The rain on this April evening reminds of my grandfather’s house in Tampico, Mexico, where I grew up. It is the sound of the rain on the roof of the house. The soft light of the lamp falling on the book. Mostly I think the memories come from the combination of sound and warmth. In my grandfather’s house, la casa de mi abuelito, the roof was made of tin and so the rain made sounds that, depending on the force of the rain, resembled anything from dozen ballerinas tip toeing to a million marbles dropping out of a big bag in the sky. Even as a six-year-old, I liked the rain. I liked it when it rained so hard that the noise absorbed all my thoughts and there was this delicious mixture of fear and safety. Inevitably, during those hard rain storms, the lights would go out. Then, the kerosene lamps were lit and there was complete immersion in all the senses: the sound of the rain, the smell of kerosene, the shadows cast by the flickering flames. If it was too early to go to sleep, then we would all sit in the living room, listening, maybe saying a word here and there. A word or two now and then was all that was needed.
April 28, 2008
April 15, 2008
Marcelo in the Real World
For the past month or so I have been working on the final edits to my third novel, Marcelo in the Real World. Today we finished the copyediting process. It is a funny feeling to see my work “corrected” that way. It is a humbling experience to see all that I missed despite the reading and re-reading and revising that I did before sending the manuscript off to publishers. It made me realize how much I need others with different skills to bring a book to completion. Even though the book is different now than the first submission, it is still very much my own. It is as if the initial vision of the work lay hidden and the editing cleared the way for it to emerge. This, I think, is what a good editor does – she opens the way so that the beauty and the light of the work can shine forth. Marcelo was very fortunate to have found an editor like Cheryl Klein at Arthur A. Levine Books/Scholastic. It is truly beautiful when a book and an editor are made for each other – when the characters and ideas in a book resonate with the sensitivities of the editor and when the editor has such kinship with the book’s meaning that she can articulate for the author what the author dimly feels. Publishing a book is such hard work. And in the midst of the hard work there is the element of “luck” or “fate” or “grace” – some mystery that cannot be accounted for in rational terms. Dozens of people read a manuscript and one likes it. Why that person? It is a mystery – like love.
