![]() I thought, What's the use? I'm just going to get a big fat no. I have a record of 45 rejections, but there was one despondent summer where I blasted out about 15 letters without keeping records. You spent five years trying to get a literary agent. ![]() After a while longer, I decided to make it a book. She was older, soft-spoken, and she started showing some attitude. I sent the story to my mother and she was sort of like, "Hmm, that's good." As I wrote, I found that Aibileen had some things to say that really weren't in her character. She later became the character of Aibileen. So I started writing in the voice of Demetrie, the maid I had growing up. I was really homesick I couldn't even call my family and tell them I was fine. Like a lot of writers do, I started to write in a voice that I missed. We didn't have any phone service and we didn't have any mail. (See pictures of the last days of Martin Luther King Jr.) ![]() Stockett talked to TIME about growing up in Mississippi and what it's like being a white woman from the South writing from the perspective of African-American maids. But since coming out in February, her story about the complicated relationships between African-American domestic servants and the white women who employed them in pre-civil rights Mississippi has spent over 30 weeks on the New York Times' best-seller list. ![]() In fact, when she started writing her debut novel, The Help, she didn't think anyone would ever read it. Follow Stockett never intended to write a best-selling novel. ![]()
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