Writing

Choosing to Begin

~ Donna Drew Sawyer ~ Leave a comment
Photo by Jon Tyson (Unsplash)

A writer becomes an author in their own way. Each route to publication is unique, and while you can read about someone else’s experience, I doubt you can duplicate it yourself. Writing is a practice—something you work at repeatedly to become proficient. The arts are a prominent theme in my books and writing, like music, visual and performing arts, to do it well you have to practice. You write, edit, and rewrite to hone your craft and simultaneously work on growing courage and conviction—dispelling the internal and external voices that tell you that you can’t and embracing those that say you can. You’ll also need the wisdom and grace of friends, family, and other writers who are willing to share their wisdom and experience so that you grow through it as you go through it.

Until my debut novel, PROVENANCE, I had never written fiction. I entered the publishing world naked and afraid—with no massive social media platform, celebrity status, or inside access to the publishing world. I also had additional hurdles—I am a woman of color writing about a nuanced black experience (passing) and, I’m over fifty.

Undeterred,  I went to writing conferences to meet agents and queried incessantly, hoping to beat the odds. Agents in their 20s and 30s looking for the next young literary breakout talent found it hard to relate to me and my manuscript. Though the odds were against me, I believed in my hard-earned skill, and if I am anything, I am determined.

After a couple of years of “I don’t understand how to find an audience for your book,” or “I don’t think I am the right agent for a book like this,” or no response at all, it became clear that landing an agent and a traditional publishing deal was highly unlikely for this first-time author with no platform. I may have been beaten, but I certainly wasn’t broken.

I wrote PROVENANCE for avid readers like me—anyone who had grown tired of reading fiction about the African American experience that focused only on our history of being enslaved. I craved stories that celebrated what it means to be a person of color – to determine our own destiny and to achieve great things.  I knew I had written a good book, and I knew there was an audience for it.

Not being able to land an agent could have ended my quest to be a published author, but, as I said before, if I am anything, I am determined. I figured out how to self-publish and promote my debut novel. I worked like hell to reach an audience that I knew was there.  

PROVENANCE took this author on an exhilarating adventure. I am grateful to the readers who helped it reach #1 in African American Fiction on Amazon, to the juries who awarded it prizes for debut and historical fiction, to the book clubs, book fairs, and libraries who invited me and my book to in-person and virtual appearances around the country.  It was a heady adventure—risky and remarkable.

Fast-forward to 2025, my next manuscript, PROMISE, is complete, and I am embarking on a new adventure. It is time to begin again. Putting fears of the dreaded sophomore slump aside, I am querying agents hoping that the literary world will offer this author an opportunity to share a story that challenges our assumptions about race, class, and identity while celebrating the enduring bonds of family. So, aware of the challenges and the rewards and armed with my hard-earned skills and my hard-headed determination—I am choosing to begin again!

Writing “Fact-tion” with Lalita Tademy

~ Donna Drew Sawyer ~ Leave a comment

Lalita Tademy
Lalita Tademy

I was with my tribe last weekend, among the many DC booklovers at the 15th annual National Book Festival on Saturday, September 5th. This year I went not only as a booklover, but as an author. My novel PROVENANCE, comes out in October, and I wanted to see how the pros engaged with their readers. One of the sessions I attend was with author Lalita Tademy where she read from her latest novel, CITIZENS CREEK. Tademy is a favorite author of mine for many reasons—I love her writing, we are both happy refugees from the corporate world, we both came to writing later in life and, after achieving success in one career, we had to learn a completely new profession—writing—on the job.

Another important similarity, that I can now give name to after hearing Tademy speak, is that we both write “fact-ion”—a term Tademy explained as fiction based on fact. She explained that when something piques her interest, as did her ancestral past for her novels CANE RIVER and RED RIVER, she deeply researches her subjects and weaves the facts of people, places and time into a compelling story. She has done that again for CITIZENS CREEK, an epic story of the slave, Cow Tom, who became the black chief of the Creek Indian Nation.

While Tademy’s oeuvre deals with aspects of the history of slavery in 19th century America, my novel, PROVENANCE, moves that history forward to aspects of the African-American struggle for freedom in the 20th century. Like Tademy, I use historical figures, places and facts to tell the story of fictional characters who, because of their light-colored skin, believed they could escaped the tyranny of racial discrimination only to find that their freedom was not truly free.

In response to a question about the topic of her work, Tademy said her writing enables her to tell the stories of people whose lives are for the most part unexplored in American history. Through PROVENANCE, I hope to do the same thing, share unique American “fact-ion” that illuminates a cultural aspect of history that rarely reaches an audience.

Two Tales Tell a Better Story

~ Donna Drew Sawyer ~ Leave a comment

qthomasbower on flickr
qthomasbower on flickr

“You’ve got two books here.”

At 544 pages, my writing teacher and editor, Barbara Esstman, a twice published novelist, told me my novel was too long – way too long. She even shared where she thought a natural division of the story would work. I heard what she said, but I didn’t comprehend what she was saying. I saw that the novel could be divided into two books but emotionally, I wasn’t buying it. I’d worked too hard on this book for far too long – six years at that point – to now pull it apart and basically start over. When you’ve typed “The End,” the last thing you want to do is upend your book – again.

About the same time I got the news that my novel was too long, I started a revision workshop at the Bethesda Writers Center. Our first assignment for the 8-week class was to write a précis, or summary, of our novel that could not exceed ten pages. It was this exercise that laid bare the truth. Trying to wedge the waddling expanse that was my book into that tiny précis confirmed what Barbara told me, I was trying to tell the story of two main characters in one book that was too long, and still not long enough.

I reread all 22 chapters, and with additional consultation, confirmation and inspiration from my writing group, I dove into the daunting task of rewriting one novel into two, though I still felt a nagging resistance in my gut. Would my characters blossomed in the bifurcation? If I lose major characters would minor characters be able to take on stronger roles in the halved story arc? The plot seemed to thin out in some places and thickened in others. Some actions and incidents gained clarity, others seemed to lose their purpose. I felt the dramatic arc was too flat when it focused on one character and the veracity and tension of the “whole” novel had gotten lost in the gulf between the two books. I stopped writing, not sure how to proceed.

Whenever I get stuck like this, I read. I chose The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt  because it had similar themes – a tragic incident causes the protagonist world to change dramatically and, the visual arts served as the backdrop for the story. Also, at 784 pages, I was hoping to justify the length of my book.

The Goldfinch, was indulgent, almost extravagant, narrative. For the most part, Tartt gave readers a full experience with her characters, though sometimes it was too rich. There is only so much I need or want to know about the unsupervised drinking, smoking, cursing and boredom of 13- and 14-year old boys in the Las Vegas desert. Though as long as The Goldfinch was, it kept the reader focused on the protagonist and his journey. My novel had not achieved that.

In contrasting the size and scope of the two novels, and with time away from my manuscript, I could now see clearly that the advice I’d gotten to create two tales from one was not about page length – it was about the wandering journey I was taking readers on. I had two casts of characters with two fully formed stories. These tales are worth telling – just not together. The goal is to focus on the protagonist’s story and give readers a full experience; don’t wander off with another character’s story when there’s one to be told right in front of you. I realized that several different characters could hold their own in a sequel – not a Harry Potter-esque series (if only), but what I have is a good multigenerational saga that could find an audience over several books.

I now understood that the goal is to create a fully formed, focused story in as many pages as needed to tell one story. So back to work, two books it is!

Is Passing a Thing of the Past or Has It Just Evolved?

~ Donna Drew Sawyer ~ Leave a comment

A Chosen Exile Cover A recent story on NPR’s All Things Considered about a new non-fiction book, A Chosen Exile: A History of Racial Passing in America, by author Allyson Hobbs, discussed the practice of light-skinned blacks passing for white to circumvent entrenched racial discrimination. Hobbs focused her research for the book on personal stories from the past –  before integration, Black Power and multiculturalism. Reporter Karen Grigsby Bates’ summary suggested that racial progress prompted by those movements had effectively made the act of passing irrelevant. I beg to differ – I believe these movements caused the evolution of passing but did not erase it or make it irrelevant.

Anyone of color who has ever worked within a majority environment such as corporate America, or in my case the cultural arts, knows that though your skin color may be evident – you are still required to negotiate the majority culture by not revealing too much of who you are. When your aspirations are constrained by how “acceptable” you are to the majority culture then you are effectively passing. If you subjugate or neglect your own culture to assume that of the predominate culture – it may not have the skin-deep appearance of passing but it has the same effect – isolation, loss of self and community. Passing in the 21st century has the added burden of the assumptions some people make because they can see your skin color; that can lead to further complications and indignities. For example, when I was a museum director, during an exhibition opening, an art patron, upon seeing my brown face near the entrance, walked up to me and handed me her coat, assuming I was the valet. She even offered me a tip.

I used these post civil rights movement experiences as well as the history of passing to inform the characters and their actions in my novel, Provenance. The main protagonist is a man who, like the people in Allyson Hobbs’ book, passes as white in the early 20th Century in order to access opportunities not available to a black man. Another character, a 21st Century millennial and a curatorial rising star at a major art museum, is passing culturally. Her expertise is in 20th Century Impressionist art belies the assumption that her discipline must be African or African-American art and, as she moves further up the professional ladder in the art world, she is distanced from her family’s cultural experience.

At its essence, similar to my novel, passing is about identity – who we are, and how others see us. The way my characters pass – racially and culturally – compares and contrasts what passing was then and is now.

Seems Like Old Times

~ Donna Drew Sawyer ~ Leave a comment

bigotry and tolerance“There’s something wrong when a person can go to work, be subject to intolerance or abuse and have it be ignored and accepted by colleagues as part of the job.”
Sachin H. Jain, MD, MBA

Provenance, my novel, deals the effects of race and racism on three generations of a family. Provenance moves between the early part of the 20th Century when segregation and overt discrimination were the rule rather than the exception and  present day where my characters still face racism as a raw fact of life in America. Seems like old times when a recent article in the New York Times about the abuse of bigotry and intolerance is as relevant today as it was 200 years ago. Today the targets of discrimination today may be more varied but racial intolerance has the same impact.