Francisco's Journal an author discusses the art of writing

December 6, 2019

Letting Go

Filed under: Uncategorized — Francisco Stork @ 10:05 am

On this late autumn day, the elms and oaks around my house seem determined to let go of all the leaves that have died on their limbs. Everywhere I look there is a letting go. The sky has let go of blue and allowed itself to be covered with a thick mantle of gray.

I am reminded of the letting go that I need to do. I am sixty-six (not that old as actuarial tables go) but like you and everyone and everything else that has been born, I am on my way to that final, total, letting go and I believe that it is time to shed what is no longer needed in this final stage of the journey.

It’s not a long list, the things I need to detach from. They are internal things mostly, like the ambition for worldly recognition that served me so well when I was young and I yearned to be somebody. Now ambition and the search for glory and rewards are a heavy burden and I would like, if at all possible, to travel light.

Whenever I try to explain to people that in this phase of my life, I wish to let go of no-longer-needed wants, they get worried that I may be in the grips of depression. Sometimes, I see disappointment in their eyes. I am bailing out on the American dream to strive, always to strive for more, to never quit. I am giving up on living life to the fullest. Why, there are people older than me running marathons, running billion-dollar enterprises, running for president of the United States. A few of my more literary friends have even taken to quoting the famous lines from Thomas Dylan’s poem:

Do not go gentle into that good night,

Old age should burn and rave at close of day;

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

I try to explain that, actually, raving and raging are at the top of the list of what needs to go. And if there is any burning inside of me, it will be more like the gentle flame of a candle that stays lit in the windstorm. But isn’t rage needed now more than ever? Isn’t giving up on rage the equivalent of not caring, of standing silent in the face of suffering and injustice? Am I being irresponsible? I respond that anger is not the strongest force, the fiercest weapon, but my words are taken as defeat.

I want to keep on working, fighting if you will, by being as useful to others as I can. What I am letting go of is the old motivation and the old methods of work. I let go of working for the fruits of my labor and focus on the sincerity of the effort. If I work with honesty and truth the outcome will not matter. I embrace work as a gift. The energy and ability to work, the talent, the creativity behind it, all is a gift and my only hope is to pass the gift successfully to others. The method too will change from hurried and anxious productivity to work done with the urgency and seriousness of an inner calling, a sacred obligation. Waiting with receptive attention, listening, silence, the fecundity of leisure — all these will be part of the work.  The value and priority of different daily tasks will change. What if everything I do each day is equally important? What if playing with my grandchildren is as significant as writing a story? What if I write a story with the same love with which I hold my grandchild? And what if love becomes the burning purpose of my work?

So many world traditions recognize old age as a special time. A spiritual time when a person can let go of the business of making a living and spend time looking care-fully at creation or searching for the presence of a creator, or developing virtues like humility, patience, kindness. Here in America that kind of letting go seems like giving up or, worse, cowardice. But letting go is an act of courage. It is choosing to finally, finally, follow the beat of your own drum. It means, if it comes to that, living on the margins of what is approvable by the world you live in. Courage could mean a solitude that is entered bravely, but not without fear. I am letting go of the images of myself that have served me well since I was a child. Who am I if not the talented boy who could read hardcover books in first grade? Or the dutiful lawyer or the Latino writer? Who am I, really, without these comfortable images?

These old, old, tress let go of their leaves effortlessly. For them, the process of letting go each year is part of their becoming and their becoming happens just as it is meant to happen. It is, unfortunately more complicated for me. The acorn “knows” it will become an oak tree. My own becoming takes some figuring out. Not just who I am but who I am supposed to be. Who is the person I am finally to become? For I feel the presence of becoming in my old heart and it is not the same restless energy of forty years ago. To find out where this becoming is taking me, I must let go of all that is not true, of all that belongs to others, of all those cherished fantasies. No one said it wasn’t going to hurt.

And yet, this letting go is not without a quiet joy, like the joy of the trees swaying in the wind, or the joy of the spiraling, falling leaf. I don’t know how to describe this joy. It is a paradox. It is joy filled with a light that is both dying and living.

I let go of trying to understand it.

July 14, 2019

A Sense of Place

Filed under: BYU Lecture,Suspense — Francisco Stork @ 11:48 am

[Excerpt from the Virginia Sorensen Lecture — BYU 2019 Symposium on Books for Young Readers]

One of the things I love the most about creating young adult characters is that readers accept the fact that they will grow as human beings — which, when you think about it, is not always something that is acceptable in books destined for adults. But in young adult literature we accept that the characters can become better human beings during the course of the story. To write a character-driven book really means that the plot is simply the outward manifestation of the moral decisions made by the character and of the consequences of those decisions. Early on in my career as a writer, I decided to follow what John Gardner says about plot:

“Real suspense comes with moral dilemma and the courage to make and act upon choices. False suspense comes from the accidental and meaningless occurrence of one damn thing after another.”

I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about what Gardner means by “real suspense”. Is there a suspense that is fake? Suspense is suspense, no? Shoot, I’ve been held mesmerized for hours by episodes of the Kardashians. I was doing research – in case you’re wondering. Real suspense, it seems to me, is when we as readers are fully invested in the moral dilemmas, in the inner life and doubts and soul-conflicts of the character. The Memory of Light is the story of a girl who finds herself in a hospital the day after a failed suicide attempt. There’s not much that is going to happen — the only suspense is whether Vicky will try to end her life again and it is clear from the beginning that this is a story of hope and healing. How can I keep a young reader interested in the story for three hundred pages? Only if I can create the real suspense of wanting to know more about someone we care about and the real suspense of discovering in another’s thoughts and feelings our own thoughts and feelings. Real suspense comes from the expectation that growth will happen, that healing will take place, that something will be eternally gained for the universe by the character’s fight. Real suspense is a sense of place where we are both comfortable and curious, familiar and challenging.

Writing for real suspense may make you into a “vertical writer” — one who writes for fewer, but more deeply. It might put you on the margins of what is popular. But I think that as writers of young adult literature we ought to try stay at the margins, we ought to be okay with not belonging, we ought to feel uncomfortable wearing the mask of conformity. We sometimes think that to be original in our writing means to acquire a quality or a style that no one else has. But originality involves more of a shedding — you divest yourself of what is not you. We writers have to remember that the intention with which we write matters. That what we believe when we are not writing matters, that how we live our lives matters and affects what we write. People read for many reasons but one of those reasons, surely, is out of loneliness and from a hope to find another soul who is with us for a while and understands our alone-ess. Shouldn’t we do all we can as writers to make sure that we give our best to the young person during the time they are with us, that what we give of ourselves is the truth, our true self, our most authentic? We ought to do all we can to make good art and not just so-so art and the only way that I see this happening is for the art to come from who I am and who I am working on becoming. Here I will leave you with some words by David Foster Wallace, one of my favorite authors:

“. . . it seems that the distinction between good art and so-so art lies somewhere in the art’s heart’s purpose, the agenda of the consciousness behind the text. It has something to do with love, with having the discipline to talk out of that part of yourself that can love instead of the part that just wants to be loved.”

 

June 8, 2019

Growing Old

Filed under: Aging,Old Age,Solitude,Soul — Francisco Stork @ 9:32 am

When I retired from practicing law three years ago, one of the things I proposed to do was write in this journal on a more regular basis. Now, looking at the small number of entries, I wonder what happened to my early resolve. I have continued my life-long practice of writing every morning in my private journal (the one no one else sees) and so it is not for lack of words or ideas that there are no entries here. Why then?  This morning I came up with a possible reason — one that will do as good as any other. I am growing old. Now, in case you didn’t know, growing old does not happen all at once. It happens slowly and it takes some getting used to. I think that these past three years have been a transition into old age. And part of that process of transition involves a need for privacy and maybe a little bit of a dislike for the desire for attention and admiration that marked earlier periods of my life. Writing here in this public journal is, I would like to think, a form of sharing, but it is also part of that persona that I choose to project to the world. One of the most beautiful things about growing old is that the false aspects of this persona are gradually shed like a snake’s old skin in favor of a more sincere reflection of this mysterious being that I am. But it seems to me that this effort toward authenticity that I am encouraging in myself as part of growing cold, this effort needs a cool, moist, shady, private place – at least until the new skin is in place.

Growing old has not been easy. I’m just getting started in what I hope will be a long process. There is an incredible amount of learning and adjusting and accepting to be done. That process of “letting go” of illusions, images, things that we cherished, but are finding out are not all that essential, seems to be the first phase of the process. Inherent in this “dis-enchantment” is the sense that my voice and what interests me many times does not “jibe” with the strident, ranting, spirit of the age where rage is evidence of principled conviction. The second phase, the one that I am now hopefully entering into now, is the “old men ought to be explorers” phase that T.S. Eliot speaks of in his Four Quartets. Explorers of external geographies, sure, but most of all explorers of the soul, ours and others. Old age is a gift in many ways — the final opportunity for soul-making and character building. All through my life, I intuited that I was growing toward something. There was a restlessness in me that I channeled into different kinds of externally recognizable achievement. That restlessness continues into old age but the goal changes or, if I am fortunate, will disappear altogether. No longer to do but to be becomes the direction and the joy. And this is not to say I cannot yet still be useful to others with my work. But, increasingly, it is the work itself and not what I receive after it is complete, where I find fulfillment. Who knows, I may have a book or two left in me. But the books, if they come will be a natural blossoming of the soul work — a fruit of love. It is the growth of love that is the true work of old age.

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