Author Kathryn Stockett Advises
Writers to "Listen to Yourself"

The Help
Kathryn Stockett
Buy this Book at Amazon.com

Like many people in New York City immediately after 9-11, Kathryn Stockett was unable to communicate with her family back home. When that happened, she was hit with a bout of homesickness for her birthplace, Jackson, Mississippi .

Stockett was in the midst of a month off work from her job consulting with magazines on business matters to work on writing fiction and had found herself with a case of writer’s block.

“The next day I started a story in the voice of Demetrie. I just wanted to hear her voice,” said Stockett.

Demetrie was the housekeeper/cook that came to work for her father’s family when he was 14. When Stockett’s parents divorced, Demetrie often looked after young Kathryn and her siblings.

“Demetrie was a good storyteller. She would talk to us about her own life as she worked,” said Stockett.

She recounted one such story on her website, www.kathrynstockett.com, which illustrates the unique combination of intimacy and cultural divide among white families and the women who worked for them.

 Our family maid, Demetrie, used to say picking cotton in Mississippi in the dead of summer is about the worst pastime there is, if you don't count picking okra, another prickly, low-growing thing.  Demetrie used to tell us all kinds of stories about picking cotton as a girl.  She'd laugh and shake her finger at us, warning us of it, as if a bunch of rich white kids might fall to the evils of cotton-picking, like cigarettes or hard liquor.

What began as a way to feel closer to home resulted in an engaging novel about the south in midst of the civil rights struggles of the 1960s. THE HELP is told from the perspective of three women: Skeeter, an aspiring writer from a wealthy white family; Aibileen, an African-American maid raising her 17th white child; and Minny, an African-American maid who often gets in trouble speaking her mind.

The three women join forces for a clandestine project documenting the lives of domestic workers in the south that has the potential to shake up their community and change their lives forever.

How was Stockett able to capture the voices of women of a different race and generation?

“I just wrote what I heard in my ear,” said Stockett. “Story starts with voice. . .”

She said the voices of Aibileen and Minny came easily. She had a harder time with Skeeter. “I had a hard time creating a voice that sounded unique. I am not as brave or ambitious as Skeeter,” said Stockett.  She said part of the challenge of mastering Skeeter’s voice came from the fact that she was broaching a taboo topic in the south – race.

“We’re taught not to talk about race in the south. It was hard not to make Skeeter seem like a saint trying to help everyone or a racist for her limited understanding of the Aibileen and Minny. Finally, she just knew what she knew,” Stockett noted.

Stockett said the multiple narrators and their shared concerns helped drive home the point stated by one of the characters in the book that “people are just people and there is not that much that separates us.”

She researched the civil rights movement with an eye toward the impact of the events on her fictional characters.

“To be a black maid in 1963 and hear about the death of Medgar Evers on the radio must have been truly frightening. I am sure folks thought ‘What next?’ Then there was the fear of feeling unprotected by your own government and police force,” said Stockett.

In order to gain more insight into the personal relationships between white families and their African-American maids she did a number of personal interviews and relied on TELLING MEMORIES, a book of interviews of women in the south and their maids.

Stockett received encouragement and feedback from the Jane Street Workshop. The group, led by independent editor Alexandra Shelley (former Editor of Bridge Works Publishing), is comprised of a dozen writers who provide feedback and direction on each other's writing.  Shelley worked with Stockett for more than two years on THE HELP.  “The characters could've easily drifted into Mammy stereotypes and Alexandra helped steer me away from such maudlin territory,” said Stockett.

“I worked on the book for two years before I thought maybe someone besides me, my mother and my writing group would want to read it,” she said. She began sending the manuscript to agents and got 45 rejections.

“Susan Ramer (with Don Congdon Associates Inc.), my agent, was number 46. I’m not sure what changed. I polished the book as I went along and fixed the problems. After she accepted it, the book sold in a week,” said Stockett.

Publisher/Editor Amy Einhorn chose THE HELP as the inaugural title for her own imprint at G.P. Putnam's Sons. She signed a contract for book two halfway through the editing of THE HELP. The second book, also set in Mississippi , centers on a family’s struggles during the depression.

“Listen to yourself and your writing group more than the rejection letters. Just keep going. It is a tough market. Your work could be fabulous but the bottom line is if it can sell. The number one rule is tenacity. Keep going, Keep trying,” advised Stockett.

Her efforts have paid off. THE HELP has reached number three on the New York Times Hardcover Fiction bestseller list.

Kathryn Stockett was born and raised in Jackson, Mississippi . After graduating from the University of Alabama with a degree in English and Creative Writing, she moved to New York City where she worked in magazine publishing and marketing for nine years. She currently lives in Atlanta with her husband and daughter. THE HELP is her first novel.

Ellen Birkett Morris is an award-winning writer whose work has appeared in national print and online publications including The New York Times. She also writes for a number of literary, regional, trade, and business publications, and she has contributed to six published nonfiction books in the trade press. Ellen is a regular contributor to Authorlink, assigned to interview various New York Times bestselling authors and first-time novelists.