Wiser With Age

Tag: purpose

  • Author Francisco Stork: Advice to Young Writers

    Author Francisco Stork: Advice to Young Writers

    “What advice would you give a writer starting out?” is the question I am always asked at the end of one of my talks to high school students. I have thought about this question long and hard trying to come up with an answer that will be truly helpful. There are so many possibilities. Do I talk about developing skills or do I talk about attitude, about the mind-frame needed to write something that matters, something capable of touching hearts? In the end, I tell the young person about the one thing that helped me the most: writing every day in my journal.

    I started writing in my journal when I was a sophomore in high school and have been doing it almost every day since then. I am now 65 years old. I’m too scared to do the math and count how many entries this makes. In a closet in the basement of my house there is a stack of notebooks that goes almost to the ceiling. If I were to search for the first entry, I would probably find something very melodramatic about the unbearable sadness of unrequited love . . .and a few pages later, something with a lot of restless adjectives about a new possible love. These days the entries are more like silent prayer.

    I became a writer in those journals. At some point in my mid-forties there came a facility, an ease of vocabulary and imagination that allowed me to create characters that were part of me, yet were not me, and stories that were connected to yet separate from my own life story. Looking back, I see the journal as the equivalent of the scales that the pianist plays or the free-throws that the athlete repeats, alone in his back yard, one after another. My journal is where the habit needed for every skill was formed. The journal is where thought turned into instinct. The words that drip out slowly at first eventually start to flow as if they needed time and attention to feel fully welcomed.

    My journal gave me the gift of unconsciousness and of consciousness. Unconsciousness, because what I really want to say to that young person asking for advice is to forget about all those things she thinks writing will bring: fame, security, lots of people admiring you and loving you. Forget about the results, which more than anything else will paralyze you, or push you to write words that will not last, and instead focus on the effort. Love the trying, if you can. Offer your work to God, or life, and let them take care of whatever happens to your work after you finish. This is what I would like to say, but instead, I talk about writing in a journal every day because the practice of writing with the knowledge that no one will read what you write will, if you keep at it, eventually give you the freedom of knowing that what you write matters even if you are never famous, even if no one ever reads your words. This is the gift of unconsciousness that journal writing gives.  The journal’s gift of consciousness is the awareness that develops inside of you. The awareness of feelings and thoughts and of the universal humanity that is reflected in you and of which you are a part. You explore sadness and joy and ugly things too, like envy and anger, and when it comes time to invent the characters in your novels, you can create their souls from the first-hand experience of your own soul.

    This is what I want to say to the young person that wants to be a writer. But I can tell that she won’t like an answer that involves day after day of dedicated purpose. Start now, and maybe in 10 years, or 20, or 40, you will have something that the world finally recognizes as valuable. My dear young person doesn’t want an answer that requires years of working without anyone knowing he is working. She wants something that will happen before the junior-senior prom. Still, I go ahead and tell him about writing in a journal, about writing day after day to save my soul, sometimes my life. I tell him. Write in a journal every day. Write as if your soul and your life depended on it. The rest will take care of itself.

    Francisco X. Stork is a former attorney and an award-winning author of seven teen fiction novels. He often uses themes of his own life as inspiration for his writing. “The Memory of Light” is inspired by Stork’s own experience with depression, and “Marcelo in the Real World” is about a teen boy labeled as having a developmental disorder. Read more about his personal journey here. 

  • Actor Ivonne Coll on playing the matriarch on ‘Jane the Virgin’ at 70

    Ivonne Coll (Photo\Starla Fortunato)

    Ivonne Coll is not a mother, or a grandmother, in real life, but she plays the role of both on television.

    Coll, otherwise known as Alba, plays the matriarch of her alternate reality home on The CW’s “Jane the Virgin.”  There, the Puerto Rican actor plays the Venezuelan grandmother of Jane (Gina Rodriguez), and the mother of Xiomara Villanueva (Andrea Navedo). Her main goal as head of that household is to try and steer Jane in the right direction. 

    “What I like about the show is how they portray Alba is that she is still sensual,” says Coll, adding that her character is also courageous and intelligent. “A lot of times abuelas are shown as always having an apron on and asking if you ate, but Alba is a dynamic woman who has a boyfriend and makes mistakes in life. The creators allow me to sing and dance – those are the opportunities that this show has allowed me to express.”

    In a way, the now 70-year-old actor is going back to her roots. At 20, while studying psychology at the University of Puerto Rico, Coll won the Miss Puerto Rico title, and in the same year, 1967, she represented Puerto Rico in the Miss Universe pageant – both of which required her to display her talents of acting, singing and dancing. Upon seeing her performing skills, a producer in Puerto Rico gave Coll her own variety show. But at 26, Coll decided it was time to move to Hollywood.

    Ivonne Coll in 1967 (Courtesy Ivonne Coll)

    “My mother couldn’t understand why I was leaving Puerto Rico, because I was so successful there, but I knew my calling was somewhere else,” says Coll. “I knew I had to study the craft of acting. I didn’t care about fame, or making it, or becoming a star, I wanted to become a working actor – that was my goal.”

    Little did she know, she says, that according to the standards of Hollywood, she was already considered “too old.”

    “But I didn’t know that, and when I was told about it, I didn’t care,” says the determined Coll. “I just thought, ‘Let me keep on growing and doing my craft.’”

    It was around this time in her life that she often didn’t have money for food or to buy bottled water, but nothing, not even not having money, would be an obstacle to accomplishing her dream. When she needed diction classes to make her spoken English clearer, she instantly thought of a creative solution.

    “I would clean the room for free lessons,” says Coll, laughing at this memory. “It was joyful. I never thought that I was struggling. I never thought I was paying my dues. It was a joy to do that work to get that session.”

    Shortly after, by a chance situation, she was hired to play the “redheaded singer, Yolanda” in Francis Ford Coppola’s, “The Godfather II,” which hit theaters in 1974.

    “It was around 2 or 3 in the morning, and Al Pacino came on the set to do the kissing scene, and that’s what it did it for me,” recounts Coll about the exact moment she confirmed she wanted to dedicate the rest of her life to acting. “As he walked to Fredo, watching the way he transformed. I thought, ‘How did he do that?!’”

    It was then that she started to train even harder.

    “I studied acting techniques for seven years, with Lee Strasberg, David Alexander, and Lucille Ball – who gave an eight-week workshop in Hollywood,” says Coll, adding that Ball was very strict and committed as a teacher.

    Throughout her career, Coll has starred on Broadway in “Goodbye Fidel,” and played Lady Macbeth in “Lady Macbeth,” and acted in the films, “Lean on Me,” and “Walking the Dead,” and has countless television credits, including “Switched at Birth,” and “Glee.” Yet no matter how many years and projects pass, she still calls her mother her biggest inspiration, role model and hero.

    “It’s all for Puerto Rico and my mother,” says Coll about Rosita Mendoza who was a celebrated hairstylist in Puerto Rico. “I think I inherited all my talent from my mother…Later in her life, she would be training – her talent for teaching is my talent for coaching others. That’s my mother – I’m so lucky. The last thing she saw me in was in Puerto Rican Parade in New York City when I won the Lifetime Achievement Award [in 2015]. She saw it on TV, and a week later she died.”

    Coll admits that as her recurring role as a mom in the television series,“Switched at Birth” was dwindling down, she started thinking about gracefully bowing out of show business and returning to her island home.

    “I didn’t think there would be more roles for me,” says Coll. “As I’m doing the paperwork needed to wrap up, I get the audition for this role at Jane the Virgin.”

    Not taking it seriously, she first told her agency she’s busy doing jury duty.

    “I was so confused, because the role was in Spanish in English, and the audition was the next day!,” says Coll.

    Once there, she asked the producers what kind of Spanish dialect they wanted. They said Venezuelan, which was a very easy transition from her native Caribbean Spanish.  

    “God decided that role was for me no matter how much I didn’t take it seriously,” says Coll. “When they called me to go to network, I turned off my phone, and I didn’t hear they cancelled the audition. So I went. And at the moment the casting director came in, and she said, ‘Abuela, we’ll see your tape.’ They didn’t answer until the next day. We were in parking lot when I got it. I was screaming in the car. It’s been a great ride.”

    She says working on “Jane the Virgin” has been one of her most special experiences, because her co-stars have become like true family.

    “It’s also the first time three Latinas are in a mainstream show, and now we have it in ‘One Day at a Time,’” says Coll about the Netflix series she will soon guest star on – reuniting her with Rita Moreno, 85, who played the “Glam-ma” on “Jane the Virgin.”

    Looking back now to when she once heard she was “too old” at 27, Coll laughs.

    “I just produced and co-wrote a short and I’m acting in it,” she says. “It’s about two women – one is a principal, and one is a yoga teacher and married to a Harvard professor…I want to put [Latinas] in charge like we are in real life…Producers feel it won’t sell, but it will sell, because it represents the face of North America.”

    What advice would she tell her 20-year-old self at her age now?

    “I wouldn’t change anything of what I did really…Go with your gut feeling. God lives in you. I was not aware that I was doing that. Be more aware of what moves you, because that will inform how your life will be.”

    “Alba, to me, has been a gift of love from God that came at a time I was about to retire. Isn’t it incredible?,” says Coll. “You can plan, but God has other plans, and His plans are better than yours.”

  • Bronx poet uses storytelling to educate others about their history

    Bronx poet uses storytelling to educate others about their history

    Bobby Gonzalez (Photo/George Malave)

    Bobby Gonzalez has had practically every job you could think of — from a medical records clerk in a hospital to customer service at a utility company. However, he says it was at age 40 that he discovered his life’s calling and passion – storytelling. His favorite topic is his Puerto Rican and Taino heritage, which in turn, challenges his listeners to get curious about their own roots.

    Ever since that moment of enlightenment, storytelling is what Gonzalez devotes his life to. At 65, he still resides in his native Bronx, NY, with his wife Maria, but sometimes he doesn’t even know where he’ll end up the next day giving a workshop or lecture. So far, he’s spoken in 42 states — in the past two weeks alone, he’s been at Wellesley College in Massachusetts and Davidson College in North Carolina speaking about the racial and cultural diversity of Latinos. Next week, he’ll host his monthly spoken word event in Queens, NY.

    “When people ask me, ‘What do you do?’ I say, I’m an educator through lectures and poetry,” says Gonzalez, who has also authored two books, “The Last Puerto Rican,” and “Taino Zen.”  “I don’t know what’s going to happen the next minute. Occasionally, I get a phone call asking me, ‘Can you do this?’ and I do it. I’m not afraid to fail.”

    His second favorite job in life, he says, was working at his family’s bodega, which they owned for more than 30 years.

    “That’s where I really polished my speaking skills, and I heard a lot of great stories,” says Gonzalez, about the place which birthed his purpose. “It was quite an experience.”

    He says his parents also played an important role.

    “We were very fortunate, my brothers and I, to have had two Puerto Rican parents who always made the point to tell us where we came from and instilled in us a great pride of who we were,” says Gonzalez. “That inspired me to embark on a lifetime of personal research. I got my information from books and oral traditions – here and in Puerto Rico. When I was a little boy, my parents would take me to Puerto Rico, and I would sit at the feet of my great grandfather. He would tell me the stories of the old days, and I would roll my eyes, but I wish I listened more carefully.”

    Gonzalez can see clearly now that his ancestors grew up in a different world, and that gives him the incentive to tell their stories. One story in particular which has marked him is one of his mother’s arrival to New York from Puerto Rico via a train from Miami in the 1940’s.

    “She was very light-skinned, and when she got to Miami, the conductor told my dark-skinned grandmother to sit in another car,” recalls Gonzalez. “I have to remind young people they take a lot for granted – even the right to vote.”

    Gonzalez remembers the exact date he began documenting his family roots by writing poetry.

    “It was February 9, 1964,” he says without hesitation. “The Beatles appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show, and the day after, millions of kids around the world bought their own guitars and started to write their own music.”

    Storytelling came very naturally to him, he further explains.

    “Every day, I would go to the library, get some books, and then go down my block and tell stories,” says Gonzalez, who still has the same almost involuntary instinct years later. “I spend a lot of time in the Manhattan and the Bronx libraries,” where he sometimes also hosts spoken word nights for teens.

    He says one of his biggest career challenges also took place in a library while he was telling stories of his ancestors, the Taino people, who are an indigenous people of the Caribbean.

    “Once I was speaking in a library in Queens, and a man told me, ‘There are no Tainos left. I don’t know why you’re doing this.’ At the end, he came up to me and said, ‘I’m proud to be a Taino.’ I was taught by my parents never to say ‘You are wrong.’ We were all raised differently, so it’s important to dialogue in a civilized manner. We are all one.”

    Gonzalez says he used this parental wisdom when speaking at the University of Mississippi last year, as well.

    “We can’t have the same perspectives, and that’s okay, as long we listen to each other with respect,” he adds. “I meet students from Latin countries, and they don’t know about their indigenous heritage, and people who lived here their whole life don’t know American history. My favorite moment is always when people say, ‘I didn’t know that.’”

    Education is primordial for Gonzalez, even though his father only finished 2nd grade and his mom, 6th grade. He admits he never finished his bachelor’s degree in marketing, but he believes through his natural curiosity, he has learned so much more by devouring books on his own. And now he loves to share that knowledge with kids as young as pre-k, all the way to seniors.

    “I don’t have the sense of fear,” says Gonzalez about what has helped him the most in life. “The times now are nothing compared to what my parents went through. Police brutality was a lot more common back then, there were no bilingual services, and immigrant groups lived in one neighborhood. My brothers, and I went to college. We didn’t finish, but we did it, because my parents sacrificed for us.”

    What is the one piece of life advice he wishes he could tell his younger self today?

    “It gets better every day if you make the conscious effort to improve yourself passionately and persistently.”