Francisco's Journal an author discusses the art of writing

That’s the question that I was asked by a young person recently. What would you say if you were asked this question by someone whose life depended on the honesty of your answer? All answers to this question are so . . . poor (it’s the best word I can come up with). Here’s what I struggled to say. I share this with you not without fear.

I don’t know where to start. The question is like a Zen Koan, so very complicated and so very simple. And like a Zen Koan the mistake we make is to look for an intellectual answer, something we can put in words and impress people with our brightness. Actually, the answer is more like an experience, a new way of seeing and it is one of those things that if you can name it, you probably don’t have it. Nevertheless, I believe it is important to try to communicate as best as possible this experience. Being a seeker (like you are) has consequences. One of the consequences is that if you don’t share what you find in some form or another you’re going to be unhappy.

What I have found is that there are times in my life when I experience something that is unique but also part of a greater whole shared with everyone and everything else in this universe (Maybe our question should be why are we in this universe?”). The best way I can describe this experience is that it is something like what I have experienced in other realms of life and which we call love. The experience is one of being loved and of loving. It is an inward and outward movement, like breathing or like the heart’s pull and push motion.

Why I was put in this planet is to realize completely and always that my true self is this ever flowing fountain of love. For some reason, realizing this full time is not easy. There’s another part of me that doesn’t want to live and operate out of this loving region. I’m not sure why this struggle was built into the system and why this other part exists at all. I have some clues, but that may have to be another e-mail if you’re still e-mailing me and I haven’t scared you off, which, trust me, is a real possibility. I don’t know you and I don’t know at what part of your journey you’re at, but the very fact that you are asking why tells me that you’ve started. The one thing I do know about the struggle to live in love is that for that to happen that other part of me has to surrender it’s claim to be number one and accept it’s role as a servant of the source, the true self, that I am.

So that realization of who I truly am is one side of the coin of why I’m on this planet. The other side of the coin is the expression of that realization in the particular circumstances of my life. This part is related to the “uniqueness” piece contained in the experience of love. This part has to do with discovering and using that uniqueness. How are you going to express the love that you truly are in a way that only you can express. Until not very long ago, I used to think that writing novels was my uniqueness, my gift, and it is only lately that I’ve discovered that my gift is teaching. Teaching includes writing young adult novels but it is broader than that. Teaching sounds pedantic, and preachy and even a little arrogant. You know, the teacher is “better” than the student, the teacher is supposed to know more than the student. But the kind of teaching I’m talking about requires a skill and a mastery that I am still working on, and most of all it requires humility. The good teacher is not just interested in filling the student’s head with information but in drawing out what is unique and universal in that student. Writing for me is the best tool for that and so I write for young people, about young people to walk with them as a fellow seeker, to humbly walk beside them toward the discovery of our true self and and the unique gift each one of us has received.