A Cool Bit with Francesca Lia Block
 Who says fairy tales are just for kids? Francesca Lia Block has been
crowned Girl Goddess #1 by teens far and wide for her slinkster-cool
Weetzie Bat tales about hip, savvy young adults who find meaning in
Shangri-LA, I mean, Los Angeles.
In this never-before-published conversation from 1998, Francesca talks about her creative process, darkness,
and hope.
Cathy: How do your stories begin? How do you get them out? What do you do when you get stuck?
Do you have rituals to help you get in a writing frame of mind?
Francesca: I take long walks with my dog [Vincent van Go Go Boots], and that helps
sucking my lower lip and twirling a strand of hair around my finger. I would make
up stories to myself and sometimes I would say them outloud. I must have looked
like a little mad girl or something! I needed that motion. I like to dance.
I really need motion or dancing and moving in order to get my ideas out.
I don't have a set schedule. I heard that Isabelle Allende starts a book on
the same day each year and that Clive Barker writes 8 hours a day.
For me, it's more about being there for the muse to happen but not in a structured way.
I don't know when I get my work done. It's almost as if I go into a trance.
Suddenly, I have something done, but it doesn't feel like it was work.
Cathy: You know, the whole idea of what Young Adult
literature can be has changed so much in recent years, and I think that you
contributed to that change. I also think that when The Hanged Man first came
out that people were stuck on some of the motifs in your Weetzie Bat books:
rubber chickens with wigs and slinkster-cool pooches. I'm not sure if people
were ready to read such explicit darkness from you.
Francesca: There's something about the way you say that that is very moving to me.
There's a big part of me that is very dark and sad. That comes out in very delicate ways,
sort of disguised by all of the fairy tale elements and magic, but it's definitely a big
part of me. It's a part of me that needs to be expressed. I felt sad that this part of
me wasn't accepted [by readers, by the market] because I felt that those darker
explorations [as in The Hanged Man] were some of my strongest writing - if not the strongest.
Cathy: Well, I agree with you, and I was going to say that
my favorite Weetzie Bat book [also included in Dangerous Angels] is Missing Angel Juan, which I think is the darkest story from that group.
 Francesca: Definitely. That's my favorite, too.
So many Young Adult novels are [so-called] "problem novels," and those worry me. You
would never write an adult book by [inserting] a moral message in there for the
reader [and make conveying that message] the whole purpose for the book. I think,
when you express yourself in writing, the things that you believe in come through
all on their own. I believe that love and art are healing forces. That theme came
through all on its own in The Hanged Man. In Missing Angel Juan, the theme is about
love and letting go, but I didn't set out to write about that. That was something that
I was learning at the time [in my own life]. After I wrote the story, I realized that
that was the theme so I went back and tried to pull it out more.
Cathy: Jules Feiffer has said the same thing about his own writing process, and he
is equally as frustrated as you are with all the moralistic "problem novels" out there.
He's said that, paradoxically, if he knows what he is writing about, then he
can't write about it. Writing has to be a process of discovery for him.
Francesca: Exactly! I think many writers start out thinking that they have to know
everything, the whole story, before they get it out on paper.
Cathy: Obviously, if you allow your characters the freedom to confront the darker
parts of their lives, then there must have been a period of time when you first
encountered the darkness inside of yourself. When was that? What were the circumstances?
Francesca: I don't know how in touch my mother was with her darkness when I was growing up,
but she always encouraged me to be truly myself. I felt that there was a safe place there
[to explore all parts of myself]. My dad was really into art. He was a painter. Before
he did very lyrical, very beautiful still -lifes, he was working in the film industry doing
special effects for movies (lots of monsters) so-- through his art-- he believed one could
confront darkness safely. That was something that was encouraging to me.
When one period of darkness hit, I probably tried to avoid it rather than confront it.
It was when my dad was ill when I was a teenager. The only way I could really deal
with it was to write so [my feelings] came up a lot in my writing during that time.
Sometimes that was by weaving it into something like Weetzie Bat. Sometimes I didn't
face the darkness directly.
I still can't write about my father's illness. I wrote a story about it once, but I
have to [approach the subject] in very light ways even though he died many years ago.
Writing about it [directly] doesn't work for me. There's too much sadness; there's no
release or transcendence - even though the experience of his death had all of those elements
of transcendence and beauty.
Cathy: Do you get a sense that teens are different now than when we were
teens (in the 70's and early 80's)? Are their concerns or sensibilities different?
Francesca: Well, they grow up with AIDS now, and I didn't. They grow up knowing that
if you make love with someone, you could die - not just get pregnant or get venereal disease.
It's just a different view of the world, and I think it makes them grow up faster. Also,
they see so much more media than we did. They seem very sophisticated to me, but -- at
the same time (but maybe this is just the kids who write to me) --
there's an element of innocence and a yearning to hold on to that innocence in the
face of all this stuff.
That's why all of the fairy [motifs in my books] appeal to them. I open up their mail and
glitter falls out of every envelope... flower petals, glitter, stickers. It's so sweet,
yet at the same time they seem very sophisticated in the world and have been through so
much already in their lives.
Cathy: Do you ever dream about your characters?
Francesca: No, but writing for me feels like dreaming. It's funny.
As I said before, I don't even know when my books get written. I go into a
place where I am not obsessing about things. Sometimes I feel as though I am
walking through a film or a dream - rather than trying to MAKE it happen.
The stories and characters are already there, and I just go inside it all.
Cathy: When you go into your writing place, your dreamlike place, do you ever get scared
of what you discover there?
Francesca: Well, no. I get more scared when I am NOT in that place. That's the safest
place I can go. No matter how dark it gets there, as soon as it becomes a story that I am
writing, I just want to stay there - where I'm not obsessing about my life or worrying
about things. No matter how hard it gets in that place, how uncomfortable it gets...
I remember writing Missing Angel Juan, and I was stuck in my apartment
with some health problems. I was going through a really hard time [physically and emotionally].
It was really painful to be writing that story [because it explores such dark themes], but
it was more painful to NOT be writing it.
Cathy: It's really inspiring for me to hear you talk about your creative process
like this because I wish I had a deeper friendship with my own. Sometimes I have
experienced going into a dreamlike or trancelike state during creative moments,
but I often get scared that I won't return to the real world.
Francesca: I can understand that. I need to think about why I don't get scared
when I go to that place. Maybe I don't go all the way into that fairy world.
You know, I used to think, "Why don't I see fairies?" I'd be a great person
to [have the ability to] see fairies because I believe in them. "Come on.
Let me see them!" And I have a friend who does see them, but I don't. And I guess
there is a part of me that won't let myself go that far because I am afraid of not
coming back. I go in far enough so that I can see the fairies and the stories
through a glass, a window pane or something. There's something that separates me
ultimately from that world.
Cathy: If Grandma Fifi's magic genie decided to grant you wishes, what would you wish for?
Francesca: Well, the genie wasn't able to grant Weetzie Bat world peace, but I would still
try for that I think. Also, I think I would ask for a cure for AIDS.
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