A DECADE'S worth of work went into the Pulitzer Prize winning work 'The Known World', written by acclaimed fictionist Edward P. Jones.

MANILA, Philippines — They say slow and steady wins the race, and that certainly proved to be true for award-winning novelist Edward P. Jones.

Over the course of a decade, Jones worked painstakingly on “The Known World”, an epic 400-plus page novel that tackles the little known fact that there was a time in the antebellum South when there were black plantation owners who themselves owned black slaves.

James says that he lived with his characters over those 10 years, getting to know them and their motivations intimately, and just witnessed the story grow and grow in his head, even as he battled uncertainty at the time about what to do after the success of his short story collection, “Lost in the City”.

But all of that thinking, planning, and working would prove to be worth it when “The Known World” was published in 2003 to widespread acclaim, with Time magazine naming it one of the 10 best books of that year and eventually going on to win the Pulitzer Prize.

All of that invaluable experience was recently on hand for Filipino writers and readers as Jones was brought here to the country by the National Book Development Board and National Book Store. Jones spoke at the second Manila International Literary Festival, as well as holding book signings at Powerbooks at Greenbelt 4.

FROM LOST CITY TO KNOWN WORLD

Born and raised in Washington D.C., Jones early on turned to reading as a form of companionship as his childhood was often marked by a lot of moving around.

“My mother was a dishwasher at a restaurant. That was a job she held from the ‘50s onto the ‘70s. She really didn’t have the salary to keep us solid, so we would keep moving again and again. By the time I was 18, we had moved around to 18 different places,” he recalls. “I was really into comic books for the most part, and they travel well. By the time I was in my teens, I began reading adult books. I was less and less going outside as a child and became more and more a loner.”

It was only a matter of time before that love of reading would turn into a talent for writing. Jones says that he would begin to seriously pursue writing during his college years at the College of the Holy Cross in Virginia, and the discovery of this particular skill is something he has always treasured.

“I discovered that writing was that for me. There’s nothing like getting up in the morning and not being certain of what you’ll be able to do on that day, but you do two pages or three pages. And when you go to bed that night, that morning, somehow you succeeded with those pages. It makes the rest of the day so much more enjoyable,” he explains.

His break into the literary scene would come in 1992 with the publication of “Lost in the City”, a collection of short stories about the African-American working class of Washington D.C. That first book would go on to be roundly praised, winning a PEN/Hemmingway Award in 1993.

However, it would take a decade before Jones would follow up that particular success.

“When ‘Lost in the City’ came out, I was thinking about what I would do next and I began thinking about what I wanted to do. I started working things out in my head, and it was in 2001 when I sat down to work on it,” he says.

“It” would turn out to be “The Known World”.

WINNING THE PULITZER

While there may not have been any physical output during those long years, Jones says he wasn’t resting on his laurels. The creation of a book, he says, happens as much in the mind as it does in the actual sitting down in front of the keyboard.

“People who don’t write just see it as tapping at the keys, when working inside your mind is as much a part of the work as the physical aspect of it. I can remember all those years, coming up with one phrase after another, and there was just a part of my brain that just said that if you thought of that phrase, you can think of another one down the line,” he says.

Besides, Jones says that long period of gestation also gave him ample opportunity to know his characters inside and out.

“If you spend 10 years with people, it’s not the same thing as getting up one morning and starting writing a novel and finishing one year later. If you live with it for 10 years, then you get to know them quite well,” he explains.

Even with all that work and preparation, Jones says it would still take another year before the work would be ready for publication.

“I think all told, when I was ready to send it to the agent, it had taken me about six or seven months. And after the agent sent it to the editor and the editor sent it back to the agent, I took another three or four months of revisions,” he says.

All of it would be worth it, of course, as “The Known World” won the Pulitzer Prize as well as the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, the literary prize with the world’s largest purse. Jones says that winning those awards have enabled him to not worry about material things any longer, but he still maintains that he was still the same person that he was when he began to work on the novel.

“I think of myself as essentially being the same person that I was before all of this happened. I have fewer things that I have to worry about, but I’m essentially the same person,” he shares. “Being rich and famous doesn’t really change people. It just unmasks them. That’s why I don’t really think I’m any different after receiving those prizes.”

AGAIN — READ, READ, READ

For young writers seeking to emulate the path his writing career has taken, Jones says that there are just a few simple rules, with the foremost of them being to read, read, read.

“If Shakespeare and Chekov were alive, do you think they would tell you that they became great writers because of the writing workshops they went to?” he jokes. “You have libraries. If you can afford it, you have bookstores. That’s all you need.”

One other rule that he lives by, says Jones, is to never let anything go to waste when it comes to writing.

“Some stories start with one line. There are some that begin with a certain scene. They all have certain beginnings. If you have a spectacular opening scene, keep it. If you have an opening where you have a woman walk out of a cornfield and the front of her dress is bloody, keep it and find a way to tell the story from there,” he advises.