Sometimes I feel like Walt Stack, the legendary 80-year-old runner featured in a 1988 Nike’s “Just Do It” TV commercial. Not that I can run like Walt. Or that I ever could. But there’s something that he had that I also have. I call it “ganas.” He probably called it willpower.
At age 77, I still have that resolve, that desire to get stuff done. And a determination to continue to follow my dreams, which I’ve had plenty of along the way. Some have been accomplished, a few have not. But I’m still going after them, no matter what. Because I still have “ganas.”
One of those objectives has to do with getting published by the “Big Five,” and becoming an established author.
I’ve been honing the writing craft ever since I was a kid growing up in Mexicali, Mexico. I did it in Spanish then. It’s now in both English and Spanish. I often wonder whether I got the telling-stories-on-paper bug because of my stuttering, a speech impediment that eventually went away, after the teen years. Who knows.
Chances are, though, that I got hooked into writing because I had already gotten hooked into reading. And that somewhere along the line I decided that I also wanted to tell stories. Just as good as the ones I read.
Well, I’ve told plenty of them during the long time that I’ve been around, fiction and non-fiction stuff. Good stuff, too, if you were to ask me. Unfortunately, when it comes to writing, I’m still not in the big leagues.
It sucks, but I’m not complaining. I’m not the kind that whines. I just keep going. It’s tough to get in, though, there’s no doubt. But there’s still hope, as long as I keep trying to get in. And as long as I have “ganas.”
And trying I do. That’s why I keep on trucking and writing and creating stories that just might get my foot in the door.
Here’s my latest offering. It’s a tale for readers of all ages, of all backgrounds. It’s called Juanita and the Whales. It’s a novella, a little over twenty-thousand words in length. A little shorter than The Old Man and the Sea or Of Mice and Men, but long enough to tell a good story.
A nine-year-old girl named Juanita, you guessed it, is the book’s main character. She lives in a barren and desolate desert-like stretch called La Laguna and next to the San Ignacio Lagoon, a huge bay along the Pacific Ocean that is the winter home of gray whales that travel there yearly from the waters off Alaska.
Juanita and her seven-year-old friend Luis enjoy watching and yelling at the whales from afar whenever those visitors stay at the lagoon. The two children do their carousing after school and on weekends. However, that fun might end soon if a proposed salt plant gets built and gets in the way of the whales. Most local residents are in favor of the project, but not Juanita. Don Julián, a secondary character in the book and an old man who also lives next to the lagoon, does not favor the construction of the salt plant either, but for different reasons. He believes that if it becomes a reality, the saltworks will tip the balance of nature there and forever affect the area’s habitat.
In a way, Juanita is sort of like Walt Stack. She’s disciplined and determined. As she worries about the effect the salt plant might have on the gray whales, she comes up with a plan to try to stop the construction of the industrial project. It’s a puerile scheme but one that she eventually undertakes. In the Nike TV commercial, Walt leaves his dentures behind during the cold of winter. In my book, Juanita leaves a note at home for her mom, explaining what she’s about to do.
The novella has a historical backdrop. The real-life and well-known proposal, which planned on building the world’s largest saltworks at Laguna San Ignacio, was cancelled on March 3, 2000, by then Mexican president Ernesto Zedillo. At the stroke of a pen.
Juanita and the Whales is available for sale as an eBook or in print form at Amazon.com, or in print form only at my digital store, www.megatratobooks.com.
My hope is that this work of literary fiction opens the door for me as an author and helps me accomplish one more dream, the one that has to do with getting me into the publishing big leagues. Who knows, maybe it will. If not, there’s still plenty left in me, plenty inner fire to try to get it done. Of course, I also have a little voice somewhere in my brain that keeps telling me to keep on trying.
Any literary agents out there listening? If my pitch makes sense to you, don’t think about it twice. Let’s partner up. Let’s just do it. There’s gold in them thar hills.
AUTHOR: Pedro Chávez