I was on a panel yesterday at the Brooklyn Book Fair with Mitali Perkins, Kate Milford and Anjali Wason. The title of the panel was “Making It” and it dealt with the tough situations the panelists put their characters in and how those same characters “make it” – that is, survive. It was wonderful panel and the questions from Anjali (the moderator) and the audience were very insightful. Being in that panel got me thinking about many things. What is it in me that likes to put my poor young characters in such dire straits? Pancho loses his dad and his sister. DQ has a rare form of cancer. Marcelo has to spend a summer working in a law firm! Oh, my goodness. In answering a question from the audience, Mitali Perkins said that she wanted to write something funny and I remember thinking how wonderful it would be to write something light and airy and fluffy. Do I have it in me? I hope that humor and a certain lightness of being will always be a part of whatever I write no matter how serious the topic or how dire the straits that my characters find themselves in. I think that this lightness of being that I seek so much has much in common with hope. No matter how serious the topic, hope needs to be part of the mix. And humor. I think what saves serious, realistic fiction from being too dreary to read is hope and humor and love. Love is not something that is directly conveyed from author to reader. It is more of an aura, a feel that the reader picks up. The love I’m talking about is the love of the author for his characters – so that even when they are in a rough spot, they are still very much loved. I’m not sure that there are any literary tricks to convey this love. It is either there, in the author’s heart, or it isn’t. For some inexplicable reason, my poor young characters will probably always find themselves confronted by a reality that can be harsh sometimes (and kind and beautiful as well). I can promise you that they will also find in themselves a way towards hope and love.
September 13, 2010
July 4, 2010
Integrity
I’ve been thinking about what it means for a young adult novel to have integrity. I approach the subject from the point of view of the author. How can I write a novel for young people with integrity and why is it important that I do so? I don’t know why it is so hard to write about integrity. It is almost as if integrity and silence go together. The minute you start speaking about integrity you are in danger of losing it. But maybe the risk is worth taking.
The reason why it is so difficult to write about integrity is because integrity has a lot to do with intent and motive. Why am I writing this? The young adult novel will have integrity if it is written in response to an inner calling, a spiritual necessity. When the impulse to create is pure, when what it seeks is the expression of beauty and goodness, the result is a work that has integrity.
So integrity is something that happens in the mind and heart of the author. But the motive of the author cannot help but manifest itself in the work. There it waits to be recognized by the reader. Integrity is an invisible presence recognized by an invisible awareness. Integrity gives rise to trust between writer and reader. “Yes, I give you my heart. I now know you have my wellbeing in mind,” says the reader wordlessly when integrity is apprehended.
To write with integrity is difficult. To do so the writer must invoke a sort of amnesia for all those external considerations that detract from the work itself. How hard these days to forget about sales and awards and praise or its opposite. But I don’t think integrity means that the writer must forget about the reader — the person for whom she is writing. Rather, to write with integrity means to respect the intelligence, the feelings, the autonomy of the reader. It means that I as an author will remain true to an artistic vision that I intend to share. That the artistic vision is to be shared imposes certain limits to the creation. And it is here in the imposition of limits that I as an author will respect my reader. It is here that I will keep her wellbeing in mind. This dance, this tension, between responsibility to the work and responsibility to the reader is where integrity may be found, where it lives like a spark of life.
May 29, 2010
The Writer’s Faith
Writing a book can teach you about life, how to live your days, if you let it. Take this thing we call faith, this mystery that is as real in its presence as it is in its absence. You need it. The book cannot get written without it. But what is it? The kind of faith you need, the one you’re looking for, the kind you wait for open-eyed and thirsty is more than a belief. I believe in myself. I believe I can do it. My experience is that this kind of mental faith (for belief is a thing of the head) doesn’t get you too far. The faith that works is the kind that triggers surrender and that follows it. This vision of a book that I have, there’s no way that I can make it real. The work is beyond my powers and yet it must be done. I put my foot in the water, testing, and I wade in slowly. Or I dive in careless of depths or petrels. Faith is this two-chambered heart of giving up and going on. And as the book gets written sentence by sentence yet another kind of faith is needed. Let’s call it faith in the reality of your creation. The world that you are creating is made real and kept alive by your faith. You must not doubt your creation’s power or its purpose or its goodness. The world you have created has been made real by your faith and now you begin to love. You love your characters, the things that happen to them, the world they live in. Faith has become love. And that’s what it always wanted to be.
