Michael Farris Smith is an award-winning writer whose novels have appeared on Best of the Year lists with Esquire, NPR, Southern Living, Garden & Gun, Oprah Magazine, Book Riot, and numerous other outlets, and have been named Indie Next, Barnes & Noble Discover, and Amazon Best of the Month selections. As a screenwriter, he scripted the feature-film adaptations of his novels Desperation Road and The Fighter, titled for the screen as Rumble Through the Dark. With his band MFS & The Smokes, Smith wrote and released the record Lostville, which was produced by Grammy nominee Jimbo Mathus. He lives in Oxford, Mississippi, with his wife and daughters. @michaelfarrissmith
Where were you born and raised? How did it influence your writing and your thinking about the world? Mississippi. Which is a broad answer, but my father was a preacher and my family moved around from small town to small town. I think I went to six or seven different schools from kindergarten until graduation. I eventually finished high school in South Mississippi and there is a little town called Magnolia that I think of as home.
Needless to say, all of this influenced (eventually) my creative life. I learned to adapt to different environments, saw different landscapes, had to learn how to navigate new people and new situations, and doing all of this in Mississippi, which is already rich in contradictions and complexities. I heard the voices, saw the sun rise and set in different homes, and heard bible stories and gospel music over and over. The lyricism of language and the economy of storytelling got into me at a young age, and it wasn't around the age of thirty that I began to write, but I know the sentences came out of me, and still do, a certain way because of the assortment of dynamics of my upbringing, the conflicts of what I heard on Sunday and what I heard and saw Monday through Saturday, and my developing transient nature which followed me into adulthood.
What kinds of stories fascinated you when you were young?
I read whatever was handed to me at school, and I read bible stories handed to me at Sunday School. I loved the Bible stories because they are imaginative and driven by things like desperation, courage, failure, salvation, doubt, jealousy, any emotion you can think of. And the images are so striking, a burning bush, a parting sea, a rugged cross. It got my wheels turning. No matter what you believe, those are some fantastic stories.
Describe your typical writing day. I work without a net, discovering as I go. My typical day is go into my studio around nine in the morning and go right to it. When I'm going good on something, I have a goal of 1,000 words a day. Sometimes that comes in a lightning bolt and sometimes it comes in a grind, but when I get there, I stop. No matter if I know what's next. I like to keep the fire lit for the next day. I'll make myself a couple of notes for where to start tomorrow, and that's pretty much it. I'll reread what I wrote the day before (not the entire manuscript) to get the words flowing and then I'll begin. It's a process that has gotten me through eight novels and I can't see a reason to change. There is an impulse to it, a notion of discovery to it. Sometimes it causes some desperation, but that fuels itself into the story (hopefully). I just believe that if I'm feeling that sense of discovery along the way, that the reader will also feel it when the time comes.
What was the initial spark for LAY YOUR ARMOR DOWN, and how did it develop over time? My process changed a little for LAY YOUR ARMOR DOWN. I decided to move some, get out of my studio more often. My spot is right off the Square in Oxford, Mississippi, and across the street is a cigar shop and down the street is a coffee shop. When the weather is good in the morning, and that's often in North Mississippi, I took to sitting outside, with a cigar or with a coffee, and beginning the day's work like that. Then back into the studio in the afternoon if I felt another round coming on. It's been sort of liberating to work outside of four walls. I also have gotten back into the habit of picking up my guitar and playing a little to get the juices flowing.
Do you keep a journal or notebook? If so, what’s in it? I think what I keep are scraps of paper with notes on them, scattered across my desk, which very likely only I can make sense of.
If you could have a one-on-one conversation with any writer in history, who would it be? Larry Brown. Larry was the writer that I discovered when I was starting out that had the greatest influence on me, not only for his stories and novels, but for his experience of becoming a writer and how honest he was about this in his interviews. It taught me about perseverance, handling doubt, trusting yourself, working hard and then working a little harder. It taught me about how to create characters that could take whatever you threw at them and still get back up. And Larry was 29 when he started, after doing a dozen different jobs and feeling lost, and that was my same experience coming to writing. Knowing his work and life made me feel like I could do it.
Do you draw inspiration from music, art, or other disciplines? I've always been interested in other genres and love listening to interviews with painters, musicians, directors, actors. In the same way, I'm a musician and have a band and made a record, I've written the screen adaptations of two of my novels that were made into film, and I've recently directed a short film. It serves me well to try different things, to keep the wheels turning from a creative standpoint in different mediums. There are no many interesting and talented artists out there, in all forms, and I get a lot of inspiration in talking to and working with them.
AI and technology are changing the ways we write and receive stories. What are your reflections on AI, technology, as someone who writes novels, what concerns or curiosities do you have about AI’s role in writing? Call me hardcore but I don't believe AI has any role in storytelling. It's fake. And if a writer is using it, it's plagiarism. I don't think I need to go into detail as to why for a place such as this. I wish there was some way for writers to form protections against it because I have no doubt there are people out there right now using it and calling it their own.
Tell us about some books you've recently enjoyed and your favorite books and writers of all time. My favorite writers of all time include the ex-pats, Hemingway and Fitzgerald and Eliot. A very underrated and lesser known writer from that period who had a huge influence me was Jean Rhys. And then there are the Southern writers, Carson McCullers, Flannery, Cormac McCarthy, William Gay, Larry Brown, Richard Wright. And then off to the side, I always have enjoyed the Russians, particularly Gogol and Dostoevsky. As far as favorite books, I really lean into novellas: Ballad of the Sad Cafe, The Stranger, Legends of the Fall, Death in Venice, Old Man and the Sea.
Exploring literature, the arts, and the creative process connects me to… Myself. I get lost a lot and it helps me find my way back.
