Flannery Gives Writing Advice

Stack Takeover | Angela Alaimo O'Donnell

August 3, 2024, marked the 60th anniversary of the death of Flannery O’Connor. In honor of O’Connor’s work and memory, we have invited Angela Alaimo O’Donnell to take over this Substack for two weeks. In this time, you’ll see a selection of poems from O’Donnell’s book Andalusian Hours: Poems from the Porch of Flannery.

“Get that plot business out of your head and start simply with a character or anything that you can make come alive. When you have a character he will create his own situation and his situation will suggest some kind of resolution as you get into it. Wouldn’t it be better for you to discover a meaning in what you write than to impose one? Nothing you write will lack meaning because the meaning is in you.”
—Flannery O’Connor, December 11, 1956, The Habit of Being

Start with a person, one that you’ve met.
That meeting can be in the mirror.
Give her a problem, an eye that don’t work,
a dread disease, a temper that makes her mean.
Surround her with fools. Though she be an idiot,
it’s a truth the fools must teach her to learn. 
Strand her some place she doesn’t deserve
to be, where she lords her superior
mind over hills and sunsets shaped by God.
Let her be wacky, but not so odd
the reader can’t see himself in her
mismatched eyes, her heart that’s good but flawed.
Don’t be picky. Love the one who comes your way.
Show mercy. You might be her someday. 

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Angela Alaimo O’Donnell, PhD is a professor, poet, scholar, and writer at Fordham University in New York City, and serves as Associate Director of Fordham’s Curran Center for American Catholic Studies. Her publications include two chapbooks and nine full-length collections of poems. Her book Holy Land (2022) won the Paraclete Press Poetry Prize. In addition, O’Donnell has published a memoir about caring for her dying mother, Mortal Blessings: A Sacramental Farewell; a book of hours based on the practical theology of Flannery O’Connor, The Province of Joy; and a biography Flannery O’Connor: Fiction Fired by Faith.  Her ground-breaking critical book on Flannery O’Connor Radical Ambivalence: Race in Flannery O’Connor was published by Fordham University Press in 2020. Her poems have appeared in many journals and anthologies, including Able Muse, Alabama Literary Review, America, The Bedford Introduction to Literature (anthology), Christian Century, Christian Poetry in America Since 1940 (anthology), Christianity & Literature, Contemporary Catholic Poetry (anthology), Flannery O’Connor Review, Italian Americana, Italian Poetry Review, Literary Matters, Mezzo Cammin, Peacock Journal, Presence, Reformed Journal, and Taking Root in the Heart (anthology), among others. O’Donnell’s eleventh book of poems, Dear Dante, was published in Spring 2024. 

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Photo by Islam Hassan on Unsplash