A month or so ago, my third novel, Marcelo in the Real World was accepted for publication by Arthur A. Levine Books, an imprint of Scholastic. Cheryl Klein, my editor, was going to be busy during the month of July with the release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (also published by Arthur A. Levine and Scholastic) and so we agreed to postpone our initial meeting until early August . (I can’t for the life of me understand why Harry should take precedence over Jasmine, but what do I know!) Jasmine, however, is going to need some revisions and so this interlude between acceptance of the book and figuring out what those revisions will be has been helpful to me. So, besides waiting to see what happens to Harry with just about the rest of humanity, I have been busy (or unbusy) painting stones. On the shores of Singer Island in Florida where I vacation with my family, you find these flat stones the range in diameter from the size of a quarter to that of a small and badly-made pancake. The stones are cool to the touch and gray. They have been smoothed by time and sand and sea. Many of these stones have a hole made God only knows how. (I suspect there is a scientific explanation for the hole but I don’t want to find out. I like my own image of generations of tiny amoeba drilling through eons.) These stones, which I love collecting in my walks, make great gifts. You attach them to a piece of leather or gold chain (depending on the recipient) and there you are. I here confess to being slightly hurt when I see the forced smile on my nieces and nephews as I hand over to them a Christmas-wrapped small box that rattles. Now these stones are perfect just as they have come into the world. I, however, feel compelled to ruin them by making designs on them. I have a shoebox full of paints and indelible magicmarkers with names of colors I have never heard before. The designs I paint on these helpless stones are abstract and can best be described as “Mexican-Mandala.” I start of trying to make a Mandala (like the stone glass windows that you see in the front or back of a cathedral), but I soon make a mistake and then proceed to “redeem” the design painting some a happy fiesta of dotted colors. Why I think that painting stones is the right thing to do during this time of preparation (and anticipation) prior to the revisions to Jasmine is this: I paint stones in silence and my mind slowly attunes itself again and rejoices in the simple act of attention, as if this were the mind’s most natural and happy state. There is in the miniscule and detailed motions of my hands precision enough to require concentration but the object of concentration is playful enough so that it can be carried out with abandon. I care about the process not the results and in this there is, as in all true play, an element of freedom. (I am grateful for the humble stones and the willingness to so sacrifice their beauty for me.) This place inside my mind that I find as I paint my stones is a place where images and dialogues and even thoughts sometimes come to visit (and sometimes stay). They come and visit as if they were coming home – the way aunts and uncles and cousins and neighbors used to come to my grandfather’s house in Tampico when I was a child. They came to sit in the shade of mango and avocado trees and to feel the evening breeze of the gulf of Mexico and they stayed for the pleasure of being with each other.Â
July 19, 2007
November 7, 2006
Of Raking Leaves and Writing
What is keeping you from taking a pen and a notebook and writing? Maybe you feel as I do when I see before me a trillion zillion leaves covering my yard. Where do I start? There is no way that I will ever get every single leaf. And look there are still some hanging on the trees and all around me brown, orange and red leaves twirl to the ground in their own unique spiral. Of all the answers that great authors have given to the question “why do you write?” I like Flannery O’Connor’s the best: “because it would be worse if I didn’t.” As hopeless as it looks to rake all those leaves, as hopeless as it looks to ever write a work of beauty or a work that will be read, it will be worse if you don’t.
As I start raking, I put aside the vision of a leafless yard and think only of the movement of my arms. Slow, even movements that are not rushed. I will rake for an hour, I say to myself. Tomorrow, Sunday, I will rake another hour. Soon, little piles of leaves start forming in the yard and in spots, the grass which is still green, reveals itself like a blue sky when clouds drift out.
One sentence, two sentences. I will write for an hour. The pen gliding on the white, blue-lined paper. Words appear out of nothingness and now they exist. What I write is so different from that vision of beauty or that work of meaning and value I seek to create. But it doesn’t matter. I concentrate on sentences and paragraphs. One pile of leaves at a time. One circle of grass is clear. Then I start a new one, each circle connected to the next.
No matter how hard I try, I will never get every single leaf. A gust of wind comes and blows leafs from my piles. I can’t even get one small circle totally clear, leafless. I am shooting for percentages here. I have to. If I don’t, I’ll go crazy with anxiety. I’ll start to damn the leaf that falls and mars the green. Or I’ll say the hell with it. Let the leaves fall as they may. What do I care? Who needs more clarity?
So I protect myself and my task. Eighty percent, if I can get there, would be great. I’ll work for an hour today. An hour tomorrow. I’m grateful for the words, the sentences, the paragraphs, poor as they are. I am grateful. Because it would be worse without them.
August 8, 2006
Writing as Sharing
I see writing as both a solitary and a communal activity. At the beginning the author goes into solitude (in my case into a little office in my basement) in order to create. Months, even years later, he comes out, adjusts his sight to the light, and the work enters another phase. He shows the manuscript to a few people whose judgment he trusts. Down he goes again to revise. Out he comes again and this time his agent and then his publisher look at the work. Now he goes into hiding again but now he is not alone, he is working with others who are helping him complete the initial vision of the story. Of course, the only revisions he agrees to are those that were always part of the story or the character, although they were hidden, unrecognized, until then. Nevertheless, after a point the book belongs to more than one. Then the book is published. Here I think the author has a choice. He could say “that one’s done, on to the next”. Or he can say, “let’s see what I and others can learn from this book”. For a story, as you probably know, is greater than the sum of its parts and always tells more than is intended. So let’s use this modern day marvel of communication to learn as much as possible from Behind the Eyes or The Way of the Jaguar. Hopefully, this will be useful to you. As for me, you can be sure that the next time I descend to that little office in my basement, I will take with me what I’ve learned from you.
