Francisco’s Journal

Marcelo in the Real World was the recipient of this year’s Schneider Family Book Award. I am so very proud and honored to have received this award. It is a very meaningful award to me. The award is given for “a book that embodies an artistic expression of the disability experience for child and adolescent audiences.” The award, for me, recognizes the many young men and women who suffer because their perception of the world differs from that of a neuro-typical person. The award is also a recognition that “artistic expression” can take us into the world of the non-neuro-typical person like nothing else. People sometimes ask me how I came upon Marcelo’s voice, a voice that resembles the voice of so many young people with Asperger’s syndrome, and ultimately I have no answer other than to say that the voice was a gift and also that somewhere in me I too must have Marcelo’s voice, I too must see the world the way he sees it, if only in a small way. I am glad there are awards like the Schneider Award.

March 1, 2009 is the official release date for Marcelo in the Real World. I was looking in my journals the other day and ran into an entry written back in May of 2005 that talked about writing a story from the point of view of the son of Aurora, the protagonist of the novel I was then in the midst of writing. A few weeks later, I started experimenting with a story about Marcelo, the son of Aurora. What happened in the four years that followed can best be described as “false starts that got me closer to where the story wanted to go.” I would say that at least three versions of Marcelo were produced over a three year period before the right one chose to reveal itself. I wonder sometimes whether there was anyway to have gone straight to the final version and skip the pain of not getting it right. I’m inclined to think that with some books you can and with some you can’t. Marcelo was one of those books that required trial and error. I can see now that the character of Marcelo didn’t change that much all along and that is a good sign. It means that throughout, I somehow managed to remain true to the initial vision, the force that impelled me to create a character like Marcelo and to write about him.

You may be a young person who has a book you want to write. But you want it written and published like right now. You have the idea for the book in your head and maybe forty typed pages written already. You want to finish it and publish it before the school year is over if possible. You get the picture. In those forty pages of yours, there is a seed that may follow its course and grow into the book you are writing or maybe it will grow some place else. Please know that it will not be wasted. The probabilities that you have a “false start” in your hands are high. But it may also be a false start that gets you closer to where the story wants to go.

May Marcelo do well in the Real World. I send him out with all the blessings of a proud father. He persevered and kept insisting, even clamoring to be born, and so he did.

John Updike, one of my favorite writers died last week. The New Yorker published this week (February 2, 2009) excerpts from John Updike’s writings. I am glad they were excerpts because I could hardly breathe as I read them. So much of John Updike’s writing takes my breath away every time I read it or re-read it. I’ll be reading one of his novels and then GASP all of the sudden there’s not enough air in the room or in the universe. Beauty does that. The beautiful has an affect on the body . . . like love. I write this because, while it is correct to say, as I did a few days ago on another journal entry, that the more truthful your writing, the more beautiful it is, still, I don’t want you to think that “truth” is all there is to good writing. There are writers (like John Updike) whose writings are both truthful AND take your breath away. In writers like Updike, the “How” and the “What” are especially connected if not united, so that, for example, his brilliant metaphors actually reveal a side of reality you had not seen or considered before. People like me need to forego any attempts to dazzle. “Stay on the safe side, and concentrate on truthful writing rather than on trying to take anyone’s breath away”, is what I tell myself. And if you are starting to write, I would strongly recommend you tell yourself something similar. However, sometimes there is no other way of saying it other than by saying it beautifully. If you find that there is ABSOLUTELY no other way of conveying the truth than by taking the reader’s breath away, well then, in that case, please proceed. With Caution.

Donna Freitas, a teacher in the Religion Department at Boston University and a writer of young adult novels (The Possibilities of Sainthood - Farrar, Straus and Giroux 2008), invited Cheryl Klein (my editor at Arthur A. Levine Books/Scholastic) and me to talk to her Religion and Children’s Literature class tomorrow. I thought I would jot down some thoughts here in preparation for some of the tough questions I may get asked. In particular, I’m worried about someone asking me: “What role does religion play in Marcelo in the Real World?” So here’s a practice run of what I might say. Marcelo, the protagonist of Marcelo in the Real World, is a young man consumed with God and all things religious. God and the Holy Books that pertain to God are his “special interest.” Marcelo prefers the term “special interest” to the term “obsession” because obsession has certain pathological connotations. When you are obsessed with a subject you are forced by an inner force to think about that subject. A special interest, on the other hand beckons your attention without compulsion. Marcelo enjoys thinking about God. He chooses to think about God and read the Holy Books that pertain to God. He would rather do that than anything else. His religious interest is non-denominational. He likes all religions. He reads all kinds of Holy Books. He manifests no sense that one religion is better than another. Moreover, Marcelo’s interest is not simply intellectual, he hears something that for lack of a better word, he calls “music” that no one else can hear. This music fills him with a sense of “longing” and of “belonging.” What happens when someone with Marcelo’s faith, let’s call it, is asked to function in our modern corporate world? I believe that this question, at the heart of the book, is ultimately a religious question. It is not a question that is associated with any religious dogma. It is the question of how a a faith can survive the pressures of the modern, competitive, ego- centered world. What do you do if like Marcelo, you are suddenly overcome with the question: “how do I live with all the suffering?” What if the suffering in the world grabbed you like an iron hand around your throat and wouldn’t let you go? What if you are privileged to see and sense God’s goodness in you, while at the same time, you are forced to witness the pettiness and meanness and evil that surrounds you? How do you go on living? These are the questions, living, burning questions of Marcelo’s life. To Marcelo, these are “religious” questions - and so, I would say, that the role of religion in the book is in the asking certain type of questions when the asking is done with mind, heart, body and soul.

I was invited last week to talk to the 7th and 8th graders of Indian Ridge Middle School in El Paso, Texas. I work hard during the year trying to get invited to at least one El Paso school. First and foremost is the food. Mexican food restaurants on every corner. All of them with a grandmother or two cooking in the back. I grew up in El Paso and the setting for Behind the Eyes (at least the first part of the story) is in El Paso. A large part of my first novel, The Way of the Jaguar also takes place in El Paso. So it makes perfect sense to have someone like me spend a couple of days with El Paso kids. Now I have to tell you right away that these speaking engagements are hard work. At Indian Ridge, met with seven group of kids each day (each group for an hour). There was half an hour off for lunch where, you guessed it, I had tacos. What I try to do during these little talks is talk a little about my life and my books and how the two play off each other, how something actual gets transformed by the imagination into fiction. My favorite part, however, is when I get the kids to write for a few minutes. We pretend that we are writing in a journal that no one will read. I’ll read what they write but I don’t know them so it’s like writing for themselves. The question that elicits the deepest responses is this one: “What is the worst thing that has ever happened to you.” I tell them to write for five minutes without lifting their pencils from the paper, without thinking. Just write. Sometimes, one or two will volunteer to read out loud what they wrote. I bring the hundred of sheets of paper home and I read them. I read about death and divorces. I read about abuse and addiction. I read about rejection and failure. Their writings are a reminder of to me of what a young person of fourteen and fifteen is capable of thinking, feeling, enduring. Their writings are a reminder to me of why I write.