The Sweet Potato Queens' First Big-Ass Novel by Jill Conner Browne

Author:Jill Conner Browne
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2007-10-19T21:00:00+00:00

I sat around a table in the meeting room of the Jackson Public Library listening to a squeaky-voiced twenty-three-year-old graduate student named Fred read a section from his novel-in-progress. The work was entitled One Man’s Journey. It was about an intrepid photographer named Fernando who had women constantly throwing themselves at him. The novel read like a series of Penthouse Forum fantasies strung together. Fred, however, considered his manuscript to be a groundbreaking work.

“Comments?” said our workshop leader, Louis, after Fred finished reading. Louis was in his forties and had a long gray ponytail.

“You misspelled ‘turgid,’ dear. It’s ‘t-u’ not ‘t-e,’” said Bonnie. She was a retired schoolteacher who wrote poems about nature, her latest being “Ode to an Orchid.” “I also thought the setting for the scene was original.”

“You understood the symbolism, didn’t you?” Fred asked, blinking behind smudged eyeglasses. “The bank vault represents how Fernando seals off his innermost feelings.” He went to explain all the other nuances and metaphors that might have escaped our inferior little minds.

“Where’s the plot?” said Norah, who always sounded angry. She wrote aggressively feminist haikus about areolas and labias. “Am I the only one who is wondering when something’s going to happen besides sex?”

“It doesn’t need a plot, Norah,” Fred said very slowly, as if he were talking to a dim-witted child. “It’s a literary novel.”

“I agree with Norah,” Louis said. “You should consider adding some conflict. The scene reads a little static.”

Louis wrote wonderful short stories, one of which had been published by a literary magazine called Ploughshares. He was also finishing up a novel.

I was too shy to comment. After all, what the hell did I know about writing novels? I just scribbled “good effort” on the bottom of Fred’s pages and handed them back to him.

“Do you have anything today, Jill?” Louis asked.

I’d brought an essay about all the crazy diets my clients went on (cabbage, stewardess, grapefruit, and the ever-popular pink weenies and ice cream) and had planned to read it, but couldn’t bring myself to share it with the others.

“Not this week,” I said. “But I do have a question. If, on the off chance, I ever wrote an essay good enough to be published, where would I send it?”

“The New Yorker, or The Atlantic Monthly,” Fred said, impatiently.

“Guideposts takes essays,” Bonnie said. “So does Reader’s Digest.”

“Actually,” I said, taking a deep breath, “I was thinking of something a little bit less intimidating.”

“Good for you, Jill,” Louis said with an approving nod of his head. “Learn to walk before you run. Why don’t you try that free circular in town? It’s called The Diddy Wah Diddy, and they publish essays.”

“Thank you, Louis,” I said. “I’ll look into it.”

I don’t know why I lied. I had no intention of submitting my work anywhere. I wasn’t near ready yet.

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