Moroccan-born writer Laila Lalami explains how a single image became her debut novel
Laila Lalami
Laila Lalami writes short stories, essays and reviews, and the UK edition of her debut novel Secret Son was published in the UK by Viking Trade in February 2010. Her work has appeared in The Boston Globe, The Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, The Washington Post and elsewhere. She describes how she’s seen the life of a writer change over the past 10 years.
What inspired you to become a writer?
It really started with reading. I grew up in a book-loving family, in fact one of my earliest memories is of both my parents with their heads buried in books. It felt like a natural progression to go from reading to writing and I was writing little stories by the time I was 12.
When did you realise you could make a living through writing?
I was born and raised in Morocco in the 1970s, and writing as a career really wasn’t an option then. By necessity you have to think ahead and making realistic career choices.
At university I majored in English and studied linguistics as that way I could still work with words. But it wasn’t enough. I moved to California when I was 23 to go to graduate school, and then got a good job, but I wanted to do something that left me feeling inspired and fulfilled.
How did you make that transition to full-time writing?
I was already writing at night and on weekends, and then when I turned 30 I realised that life is too short not to follow your dreams. It was time to take my writing seriously.
I took a couple of writing classes at UCLA, mainly as a way to meet other writers and feel part of the writing community. Then I began writing my first novel and lots of short stories.
Did you face much rejection initially? How did you deal with it?
Oh yes. I have a box full of rejection slips. When I began sending out short stories I was receiving countless form letters saying no thanks, or worse, just standard little printed rejection cards that they must have had printed up in the hundreds.
When the box was full I made a collage out of them - I though that at least if I had to receive them I would try and turn them into art!
But then, after a while, the printed letters would arrive with a handwritten note saying they liked it but couldn’t take it, and those were a lot more positive. And then, eventually, I received my first acceptance letter.
Did you find a literary agent or a publisher first? How did you find them?
I found an agent. I’d made a list of books that I loved reading and that were the closest in style to the kind of things I was trying to do as a writer. Then I went through the acknowledgements and looked for any mentions of their agents.
That gave me between 10 and 15 names. Then I researched the literary agencies online, which narrowed the list down and then I sent a query letter to each person on the list. I had a few favourable replies, and one of them, Stephanie Harris at the Joy Harris Agency, took me on and sold my short story collection Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits to the publisher Algonquin Books.
Are you still with that literary agency now?
Stephanie moved on after a while and then I signed on with Ellen Levine at Trident Media, so that’s who I’m with now and I’m very happy with her.
How did you go from writing short stories to tackling your first novel?
I had written a novel before writing Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits and I began writing my first published novel, Secret Son, while I was working on the short story collection.
The two forms are very different though, particular the revision process. The length of short stories makes it easier to take one out, edit it, then slot it back into a collection, whereas with a novel you often find that changing one chapter means then having to change all the others so the novel still works.
Do you prefer one form over the other?
Novel writing has always been my first love, though I’m also a fan of the short story form.
In a way, with novel writing it’s like working on a bigger canvas with much more to keep track of. It’s also much more personal, as you can delve more deeply. It took me five years to write Secret Son and in that time I felt I got to know my characters and their stories really well.
What inspired the story of Secret Son?
It started with an image of a young man walking home from a cinema in the rain. It was an image in my head that I followed for five years! I created a character and an atmosphere from it, but then had to find a way to sustain it, which meant a lot of work. It became a different book to what I expected - at first I thought it was just about what it’s like to be young and poor, but then it became more about identity and belonging and the intersection between personal and political.
What are the biggest challenges of writing?
Finding the solitude that’s necessary in order to write. The life of a writer has changed in the past 10 years. Public speaking, promotional tours, websites, Facebook, Twitter - you need to do it all now, which makes it difficult to devote large chunks of time to being alone in a room and writing.
What do you enjoy most about it?
Very much the sense of being alone and writing and feeling you are creating a world without leaving your room. I love the actual process of writing. It was something that was missing from my life that no amount of job satisfaction would make up for. When I left my job I knew I wouldn’t make as much money, but the pay off is the sense of doing what I know I’m meant to do.
What has been the highlight of your career so far?
When I found out my agent had found a publisher for Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits. When you’re writing it doesn’t always feel like there’s a possibility it will be published, but then you find out it will be and that your work is going out into the world. Complete strangers will read your words and you will be communicating with them in that way. That’s an amazing feeling.
What advice would you offer an aspiring writer?
Read a lot, and protect your reading and writing time as jealously as possible. Immerse yourself in books. I teach Creative Writing at the University of California Riverside and I always tell my students that the most important thing you can do to improve your chances of publication is to take the act of writing seriously.
Nobody else cares whether you write or not, only you do, so the only thing you can do is focus on making your writing so good that people have to care.
What are you working on now?
A new novel set on a campus in America, and that’s all I can say for now.
For more on Laila, please visit www.moorishgirl.com
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Great interview. The book sounds interesting - I’ll look out for it. It’s on my to-do list!