"An Act of Hope": An Interview with Francisco X. Stork

Ever since I read Marcelo in the Real World, I have admired, been inspired by, and devoured everything Francisco X. Stork writes. Creating characters and worlds with great depth and remarkable heart, Stork is able to elucidate what maters most in life. And he connects with readers in ways that not only make for engaging and powerful reading experiences, but can truly change people's lives.

He has already changed mine.

So it is with a huge amount of excitement and gratitude that I want to share an interview with Francisco X. Stork, along with a plea: please (please! please! please!) read his most recent novel The Memory of Light. I wept, exulted, and relished the chance to hear such an authentically moving and life-changing novel. It is one of those few books that I truly believe everyone needs to read, and I thank Francisco so much for writing it.

Growing up, were there any school experiences that either inspired or hurt you? 

More than experiences I think that there were certain persons who guided me and pushed me in the right direction. Many times this guidance was in the form of small gestures that turned out to be significant. I remember, for example, Mr. Halpern, my English teacher at Jesuit High School in El Paso. One day he called me to his desk when class was over and handed me three typed pages. It was a list of a hundred books or so listed in alphabetical order starting with Antigone and ending with Zorba the Greek. 

“These are the books everyone that wants to write should read,” he said. I spent that summer and most of the following year reading each book on the list. It’s how I fell in love with Borges and Cervantes and Dostoievski and Jung and many other classic books of fiction and non-fiction.

As a writer, what part of the process do you love most?

I love it when after a lot of thinking and daydreaming and doodling a character comes to life in my mind and I feel like I can be him or her and think and feel and talk the way he or she does. I think that 80 percent of the writing process happens before I actually start writing. A character needs time to grow inside of me and it is hard to wait for the character to be whole and unique enough for me into step into her shoes. I also love the first draft process when I’m not sure where the book is going and I’m not so much controlling the process as following where it takes me and discovering what I want to say in the process of saying it. During those times I am able to quiet my inner editor and simply write the book that is in me.

In THE MEMORY OF LIGHT, Vicky's journal is so raw and real and full of both despair and hope. How did you find the courage to be able to journey with Vicky in this way? How did you find the words?

It probably helped a lot that I’ve been writing in a journal almost daily since I was a teenager. My journal is a place of total self-honesty. No one will ever read what I write. I don’t even read what I write in a journal once it is written. When Vicky writes in her journal she is also in a place of total honesty. She doesn’t need to pretend that she is strong or happy when she is there. You would think that such self-honesty would be painful and it is - but the process of finding words for what you are feeling is a healing process. I found the words that Vicky used because I’ve experienced what she experiences and probably wrote down for myself some of the things that she writes. Even when the writing is full of despair, the act of writing is an act of hope. There is a hope and faith that there is someone listening to us. In many ways, whether you are overtly religious or not, writing during those times is form of prayer.

What would your advice be to a struggling high school student who is scared about speaking with others about her or his pain? 

The first thing I would say is that it’s okay to be scared. It’s normal to have this fear because you are making yourself vulnerable to another human being. I say this because you shouldn’t wait until the fear goes away to speak to someone. You should just go ahead and do it even though you are afraid. Usually, we have a gut feeling that someone will be a good person to talk to. Maybe we see in someone a kindness or an understanding, a way that a person listens to others, that makes us feel as if we could trust that person. Follow that gut feeling. You don’t have to understand why you’re feeling the way you do before you talk to someone. Just explain what you are feeling and try to communicate the thoughts that you are thinking. “I feel like crap.” or “I have these thoughts about hurting myself.” Just tell what is happening. You are not weak or a bad person for feeling and thinking this way.

Your advice to teachers?  

Be the person that a student can trust. A person in pain is on the lookout for someone who is kind and who can listen. You don’t need to be the student's therapist or even the student’s friend. You just need to let the student’s know that you care. Learn about depression and other mental illnesses and find ways to integrate a discussion of these in your classroom.  Resist as much as you can the pressure to motivate your students by fomenting competition. Let your classroom be a safe place for all. 

Thank you so much to Francisco X. Stork for sharing such depth of heart, and for so honestly walking through both despair and hope. His words remind me of Robert Frost's dictum about writing, "No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader." 

And if you are looking for a book that is not only riveting and inspiring and authentic, but also has the power to truly changes lives, please read The Memory of Light. 

Keep Calm and Query On is Available!

I'm thrilled that KEEP CALM AND QUERY ON: NOTES ON WRITING (AND LIVING) WITH HOPE is officially out! So grateful to John Dufresne for writing the Foreword; and to Francisco Stork, Ej Levy, Betsy Lerner, and Sarah Stone for offering kind words of endorsement; and to the many writers who allowed me to interview them for the book!

On another note, here is a fascinating video exploring the delightful resurfacing of the WWII slogan, sent to me by Kathy Erskine and John Dufresne. Worth three minutes of time, to be sure!

The Heart of the Story

Today, I wrote a pivotal scene in a novel in progress. It's a novel that has seen two full re-writes already, and is now in its third round of reworking. It's the kind of scene that changes everything--redefines who's "bad" and "good" in the novel--makes the stakes higher, more tragic, more painful.

Why?

Why write a scene in which a central character has to endure something terrible? Something awful?

See, when I wrote the first draft of this novel, I avoided that kind of thing. It's a book about a ninth grade kid who wants to make his basketball team. (Kind of like...well...when yours truly was a ninth grade kid wanting to make a certain basketball team.) I wrote the original novel straight through in bursts and gusts like some kind of windstorm hepped up on the sound of catching, cascading leaves.

I wrote like fire on that first draft, all the while keeping my eyes on the finish line.

But in writing the novel like this the first time through, I only brushed the surface. I only threw a few minor obstacles in the path of my character (ahem, myself).

Okay: a minor bullying issue.

Okay: character locks up in basketball games, fumbles ball a a lot. Misses easy jumpers. Misses passes.

Okay: character has a crush on popular girl. Said girl does not, in any capacity, experience similar sense of crush-ness.

Resolution? Character's brother, teacher, father help character overcome these (minor) obstacles. Character makes team. Scores points.

Finish!

It was, essentially, 135 pages of if only.

The second draft saw more obstacles come to the character--more nuances personalities of others involved, more suffering, more confusion. But still, too easy. Too fast.

It was, essentially, 155 pages of maybe life could be like this, but it's not really that interesting or inspiring.

So then I did what any hard-working, determined, courageous novelist would do: I started a brand new novel.  I didn't look at the other novel or work on it for another six months. I left that character (ahem, myself) stranded in a world without too many obstacles, without resolution or redemption for why he even wanted to make that team so badly, how his family was going to work things out, and a host of other confusing, plain-old-hard-to-forge-ahead dilemmas.

And the new novel was great fun! Such joy! Ah: the beginnings of things! Anything is possible, everything is possible.

But the other novel, when I was trying to escape it, kept doing small annoying things.

Like: when I'd be pumped about a great scene for the new novel, the old novel would whisper stuff like: Dude. Dude! You never even gave me a chance, did you? You wrote me up to a point, but just when you sensed that wall coming, you took cover and ducked out.

Like: when I'd think about other novel ideas to get brainstorming on, old novel would shake his head and say, And I was counting on you. Really. I was thinking we were forming a relationship built on trust. Commitment. Sticktoitiveness. At least I know how you REALLY feel.

New novel was fun. Brainstorming Novel was fun, too. There were (and are) some really neat ideas in both. But Old Novel saw right through me.

Then, something happened which made Old Novel's voice as loud as a Lion drinking five Red Bulls talking into a microphone attached to a state of the art sound system.

Francisco X. Stork came along and wrote a blog post which was beautiful, profound, moving, mesmerizing, and about one-hundred other adjectives. And one line in that one-hundred-plus adjective blog post took a walk off the screen of my computer, crawled across my keyboard, under my shirt, rock climbing up the many belly and chest hairs of my body, right up over my chine, lips, semi-large nose and directly in front of my eyes.

The novel you need to write is the one that scares you the most, the one you think no one will publish and if it is published no one will read and if it is read no one will understand, except perhaps another soul like yours.

The sentence joined forces with Old Novel and the two of them came at me like Mel Gibson and Danny Glover, like Milk and Cookies, like Dragons and Fire, like Laverne and Shirley, like garlic bread and more garlic bread.

I could no longer resist.

So I gave New Novel a few loving, tender words, and promised I'd return soon, and I opened up Old Novel and dug back in.

This time, however, I wrote intothe fear. I wrote into the places I didn't want my character (ahem, myself) to go. I wrote into the darkness and the confusion and into the pivotal scene I mentioned at the start of this post.

I cried.

A lot.

My heart was pounding, and I experienced a minor allergy attack, and the three people to my right in the computer lab kept looking over at me like, Why is that guy crying and sneezing and DOES HE HAVE TO TYPE SO LOUD?

Yes.

Because in this last month of Old Novel's third re-drafting, I am finally writing into the heart of the story. And it's scary and painful and wonderful and incredibly gooey in there. Nothing makes a whole lot of sense (yet). And nothing is easy. And no redemption is going to be possible without a lot of learning, one hefty character arc, and loads of transformation, from outside and from within.

Kind of, ahem, like my life.

When we write into the heart of the story, we're no longer writing with a publishing deal in mind, or with a certain audience in mind, or even with a goal in mind. When we really find ourselves getting into the center of the story, we're writing what has to be written--the words announce themselves and we're choosing to allow them the space to be who they are, show us what needs to happen even though it's scary and painful and all we want to do is say Surely there's got to be another way?

But there isn't.

(In writing, or in life.)

Without the pain, the redemption isn't real. Without the obstacles, the triumph isn't beautiful. Without the confusion and despair, the clarity and the hope aren't authentic.

And we we were somehow able to all get together under the guise of having a Jimmy Stewart movie marathon or a garlic bread-eating contest or something typical like that, but instead, we arrived at the wide open space with no television and no oven, and instead we all started talking about the kind of lives we want to live and the kind of stories we want to write, I'd venture to say that we'd come to a pretty quick consensus.

We want to write and live the ones that aren't easy. Even though the surface of ourselves and our culture certainly claims otherwise, we know deep down that we don't want ease. We don't want clarity without confusion. We don't want triumph without despair. We don't want love without first moving through and past fear.

And the only stories worth telling and the only lives worth living are those whose words and arms open up wide enough to embrace the suffering and the joy--knowing that both are necessary to both forge and move our hearts.