Tayari Jones

When I walked into the Tayari Jones reading, I was ready to hate it. I was prepared to be bored for an hour, and then leave wondering why I’d had to come. However, once she started reading, the smooth sound of her voice and the way she brought her characters to life enraptured me.

At the end when we were having the question and answer, she said many lines that actually stuck with me. When she was talking about Silver Sparrow, she said, “think about parents having custody of children, but children have custody of their parents,” and that seemed like a very interesting concept to me. Family dynamics are always hard to write about, and since my family is very close I feel like what she said really applies to us. I’ve never thought about writing with the idea behind that I have custody of my parents, but I feel like writing about the relationship in a reverse way might actually shed more insight into our relationship.

I also enjoyed that she spoke about how much of a processes it is for her to get a good story. She was very open, and I like that she spoke about writing her way into a story, and once she gets good ideas she threads them throughout. I think I’d like to work on this, since I usually plan my story out, and then write it. It seems that just starting with an idea and going from there might leave me with a better story than planning out the whole story beforehand. I’m glad that I went to this reading, because I feel like I learned a lot of different techniques I could apply to my own writing. I found it very interesting, and I think I might go read the rest of Silver Sparrow!