whole, most of what I write is purely fictional, and every once in a while something happens to me that I will use in a story.
“Sometimes it could be something like a piece of dialogue that I overhear when I’m going about my day, or something I witness, and then sometimes it could be a news story or something like that, that I just can’t stop thinking about, so then I’ll build the story around it.”
I wrote a short story a while ago that has to do with a woman who is living on an island that’s shrinking, and she’s a widow who doesn’t want to leave her house. The beginning of that came from a news story that I heard; it was about an island in the British Isles. This island was eroding and disintegrating, and again, that image of this island falling apart, you know, I couldn’t let go of it. So that turned into the story. Sometimes it could be something like a piece of dialogue that I overhear when I’m going about my day, or something I witness, and then sometimes it could be a news story or something like that, that I just can’t stop thinking about, so then I’ll build the story around it.
LC: I’m also drawn to your connection to the Midwest, and as a young aspiring author in the Midwest, I’m curious to hear about how you feel yourself fitting into the publishing world. Do you find your history in the Midwest to have any impact on anything that you experience within that space?
DS: That’s a good question, and to be honest with you, I don’t really know. I would say—not to be overly harsh—I do think that the Midwest gets snubbed sometimes by the publishing industry at large. I feel like people refer to it as “flyover country” and if you think about how many films or books are set in places like New York City versus Wisconsin, there’s no contest. But even though I lived in Minnesota for a long time, and now I’m in Colorado for work…Wisconsin is my home, it will always be my home. I think that it’s a place that is very rich with beautiful, natural details that can be the backdrop for a story with interesting characters. And I think most importantly—this has been a big factor in most of the writing that I do—I mean, more than anything, winter is such a factor in the Midwest. Cold, and isolation, and struggling against the cold; I think that it’s very compelling.
I had a poet named Jan Chronister—she lives in Wisconsin—who came in to guest-teach my class, and I remember her saying something to the effect of, we know a lot about death because every year, we witness everything die and then come back to life. I think that’s an incredibly powerful experience to have that shapes us in the Midwest, and it’s unique. It’s something that others might not think deeply about or identify with, but it’s something that’s important to us. If that results in us being snubbed from the publishing industry, then I guess…so be it.
LC: I was wondering if you could shed any insight or advice to someone like me, hoping to publish some of my writing in the future—whether that’s tomorrow or in ten years down the line?
DS: This is something that I tell my students on the last day of class. I lost my father a few years ago and this is what he said to me. He would say it in the context of my writing and publishing life, but also my professional life. He said, “Darci, just keep going. Don’t let anything stop you. You just have to keep going.” After he passed, I had other people randomly read my work and then say that to me, and it was very bizarre. But if I have any advice, it’s that. Writing is lonely, it’s full of rejection and disappointment at times, but if you want to succeed, you have to keep going, and you have to keep trying, and you cannot let yourself get discouraged by outside forces. There’s always going to be someone who doesn’t like what you’re doing or doesn’t think it’s good, but for everyone that doesn’t like it, there’s going to be another person who appreciates it. You just have to stay focused on your craft, stay committed to your writing practice, and you just have to keep going. That’s my advice.
Visit darcischummer.com to purchase your copy of The Ballad of Two Sisters and check out her other works!