One Last Chance to Live, the new YA novel by Francisco X. Stork, author of the Walter Dean Myers Honor Book Disappeared, follows a grieving teen from the Bronx who turns a school writing assignment into a lifeline. Seventeen-year-old Nico aspires to become a “great writer,” a desire that was nurtured by his deceased unrequited love Rosario. His routines are torn asunder by an eerie dream that seems to prophesize his death, as well as the deaths of his mother and half brother, Javier. When his mother is diagnosed with lung cancer and Javier begins a dangerous gang initiation, Nico tries to make sense of these events through his daily writing assignments. Stork spoke with PW about the life of a writer and how Nico’s struggles closely mirror his experience of coming into his own.
In a note to readers, you write that One Last Chance to Live is the “most personal” of all your books. Can you elaborate on that?
I’m pretty sure that when I asked my adoptive father for a typewriter, people were surprised that, at seven years old, I wanted to be a writer. When you’re young, you think of being a writer as something that makes you special in other people’s eyes. I had a desire to do something for the love and admiration of others. But that desire changed over time.
I’m 71 years old now, and I think I’m getting closer to writing for the right reasons, which is writing out of love, as opposed to seeking to be loved. I’m learning about honest writing, the kind that you really care about, that really expresses who you are, that stays close to the things that are important to you—to your own beliefs, your own vulnerabilities.
Nico’s heart is how my own heart was when I started out. He starts off as wanting to be famous, but throughout One Last Chance to Live, he slowly discovers that the writing process can be a way to find himself, and he learns how to make his writing useful for other people. He’s finding his voice and his vocation.
In the same note, you say that this book started as “a novel about the writing life.” What was it about the writing life that you wanted to capture?
A lot of times when I talk to young people, they only really have one image of writing: writing a book, getting an agent, and publishing that book. Nico starts off idealizing the process of writing, and what he has to do is learn the realities of it and be okay with that.
I started thinking about a book for young people about how the writing life is just that—it’s something that you do all your life. It comes from who you are, and it’s something that you practice and practice and practice and grow into.
One Last Chance to Live is told over the course of Nico’s daily personal journal entries, a practice that you also keep. Why did you choose this framing device?
I learned how to write by writing in my journal, which I started keeping when I was Nico’s age. It became a habit. One of the things that happens when you write every day is that you lose that censor that we all have in our heads, the one that tells you, “You’re not a good writer,” or “Nobody’s going to like your writing, nobody’s going to read this.” If you just do it and do it, it becomes a very natural process, and it becomes much more spontaneous. Writing about the things that happen inside your head is a way of mindfulness; it’s a way of learning about who you are. It helps you with becoming the person you’re supposed to become.
What are you working on next?
This is my 11th novel. I don’t have any timelines or contracts right now, so I want to do things a little bit differently this time. I’m really open to inspiration. If something comes up, I’ll just take my time with it. I started working on a new book, little by little, but I’m just waiting to see what happens next.
I’ll always enjoy writing. I still write in my journal. But right now, I’m really enjoying being a grandfather. I take care of my five-year-old grandson every day.
One Last Chance to Live by Francisco X. Stork. Scholastic Press, $19.99 Sept. 3 ISBN 978-1-339-01023-6
