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Tayari's Blog: Way Back Wednesday

Posted by TayariJones on May 7, 2008 11:40 AM
Filed under The Writing Life

When I was in the eleventh grade, I wrote a short story called "The Pursuit of Michael Thomas." I wrote a lot of short stories back then, but I submitted this one for a contest at Pace Academy, an exclusive Atlanta private school. So exclusive, in fact, that I had never heard of it.

Short version of this story is that I won the contest. In my bio, I mark this as the start of my writing career. And perhaps it is.

I am posting here the story. It's short. Just about five pages, double spaced. It contains every mistake I warn my undergrads about. I am really fast and loose with the adverbs, for example. My characters have rather fancy names. (What is it about being a young writer that makes you want to name characters "Mignon" and "Angelique"?)

I remember my mother typing it for me. We argued about a line on the first page. The character in my original said, "Don't talk so loud!" and my mother made me change it to "loudly". (No one had told us about the adverb rule.)

I am sort of proud of this story, bad as it is. I wasn't a happy teenager. By the time I made it to tenth grade, I have been to four schools in as many years. I was sort of an invisible girl. Medium brown complexion, hair that wasn't tossable. Only one pair of designer jeans-- a gift from neighbors for whom I babysat. Picture me, writer in a school that stressed math and science. Every term I brought home my report card, 2As, 2Bs, 2Cs. Enough to get by.

I would not have had the confidence to enter the contest were in not for Mrs. Patricia Ramon, the English teacher who noticed that I was the only person to finish East of Eden, all 400-some pages. (I loved it.) She showed me the contest notice.

"Would you be interested in something like this?"
"Yes, ma'am."

So here it is. My little story. My precious beginning.

May 7, 2008 03:00 PM

May 7, 2008 03:51 PM