Francisco’s Journal

Every once in a while I get invited to talk at various types of events. I don’t know exactly why, but whenever I finish my talk, I feel a mild sense of disgust at myself. Part of the problem is that one of the reasons I get invited in the first place is to talk about my books and about myself and so what I say sounds (at least to me) like so much ego-puffing and self-promotion. Professors and other scholarly types get to talk about a topic that doesn’t have anything to do with themselves. But what can I talk about other than writing and the writing process and the themes treated in my books? I feel like I should quickly become an expert and come up with a general topic such as: “Jung, the collective unconscious, and the prevalence of vampires in young adult literature.” Was there ever a time when an author wrote and the book went off and that was it? I’m only complaining a little bit. Because Marcelo has something like Asperger’s syndrome, I’ve been invited to speak to organizations that are interested or involved with AS. A week or so I spoke before the Asperger’s Association of New England and got some of very tough questions from young people with AS who had read the book with an incredible eye for detail. A couple of months ago, I was invited to a class at the Perkins School in Lancaster Massachusetts, where young people with AS had studied the book. I walk away from talks like these enriched. Drained but enriched. Sometimes I think that there’s only enough energy in the creative reservoir and you can use it either to write or to talk about writing. There are times when it feels right to talk about my writing and my books and there are times when it just doesn’t feel right. Maybe I haven’t quite found the perspective that sees talking as reaching out, as being generous, as an expression of gratitude for the publication and interest in my books. But even if I manage to see talking in the right light, I hope to always remember that writing comes first and talking second.

Every summer when I walk into a book store, I see a table with all the books that teachers have assigned or recommended for their students. I spend a lot of time at this table even though most of the books that I see there are the same every summer. I don’t have to mention them, you know which I ones I mean. Every year a few new books make it to the table, but it is rare to see those books there the following year. I confess to you, that one of my greatest aspirations is to write a book that makes it to the table and stays there for a long, long time. Trust me, I’m familiar with impossible dreams, but I also know the energy and power that comes from them. I would like to think that when I sit down to write I am writing with all my strength, mind and heart, going so deep in search of beauty and truth because writing this way is the only way that my book will make it to the table. It is not that the books on that table have sold thousands of copies or won awards all though many have. It is what the books stand for that attracts me the most. Some of the books on the table are there because they provide valuable lessons and themes that teachers love to teach. But there are others, the ones I most admire. These books are the books that last because they offer nourishment and comfort to the human spirit. These are the books that challenge us to grow by the unanswered questions that they raise. They touch on the universal and they do it with beauty and grace. That is why I would like to see one of my books on the table.

Last week I was invited to speak at the Simmons College Young Adult Literature conference. The theme of the conference was “Crimes and Misdemeanors” and I talked about the different “crimes” that Marcelo encounters in the real world. There were those personal crimes committed or intended to be committed by unsavory characters in the book. There were “institutional” crimes, for lack of a better word. These are sanctioned actions, all perfectly legal, committed by institutions or systems which cause suffering. An example of this in the book is the encounter by Marcelo of a legal system that protects a manufacturer of faulty windshields. The third kind of crimes are what I call “crimes against the spirit” These are the sometimes very subtle “crimes” that seek to demean Marcelo, to thwart his goodness, to prevent him from growing and developing. Basically, these crimes against the spirit are reflected early in the book when Marcelo’s father tells him that the key rule of the real world is to watch out for “number one.” This ingrained belief that self-centeredness is normal and even necessary to live in the modern world is the source of all “crimes against the spirit” that Marcelo encounters. What follows are some of the remarks on this topic that I made in my presentation.

Literature that is enjoyed by Young Adults has always had that joyful sense of rebelliousness against the crimes of the spirit perpetrated by adults. The crimes of the spirit manifest themselves in many ways. Sometimes, they are depicted in characters that approach caricatures. But sometimes, the crimes of the spirit are subtle and it takes the eyes of the young to detect what the adult eye has become accustomed to.

The beauty of writing young adult literature, and the challenge, is that crimes can be as obvious or as subtle as we want. The young will always delight in the triumph of the good over evil. And I do believe that in young adult literature good should triumph. That is not to say that the young adult book need not be realistic in its portrayal of evil. Rather, I believe that it is a matter of focus. Good and evil are both here in this real world of us. I believe it is my job as young adult writer to affirm the good.

In my one and only adult I have written, crimes are treated differently than in my young adult books. The difference I think is one of attitude in the writing. In the adult book, there is ambiguity as to whether the protagonist is redeemed or chooses to redeem himself. In my young adult books, hope plays an important role. It is hard for me to envision writing a book where the young protagonist doesn’t reach a stage in life where there is growth or the hope for growth.

The presentation of crimes and misdemeanors can be as complicated in a book as it can be in real life. The book can present criminal intent in its various gradations. A young adult book can have monsters that represent evil and it can present subtle attitudes that with time will corrode the spirit. I’m hoping that there will be many diverse young adult books that deal with the complexity and the subtlety of evil while still remaining exciting books to read. Even if these books are not best sellers, if they’re good enough, I guarantee you that they will be read by and appreciated by many young people. To a certain extent we as authors need to put aside considerations as to how many will read our work. We should write as if only one young person will read the book, but the book will change that person’s life. I think that as authors we may sell our young readers short if we don’t write with all our hearts, if we don’t go beyond the entertaining surfaces and present young people with the real world in its totality, the good and bad, to the best of our ability.

Periodically I get inquiries from young people (and older ones too) who want to write or publish their first novel. By way of response, I would like to share with you some thoughts about the writing of my first novel, The Way of the Jaguar.

I started writing Jaguar about seven years before it was published. Of course I was not writing continuously. In terms of time frames, the process of creation went like this. I wrote pretty much every day for about eight months and came out with what I thought was a best seller and which I proceeded to send out to agents and publishing houses and in the process picked up dozens of rejections. Besides sending it out to publishers and agents I gave the book to a few friends and one or two gave me helpful comments. I think that at this time I put the book away for about three years. When I picked the manuscript again, I started to re-write the whole book. I would begin each writing session by reading a scene of what I had written before and then I would start writing from scratch. Many of the same scenes were kept, but they were embodied in different language. But more significantly, many more scenes were added. This re-writing took about a year. Again I sent it out and again amidst the many rejections I received a letter from a publisher who told me that the book was an “unpolished gem” and she was specific about what did not work for her. This is when the third version of the book came into being. In this third version I did not re-write totally from scratch I re-structured. I connected. I changed where the story started, organized chapters into more logical common themes and time frames. By this time I knew that the book was not the type that would be picked up by a commercial publisher so I sent it to the type of small non-profit literary presses that specialized in Hispanic-American literature. That’s when Bilingual Review Press out of Arizona State University decided to publish it. A few months later, the book won one of the Chicano/Latino Literary Awards.

This is sort of the external history of the book. The internal history is more complicated. I have always wanted to be a writer. When I was nine years old my father bought me a typewriter, which I still have. But wanting to be a writer and writing are two different things. I majored in English in Philosophy in college. I studied Latin American literature at Harvard because I thought graduate school would help me write. I have kept a journal since I was in high school and I think that that’s how the book was born. The book is the daily journal of a person on death row. One day when I was writing in my journal I decided to imagine that I was a prisoner who was about to die. So then I just started inventing. The book is a grafting, a mixing of reality and fantasy. For example, the law firm that I used to work at had these yearly outings at a country club and I took that and created a scene where the main character was at a similar outing in the pool with the person he loved.

In thinking back, I see that I wrote this book at a particularly difficult period of my life. Writing is good therapy. But, of course, good therapy does not always result in good writing. The book was published because I was able to transform the writing that was helpful to me into good writing. The Way of the Jaguar was published in 2000. My attitudes toward writing have changed somewhat since then. Now I write books whose main characters are young people. But the experience of writing that first book showed me how to discover and accept the purpose of writing in my life.

In a week or so I will be done with the editing process for the fourth book: The Last Summer of the Death Warriors. That book is slated to come out March 2010. Sometime later in 2010 (my wonderful editor Cheryl Klein is also very flexible and kind) I need to deliver a rough draft of the fifth book. What I want to talk about here is what it feels like to not know at this moment what that book will be about. I should be looking for something to write about. I should be calculating. Instead I am waiting. I am waiting in what feels like a kind of darkness. A couple of weeks ago something happened that made me think that I was indeed waiting and not just avoiding the matter. I was walking and a glimmer of an idea came to me. It just came. I treasure this idea and protect it with my silence although I am also full of doubts about it. It may be just a passing fancy. It could be that the idea points towards a challenge I don’t feel I can meet. So I wait some more. Maybe another idea will come. Or maybe this humble and lonely idea will stay and grow. Maybe with time I will believe that I am strong enough to meet the challenge it presents. I don’t know how much longer to wait before just diving in. I wish I could sit down one day and write an outline of a book. Here are the characters and here is what happens. I wish I could calculate more. Instead I am cursed with a sense that it is okay to wait a little longer. It is not easy to wait in this darkness. It is scary. It is scary because we don’t know what will come or when. It is scary because there’s a little voice that asks “what if you are just being lazy?” I think here of how much faith and waiting have in common (”For the faith and the hope and the love are all in the waiting” says T.S.Eliot in the Four Quartets). Waiting begets faith and faith begets waiting. What makes the waiting worthwhile, what fills the waiting with faith is the expectation or certainty that something will come. At the right time I will know what to write. The voice of the young person I want to write about will come (the voice always comes first) and the story will follow.

Marcelo in the Real World has been out there since March and I have been overwhelmed by its reception both critically by the professional reviewers as well as by the many, many people who have reviewed the book in their blogs or have commented upon it either publicly or by contacting me personally through this website. I am so happy that the book has already touched as many people as it has. I know that it will continue to do so. And yet, I confess to feeling a certain detachment from all the good things that are happening to the book. Maybe it is the length of time involved between when an author finishes writing a book and when the book is published that creates that distance - the sense that the book is no longer one’s own and all the praise (or criticism) that are heaped upon it are not to be taken, well, personally. Did I really write that book? I remember the years and the days and the hours of struggle and joy but they seem so far off now. I feel as if the images and the words came to me, were given to me, and that I was fortunate to have a good editor who set me on the right path. I’m not trying to be humble. I’m trying to convey what happens after a book is written. I think this natural separation from the work is sort of what a woman goes through in forgetting the labor pains of the prior child so that the next child can be conceived and born. Maybe in the case of writing, it is not only necessary to forget the pain of creating the previous work but also the praise received for it. It is just as easy to get stuck in pain as it is in praise. But forgetting pain and praise is not the right term. What is needed after a book is out is the gentle remembering of the gift-like qualities of the book’s creation. It is this remembering that will carry us steadily into the next work.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about whether good writing is preceded by a particular frame of mind. Do you write better when you are calm or do you do your best when your mind is moving fast and thinking hard? The question came to me in the midst of some editing that I was doing. There was a particular scene in the book that I knew wasn’t right, my editor knew wasn’t right as well, and there didn’t seem to be anything I could do to solve the problem. For a couple of weeks there, I wondered whether I would ever be able write again. How do you pull out of that kind of muck? In my case, I was fortunate enough to go on vacation to a warm place for a couple of weeks. I didn’t touch the manuscript at the suggestion of my editor and in the middle of the second week, while I was pouring myself a glass of ice tea and not thinking about my work at all, the idea, the piece that was missing came to me. I think that along with the relaxation, what I needed to recover was a sense of humility - an inner comfort that what I have is good enough to share. It seems now as if I got stuck because I was trying too hard and the manuscript missed a subtlety and naturalness that comes when you write with the knowledge that all you can do is write from the depth of your heart, listening all along to a kind of music that guides you.

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.

I don’t hear that much this day of the writer as an artist. We still refer to a painter or a sculptor or a pianist as an artist but the writer and the artist have been disconnected. We associate art with the creation of something beautiful that will exist either in space like a painting or in time like a musical composition. But if we, as writers of fiction, communicate a vision of ourselves as artists, as creators of beauty, we are taken as snobbish. Perhaps the problem is that beauty is so hard to define. As a writer I like this definition by John Keats: “Beauty is truth and truth is beauty.” Truly, that is all I need to know. To the extent that I am truthful in what I write, to the extent that my characters are real, to the extent that I do not over-simplify, to the extent that I do not stay on the surface but dig deep and even deeper in myself and in all life where truth resides, to that extent I am creating something that is beautiful.

A writer is like any other artist in that they both share the same impulse to create something beautiful. Say that you are fifteen and you want to be a writer. Where does this “want” come from? Do you want to write short-stories or poems or a science fiction novel because you want to impress your friends or, even worse, impress that special boy or girl you have your eye on? It’s okay if you do. If this is the only reason you want to write, you will in a few months move on to other activities that have a greater chance of impressing others and are less painful (like football or Lacrosse or cross country running, or hitting your head against a wall!). But if there is a restlessness in you, a kind of fever to create something that is beautiful (truthful) then you better get a notebook or sit at your computer and start writing. Here’s a test as to whether this restlessness you feel is truly an artistic impulse. Do you always feel a certain dissatisfaction after you finished writing even when you know you wrote your best? You tried your hardest but you still feel you missed what you wanted to say. If so, stick around and keep writing, you are the proud owner of an artistic impulse. Congratulations and I’m sorry. You have been given a gift and a burden.