I started writing Jaguar about seven years before it was published. Of course I was not writing continuously. In terms of time frames, the process of creation went like this. I wrote pretty much every day for about eight months and came out with what I thought was a best seller and which I proceeded to send out to agents and publishing houses and in the process picked up dozens of rejections. Besides sending it out to publishers and agents I gave the book to a few friends and one or two gave me helpful comments. I think that at this time I put the book away for about three years. When I picked the manuscript again, I started to re-write the whole book. I would begin each writing session by reading a scene of what I had written before and then I would start writing from scratch. Many of the same scenes were kept, but they were embodied in different language. But more significantly, many more scenes were added. This re-writing took about a year. Again I sent it out and again amidst the many rejections I received a letter from a publisher who told me that the book was an “unpolished gem” and she was specific about what did not work for her. This is when the third version of the book came into being. In this third version I did not re-write totally from scratch I re-structured. I connected. I changed where the story started, organized chapters into more logical common themes and time frames. By this time I knew that the book was not the type that would be picked up by a commercial publisher so I sent it to the type of small non-profit literary presses that specialized in Hispanic-American literature. That’s when Bilingual Review Press out of Arizona State University decided to publish it. A few months later, the book won one of the Chicano/Latino Literary Awards.

This is sort of the external history of the book. The internal history is more complicated. I have always wanted to be a writer. When I was nine years old my father bought me a typewriter, which I still have. But wanting to be a writer and writing are two different things. I majored in English in Philosophy in college. I studied Latin American literature at Harvard because I thought graduate school would help me write. I have kept a journal since I was in high school and I think that that’s how the book was born. The book is the daily journal of a person on death row. One day when I was writing in my journal I decided to imagine that I was a prisoner who was about to die. So then I just started inventing. The book is a grafting, a mixing of reality and fantasy. For example, the law firm that I used to work at had these yearly outings at a country club and I took that and created a scene where the main character was at a similar outing in the pool with the person he loved.

In thinking back, I see that I wrote this book at a particularly difficult period of my life. Writing is good therapy. But, of course, good therapy does not always result in good writing. The book was published because I was able to transform the writing that was helpful to me into good writing. The Way of the Jaguar was published in 2000. My attitudes toward writing have changed somewhat since then. Now I write books whose main characters are young people. But the experience of writing that first book showed me how to discover and accept the purpose of writing in my life.

You may be a young person who has a book you want to write. But you want it written and published like right now. You have the idea for the book in your head and maybe forty typed pages written already. You want to finish it and publish it before the school year is over if possible. You get the picture. In those forty pages of yours, there is a seed that may follow its course and grow into the book you are writing or maybe it will grow some place else. Please know that it will not be wasted. The probabilities that you have a “false start” in your hands are high. But it may also be a false start that gets you closer to where the story wants to go.

May Marcelo do well in the Real World. I send him out with all the blessings of a proud father. He persevered and kept insisting, even clamoring to be born, and so he did.

I am not a good carpenter. When I was in first grade in Mexico, I was so bad when it came to doing crafts, that the teacher would let me tell the class stories whenever the class worked on a project I would sit on a stool in the front of the class and make up a story on-the-go as the class made wooden clowns that you could roll on the ground with a long wooden stick. I’m not sure any of my classmates were envious of me up there, but I was envious of them. Now I think that my classmates and I were just using a different medium. Be a carpenter of words.

A writer is like any other artist in that they both share the same impulse to create something beautiful. Say that you are fifteen and you want to be a writer. Where does this “want” come from? Do you want to write short-stories or poems or a science fiction novel because you want to impress your friends or, even worse, impress that special boy or girl you have your eye on? It’s okay if you do. If this is the only reason you want to write, you will in a few months move on to other activities that have a greater chance of impressing others and are less painful (like football or Lacrosse or cross country running, or hitting your head against a wall!). But if there is a restlessness in you, a kind of fever to create something that is beautiful (truthful) then you better get a notebook or sit at your computer and start writing. Here’s a test as to whether this restlessness you feel is truly an artistic impulse. Do you always feel a certain dissatisfaction after you finished writing even when you know you wrote your best? You tried your hardest but you still feel you missed what you wanted to say. If so, stick around and keep writing, you are the proud owner of an artistic impulse. Congratulations and I’m sorry. You have been given a gift and a burden.

Giving or Generosity. What can you say about this one? Why write if not to give and to give your best? The thing about writing from a spirit of generosity that is not so obvious is that if the spirit of giving is not in your writing, your writing will not be as good as it could be. It will be superficial and you will not give the reader what he or she most desires. And the reader will not give the work his or her full devotion. There is a connection between “why” you write and “how” you write. If giving is the reason why you write you will reach a depth in your writing that will not be reached if you are motivated by anything else other than the desire to give. Writing that is born out of a desire to give is the writing that lasts.

Patience. Patience is typically associated with not getting angry or frustrated or giving up when things are not going your way. So it is with writing. When the words are not coming, wait. When the plot has reached an unsolvable spot, wait. If after a while there is no resolution, you may need to start again. Patience is knowing the day you start a novel that the first draft is a year away and the finished product maybe two years. It means being okay and kind to yourself when after four hours of work you have maybe one more or less salvageable paragraph.

Ethical Discipline. Everyone knows the connection between plain old discipline and writing, but ethical discipline? It’s clear to me that an alcoholic or a drug addict is not going to produce his best work. These addictions take too much time, for one thing. But maybe it is not so clear that honesty or kindness on the part of the author is necessary for good writing. I think that the writer’s integrity is something that is conveyed to the reader in subtle ways. When we read, we ask ourselves explicitly or implicitly, is this author someone I can trust? Is he or she for life or against life? Integrity, which results when our actions reflect our thoughts, seeps into our writing, it informs our work.

Enthusiastic Effort. We don’t get this type of enthusiasm when we write all the time. Some times we need to start writing with just a plain old sense of duty. But sooner or later, enthusiasm comes and when it comes, you better put up your sail. Enthusiastic effort is not a feeling necessarily, it is a conviction that the expression of your talent is something that you need to do for your sake and others. When the wind is not there, we row. Nevertheless, you need to do what you can to row where the wind currents are most likely to be. For me, enthusiasm and joy in writing always come when I stop being so serious and I look at what I am doing as play, when I become child-like again.

Concentration. Concentration happens when you start having fun with your writing the way it happens when a child plays. You realize you have been concentrating not during but later when you look back and realize three hours have just gone by without you realizing it. This absorption is the most enjoyable aspect of writing. Flannery O’Connor says that the writer loses himself or herself for the sake of the work. She means that the writer puts his or her ego aside and puts the characters and the story first so that, for example, brilliant writing that doesn’t add anything to character or story will need to be tossed. When we truly concentrate, our attention is fully directed at the work, we put the work first, we become the characters we are writing about and there is no room for me.

Wisdom. I see wisdom closely associated with the function of the editor. The editor can be an inner editor or another person, a real editor, if we’re lucky enough to have one we trust. Wisdom has to do with decisions about the work, both logical and intuitive. There are places in the work where we can choose to go in different ways. How do we choose? We can use reason, experience, knowledge and good-taste to make our decisions. Sometimes, however, all we have is an intuitive sense that one way is better than another. This is the part of writing that, paradoxically, is both solitary and communal. You need to dig deep initially to see what your heart tells you and then listen carefully to that person who understands your work and whose judgment you respect and trust.