[1st Books] Tayari Jones: Writing in the Wilderness

To celebrate the paperback publication of Silver Sparrow by my next door neighbor from the 2004 Sewanee Writers Conference and fellow She Writer, Tayari Jones - a little belatedly; there have been so many new releases this Spring-Summer - I'm rerunning her wonderfully inspiring post from the hardcover release. This lovely novel (really, really lovely!) has gone on to be named one of the best reads of 2011 by O, Slate, and Library Journal. It makes an equally great 2012 read! - Meg

About three years ago, my agent contacted me to see how things were coming along with my new novel, Silver Sparrow. I told her that is was going well and she asked me if I had a hundred clean pages that we could submit to publishers. I was very excited. Who wouldn’t want a new contract and the security (and ego boost) that would bring? She sent the pages out and.. well.. the manuscript was rejected all over town. This left me in an unpleasant predicament. I had a manuscript that was about one-third through, and was said already to be unpublishable. I wasn’t sure if I should even bother to finish the novel.

For months, I wrote nothing at all. It seemed pointless. My characters which I thought were so loveable and complicated had been undressed and shamed. (Some of the rejections were so pointed that I cried. One even suggested that I didn’t “understand fiction yet.”) And this was to be my third novel.

I’ll spare you the suspense by telling you that Silver Sparrow is just out from Algonquin and I could not be more delighted. I am telling you this up front because this isn’t a success story. It’s a don’t-forget-who-you-are story.

After nearly a year of not writing, I decided that this manuscript was the real litmus test of me as both the person I believe myself to be and the writer that I say I am. I didn’t know if Silver Sparrow would ever be published or not, but I knew that I owed it to myself and my characters to finish it. Since I am always telling people that it’s process not product that matters, I decided to address myself the way I would talk to someone seeking advice. Would I urge anyone to abandon a story because it won’t be published? I would say to that person, "Since when does a New York publishing house control your mind, imagination, muse, and vision??"

Then, I gave myself some tough love. I started off forcing myself to reread the poor rejected 100 pages and then I forced myself to spend an hour a day chained to my chair and pushing the story forward.

I also wrote in my journal like crazy trying to remember why it was that I wanted to write this novel. It was a tricky thing because I had to think of why I wanted to actually experience it as an author, not why I thought the book needed to be in the world. What did I hope to get out of the process? Any reward would have to be in my own heart, because I had been pretty much assured that Silver Sparrow wouldn’t see the light of day.

Oddly enough, this “guaranteed rejection” freed me up. I remembered what it was like when I was a young writer putting words down just to satisfy my own need to write. I started feeling my momentum coming back. I started talking to my friends about the characters as though they were actual people. I woke up every morning at 5am just to jot down some more words.

When I started this reconnection effort, I felt like I was writing in the wilderness—the forrest seemed scary and loaded with stinging insects and howling animals. But as I started getting back into my novel, I was still in the wilderness, but in the sense that I was hearing a call of the wild. I was writing something that had not been domesticated or learned it's place. It was an amazing experience.

My happy ending came for me the moment I finished my book—not the moment my agent called and said that more than one publisher was interested. I wrote that last scene and proved to myself that I am still a writer, which is for me, way more important than being a “published author.” - Tayari

This piece ran earlier this week on 1st Books: Stories of How Writers Get Started, hosted by Wednesday Sisters author Meg Waite Clayton.

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Comment by Mary Gallagher Williams on July 31, 2012 at 11:48am: Thanks for the insight, Tayari. I read Silver Sparrow about a year ago and loved it! A short time after reading the book, I met a well-known inspirational speaker and recommended it to her upon finding out she was the child in a “secret family.”

Comment by sara selznick on July 31, 2012 at 8:52am: Dear Tayari,
Sorry, I accidentally deleted this.

I'm so glad you could get back that beginner's mind set, the love in the word amateur.

I'm curious. Did you wind up reworking those two hundred pages or did they stay the same?

Comment by Katherine Scott Crawford on July 31, 2012 at 8:44am: Just what I needed to hear. Thanks for a great, writerly reminder!

Comment by Marjorie Robertson on July 31, 2012 at 8:41am: This post is a much needed inspiration right now. Thank you, Tayari.

Comment by CJ Johnson on July 31, 2012 at 6:41am: Tayari, kudos to you for having the fortitude to pull through and not give up on your novel, by not giving up on yourself. Your experience with this novel is inspiring to us all, who write for a living :)

Comment by Catherine McNamara on July 31, 2012 at 6:34am: This post also struck home with me. I showed an agent I was dallying with parts of my hefty novel set in Ghana - and she was dazed and confused! It sent me straight into depression but the upside was that I wrote a new and unrelated comedy novel - that was published this year, with no drama and lots of rewards. Plus I have a short story collection coming out next year and I am finally ready to address that first novel which - like yourself and Joanne - I have to finish. Good luck Tayari with Silver Sparrow andJoanne lovely to hear that Oh Gad! has burst onto the New York scene - I must catch up with your blog xcat

Comment by Carole Avila on July 28, 2012 at 8:31am: I'm so glad you reposted this. I've been ill this week and haven't been reading online for days. I wanted to at least get to SheWrites because I enjoy the postings and I'm glad I did. What an inspirational story about Tayari's publishing experience -I'm happy to have caught it this time around!

Comment by Joanne C. Hillhouse on July 28, 2012 at 12:58am: I remember this post it's first time around; remember relating to it deeply. Went through that lengthy period of putting the manuscript down and feeling broken by the rejections, then forcing myself to read them all, working on the manuscript some more, taking my shot again and again and again (and this cycle repeating a few times)... as many times as it took. It's not an easy road, is it? The thing that rings truest is that the happiest moment was when I knew (in my spirit) that the book was finished (because it was about the story first and foremost)...though learning of first agent, then publisher interest in said story was pretty sweet too. I actually had the opportunity to meet Tayari this past summer while in NY for the NY launch of my book Oh Gad! She was at Barnes and Noble, she and Judy Blume, and I absolutely had to go. It was one of the highlights of a trip that was already pretty important to me on a personal level (it being the occasion of the NY launch of my book and all). Here's what I wrote about the Blume/Jones event here at shewrites, if it's okay to post it that is: http://www.shewrites.com/profiles/blogs/of-puberty-bigamy-and-fairy...