Would you like to be a good writer? Then do this: renounce the fruits of your labor. Actually, that’s the advice given by the Bhagavad Gita, that ancient and beautiful Hindu Scripture, for the achievement of happiness. With respect to writing, renouncing the fruits of your labor means to write without hope of reward. It means that you are able to find merit in the work itself, that you will consider your time well spent even if your writing is not accepted for publication, even if no one reads it. It’s a kind of mental game you play. Of course you write for others. Writing is expression. But as you write enter the world you are creating as much as you can and write as if, once you are done, you will have fulfilled your part of the contract with your Maker. Okay, you put me here to write. Here I am doing it as best I can. I’m writing my heart out for You. Publishing, applause, money, friends, admiration. That wasn’t what I signed up for. I checked. It’s not even in the fine print. Here it is. I’m done. Now it’s up to you to do as you will. I give you my labor. The fruits are yours. The labor is good in its own right.
July 15, 2008
May 27, 2008
El Paso, Texas
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.
February 5, 2008
Young Adult Literature
Here is something written by a fourteen-year-old girl:
“The best remedy for those who are afraid, lonely, or unhappy is to go outside, somewhere where they can be quite alone with the heavens, nature, and God. Because only then does one feel that all is as it should be and that God wishes to see people happy, amidst the simple beauty of nature.”
The girl’s name was Anne Frank and she wrote that the 23rd of February 1944. Are young people different now than they were in Anne’s time? Do fourteen-year-olds think and feel like her? My experience is that many do. Perhaps not as eloquently or with the incredible sensitivity of Anne Frank . . . but yes, they do. It is my experience that a fourteen-year-old is capable of the same depth of vision, the same questioning, the same emotional life as an adult. This is specially the case where the young person has experienced hardship in his or her life. (For great examples of this, read: The Freedom Writers Diary)
I write this now because there are so many books for young adults that underestimate the young person’s ability to understand, to feel, to wonder and perceive – abilities which, if anything, probably diminish as the young person grows into adulthood and is numbed into conformity. Annie Dillard, one of my favorite authors, wrote that you should write as if you were terminally ill and did not have that much more to live. And you should write for readers who are similarly terminally ill. What would you say if you had a year to live? What would you read? One of the reasons that Anne Frank’s diary is so beautiful and poignant is because Anne is aware that at any moment the Gestapo could be forcing open the bookcase that hid the entrance to the “secret annex.”
All of this is not to say that young adult literature should not be humorous and suspenseful and, well, fun. Nor is this to say that young adult literature should always have a “message”. Literature that the author would like young adults to read (I like that description much better than “Young Adult Literature” which is full of marketing connotations) ought to be truthful. Truthful in the sense that the author has pushed his questioning to the limits beyond which there is only mystery. Truthful in that the author has done all he or she can to be honest with himself and his readers in what he says and how he says it.
