Listening to Your Draft Readers

When you use readers for your work (and you really must), don't forget to listen.  Sounds obvious, huh?  But you'd be surprised.  Listen to them.  Listen to what they are really saying.  They are being heartfelt  (Or are you really so far gone you don't chose readers you know you need to listen to?)  Think about what they say and then think some more.

I'm not saying you have to agree with them.  You don't.  Perhaps much of the time you shouldn't.  But you have to consider the work they've put in at your request, think about the greater objectivity they can bring to a text, ponder the points of your work that provide them struggle.

Once you've listened to them, once you've contemplated their reactions, then really listen to yourself.  Not your dreaming of being done with this damn thing self, not your dreaming about publication self, listen to the part of you that has been whispering in your ear since the beginning.  About that nagging part of our character you never actually portrayed.  About that little logistical problem you keep avoiding.  About that really difficult chapter you have never written because you're not sure how.  You've been unsure before and you have found a way.  Part of why you gave your readers the text is so that you can finally face the revisions you've known are necessary for so long now.  Listening to them will help you listen to your honest self.

Earthshine

Earthshine Define Earthshine at Dictionary.com: "–noun Astronomy .
the faint illumination of the part of the moon not illuminated by sunlight, as during a crescent phase, caused by the reflection of light from the earth"

Don't you love it when simple language is so evocative and lyrical while remaining spot-on specific in meaning. Okay, I'm a total geek, but it is a simple, beautiful word.

The Bookshelf

I have way too many books.  Shelves and shelves of them and still I use the library every week.  But I have one bookshelf, the one closest to my writing desk, that gets preferential treatment.  Only the books that I love best--a very select few--are housed there.  These are the books I come back to again and again.  Dog-eared, their covers often worn soft from use, they are books I turn to not only out of love but for study.  Some I read parts of virtually every week.  They are joined by the books I need for research at that particular moment, but that purpose is different from the use I make of these--which is something more like carrying photos of the ones you love.  A few titles change from time to time.  More will be added.  But there are a few that will always have a place on that shelf.  Among them:

• The Collected Poems of Rilke
• The Times Are Never So Bad by Andre Dubus
• The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien
• Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier
• Joe by Larry Brown
• Fay by Larry Brown
• Olive Kittridge by Elizabeth Stout
• The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje
• American Primitive by Mary Oliver
• The Paradise of Bombs by Scott Russell Sanders

Those are some of mine.  What's on your shelf?

A Sort of Bio

As you've gathered by now, I write. I write every day. That's the thing, writers write--a complete cliché and the stuff of truth…
…some of that writing has been rewarded and you can find my work regularly in literary magazines, more of it is before agents, stating its case for representation. (For a traditional credits list and information on my books, skip to the bottom of the page—this post, like everything else I do, probably appears backwards. To read my stance on the value of writing, read on.)
I write literary fiction. I'm serious about craft and I have a love affair with language—so much so I have to watch becoming indulgent. I differentiate between the architecture of story from the engineering of plot. Now I recognize this all makes me sound pompous and pretentious. Perhaps I am. However, I think it is vitally important that all artists know who they are and stay true to themselves.

Writing is a way of seeing, a way of being, and it is typically the only way I can consistently make sense of the world and articulate my eccentric and often chaotic mind. I enter my writing knowing that it asks work of its readers—not hard labor, but mindfulness. Writing worth reading is a sacred exchange. It is not television. It is not candy. I like candy, but I want to eat it, not read it and certainly not write it. I believe that fiction is a means towards truth. When I speak about truth I mean, in part, that I wish to know human character, to understand people as they are and as they wish to be seen. The human mind is fragile and potent; it is beautiful and it is capable of doing unspeakable things. To say that I value character-driven fiction over plot is an understatement. A reflective life is more than a string of events, no matter how dramatic those events. There is meaning in living a life fully awake.

Such ridiculously bold statements are some of the essentials about me as a writer. I may well prove myself wrong over time. I'm willing to take that risk, for I want to lead an examined life and for me that means producing writing that tries to examine lives—mine, those in the culture around me, and those who preceded me.

As for the more pedestrian elements about, I offer the following synopsis:

I am a husband and a parent of three grown daughters. Those roles are more important than writing or anything else. I spent twenty years teaching writing at the college level, work that I valued for the contact with students and with their writing. At some point every day for those twenty years I was humbled by something powerful a student wrote, said, or realized. I continue to feel privileged to spend so much of my adult life working within the vibrancy of the unique setting of a university. Beyond teaching, that setting allowed me contact with genuine intellectualism and the perks of coordinating a writing program and a writing conference. I now live and write in one of the most beautiful and largely unspoiled American wildernesses at the edge of greater Yellowstone ecosystem just south of Jackson, WY.

I write primarily fiction, dabble regularly in essays, and occasionally produce really bad poetry. My work has appeared in the following publications, among others, and I am deeply indebted to the editors of such literary magazines, editors who typically toil in obscurity and without pay: Arlington Literary Journal, The Bloomsbury Review, Dogwood, The Externalist, Fugue, Matter, Porcupine Literary Arts, Talking River Review, Tar River Review, Weber: the Contemporary West, Zone 3. I publish under the pseudonym Mark Hummel. I have completed three novels, each radically different from the next. A synopsis for each is available under their corresponding titles in the menu bar.

On Publishing (or Not-Publishing)

“…I would advise you not to waste time feeling ashamed for being an unpublished writer. Each time you sit alone and give your most honest and complete effort, you’ve earned the title of writer, particularly on those days when you struggle the hardest, when you spend all afternoon and evening refining an idea or the precise phrasing of a few descriptions, when you’re pushing yourself beyond your own abilities. These hard-fought and seemingly inconsequential victories accumulate over time and make all the difference.”

                                                                                             --John Dalton

Needing Inspiration

I’ve been struggling these past few days with writing, both in the story I am working on now and in editing old work (badly needed edits, I am realizing). These are times with the isolation of a writing life begins to close in, when the darkness seems near at hand. So you have choices: give up, give in, or get back to work. I try and get back to work. In such times I often turn to the writers who mean the most to me, the ones who make me push myself to be better. I re-read their texts, study them, allow myself to feel inspired by them anew. For me, one mainstay is always Andre Dubus (right). Not only did the tough old bastard write like an angel, he wrote even when the world often ignored him. And he wrote what he wanted to write, stories that moved him, characters who wouldn’t let him go. He concentrated on getting people right, even if it meant facing hard truths about himself and about humanity. One would be hard pressed to find stories more powerful than “A Father’s Story” or novellas that said more than most writers’ novels. Reading him can be like reading a voice that has existed inside my head for years. Dubus suffered hardship—physically (after an accident suffered while coming to another's aid), personally, financially—yet he never backed away from writing fiction that matters. His work sets a kind of standard for me. Some days I think if I could just write one story or one chapter that could come close to measuring up to the quality and precision of his work, it would be a successful writing life. So I read him and I learn. Again. And then I set back to work.

Make Sure Your Train Stops for You

"Time goes faster the more hollow it is.  Lives with no meaning go straight past you, like trains that don't stop at your station."
                                                                               --Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Basketball Addicted

When you are a college basketball fan, you've got to love the first weekend of April.  There have been so many buzzer beaters and improbable success stories this tournament, which are exactly the sorts of things I love about college basketball.

It's so good to see Duke back in the NCAA finals (Don't hate them because they're successful).  Class program.  Class coach.  Wonderful players.  I would never have thought they'd make it this far this year (much to the chastisement of my daughter, who looks like a genius now that she picked them to win it all), but you take their top three and let them have a stellar night at the same time and they're nearly unstoppable.

It's equally good to see a team like Butler in the finals.  Team ball.  Defense oriented.  It's been a long time since we saw those characteristics take a team to the top.

As a twenty year college faculty member and as a father of three college daughters, I'll reveal my true geekdom when I say that it is so much easier to root for these two programs when both post a 90% graduation success rate for their players (Butler at 90%, Duke at 92%).  Indeed, the NCAA should bar teams from the tournament that can't even match their institution's overall student success rates.

As a basketball purist, I'm also loving this finals match-up because it features two teams that understand the nature of team and that actually play defense on every possession.
Can't wait for the Monday match-up.  An always present powerhouse that exudes class against an upstart mid-major (and what, is their coach like 12?)--loving it.

Speaking of class and disciplined programs that play defense, understand team, and hold a hand in creating successful individuals, how about the UConn women (again, hating programs because they are successful is human nature but just isn't fair)?  One name:  Maya Moore, 3 time All American, pure shooter, 3.9 GPA, Rhoades Scholarship candidate.  We need role models like her.

New Sustainability Journal

Eathstorys is an exciting new on-line venture, part journal, part community and focused entirely on sustainability.  Edited by my old friend Wilmer Frey, Earthstorys, which went live on April 1, promises to be an wise, varied clearinghouse for a modern sustainabilty movement, one that balances intellectual depth with honest practical applications.  Visit and bookmark the site; it has offerings that will leave you wanting to return.

Remember This

After you have exhausted what there is in business, politics, conviviality, love, and so on--have found that none of these finally satisfy, or permanently wear--what remains?  Nature remains; to bring out from their torpid recesses, the affinities of a man or woman with the open air, the trees, fields, the changes of seasons--the sun by day and the stars of heaven by night. We will begin from these convictions.
                                                                                    --Walt Whiman