Finding Miracles (22 page)

As for favorite books now, I have so many! I love poetry, novels, nonfiction books—anything well written can engage my attention. It can be a story in a cookbook or a poem about a snake or a tale about a girl who saves her life by telling stories. I’m not picky when it comes to good books. But if a book is not well written, I don’t care who wrote it—
poof!
It’s transformed into a doorstop or a coaster or an item in the recycle box!

Q. As both an author and a longtime teacher of writing at Middlebury College, what advice do you offer young writers?

A.
What advice can I offer young writers? Most important of all is to be a voracious reader. How can you learn to swim without getting in the river? I’m astounded sometimes when a young student writer tells me that he is not into reading! How can you be a writer without being a reader—that’s like being a horseback rider but not really being into riding horses. Read, read, read. The best books are your best teachers!

Another piece of advice is to develop the “habit of writing.” If I decided to write based on whether or not I felt like it on any given day, I would end up writing maybe only a handful of days a month. All kinds of things would get in the way: an invitation to lunch at a favorite restaurant, a beautiful day tempting me to go out on a bike ride, a cold that makes me feel under the weather. Most people I know have no problem with my being a writer, but they often feel annoyed when I am actually writing, because I’m not answering their phone call or going to the movies or going shopping with them.

The point is that it’s hard just to get yourself to sit down and write. Like any other skill, you’ve got to practice it to become good at it. In fact, even after you become good at it, you’ve got to practice to stay in shape. I often compare writing to dancing. Say a dancer only did her floor exercises when she felt like it. Say a week went by when she did not feel so inclined. Then the day she does feel inspired, she tries to do a jeté and she pulls a muscle or she falls flat on her face. Writing also requires daily exercise of your “writing muscles.” If you don’t write for a week, when you sit down to write, you just don’t have the same agility as when you are at it every day, even if it’s only for an hour. Once you have developed the habit of writing, you don’t have to think about whether you are going to do it today or tomorrow or the next day. It’s just something you do, like having breakfast or brushing your teeth or watching TV.

One of the ways to do this daily writing is to keep a journal. In other words, you don’t have to try to write a prizewinning poem or a chapter of a novel every day. Just write an entry about whatever happened to you today. Practice putting the adventures of your life into words, the little things you notice, the way people around you talk, the view out the window, the smells after a rainstorm, the taste of your mom’s apple crisp. Practice making your sentences reflect the rhythm of a scene. Imitate a paragraph you admire from your favorite book.

And here’s a third piece of advice, a must for any writer: pay attention! Writing begins before you ever set pen to paper or put your hands on the keyboard. It’s a way of life, of being awake to the little things around you that you would otherwise miss. I do agree with Henry James’s advice to the young writer, “Be one of the people on whom nothing is lost.” It’s a great way to live, not just for writers, but for anybody: smelling the flowers—as the cliché goes—and touching them and tasting them, and even listening to them.

Haiku are great little “finger exercises,” by the way. In order to write one, you have to pay close attention to the tiny things in your life. Not only that, but you have to choose the just-right word, since so few are allowed. It also helps that haiku are easy enough to compose even if you are far from pen and paper. Here are two favorites from the eighteenth-century Japanese poet Buson. Try a few yourself.

That wren—
looking here, looking there.
You lose something?

Asked how old he was
the boy in the new kimono
stretched out all five fingers.

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AN ALA BEST BOOK FOR YOUNG ADULTS

AN ALA NOTABLE BOOK

A
MIAMI
HERALD
BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR

WINNER OF THE AMÉRICAS AWARD FOR CHILDREN’S AND

YOUNG ADULT LITERATURE

WINNER OF THE PURA BELPRÉ AWARD

Published by Laurel-Leaf
an imprint of Random House Children’s Books
a division of Random House, Inc.
New York

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents
either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used
fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead,
events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Text copyright © 2004 by Julia Alvarez

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RL: 5.4

May 2006

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eISBN: 978-0-307-43333-6

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