Heather Dennie-English 30813

Heather: Besides teaching and authorship, what other jobs have you had in the writing field?

Alex: In the writing field, I have interned with presses, so I’ve worked with presses when I was in graduate school in the Twin Cities. I’ve run reading series, interacted with authors, I’ve taught in schools. I’ve volunteered teaching little kids poetry. I’ve done lots of editing work too. So not only writing and teaching, but everything that goes on behind the scenes with editing and publishing, and what happens with post production like tours and selling books. I’ve also dug ditches and unloaded semis so not just writing books.

Devon: So what motivates you to write when you sit down?

Alex: I guess it depends on the genre. I think my impulse for writing is really different depending on if I’m writing essays or creative nonfiction or poetry. It seems like I really have this kind of unexplainable urge to create. I feel like poetry is more artistic and creative in the sense that I can’t always tell you where the impulse comes from, it’s just something that I really have to do. For writing essays, memoir, and creative nonfiction I usually have a better idea, I want to tell this story or I want to write about this topic. And then I kind of go from there. When I’m writing poetry I have the urge to make something. Often that just means playing with words and language and there is no direct route.

Heather: What authors and books have influenced your writing the most?

Alex: We didn’t have a TV when I was growing up so I was always reading. I read lots of Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson but my mom was always just really into me reading. She would get me whatever books I wanted or take me to the library. More than any specific author when I was I was young it was about the reading. As I got older I spent time with the classics and read my way through those. In graduate school I really felt influenced by people, poets like James Wright, Lorca, and Viejo. And when it comes to memoir and nonfiction, I was really influenced by nick Flynn a lot when I was first starting. And new journalism like tom wolf, I’ve gotten really into. Also Lucy Grealy’s memoir “Autobiography of a Face.” I feel like that was a really influential text that I go back to often. But I also feel that I’m just, young as a reader and writer and I still feel like I’m at this stage where I’m trying to read as much as I can and allow myself to be influenced, whether its student work or a book that crosses my desk I’m open to influence. I’m not set in my style yet. I’m trying out a lot of things. One of the biggest prizes is the Yale series of younger poets and they call you a “young poet” if you’re up to 45 years old. So I guess I feel like I’m at this stage where I’m trying out a lot of things.

Heather: So sort of experimenting?

Alex: Yeah! I hope I never lose it, stay young. It’s kind of cheesy but it’s true.

Heather: So who do you trust most with editing your work?

Alex: It’s changed as I’ve gotten older. In school I had a close circle of friends, some I trusted because I admired or respected the way they wrote. Then as I graduated, I had a professional group of people that I share my work with. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve just learned to trust myself more and more and the only person I show my work to before I send it out to the world is my wife. And sometimes she’s too busy to look at it so I have to rely on myself. But I usually try to show her.

Heather: Do you rely on her for input or editing and feedback or what?

Alex: I just want to know what she thinks. I’m probably just like, “Oh, do you like it? Is it good? Is it terrible? Do you love it? Do you love me?” you know, it’s more like that. Because I don’t always agree with what she says and her suggestions. I’m really fortunate that I’ve had really good editors at all of my presses. My editors haven’t been like, pedantic and tell me I HAVE to change this. I’ve had editors that have suggested things or told me what they thought after reading it, and reading their interaction with the text made me see it in a different way.

Heather: Constructive rather that destructive?

Alex: Yeah! Totally! And so, it’s helped me to go back and in a more concrete way decide why and what I do. At this stage in my life I’m spending more time with my writing and trusting my instincts more and I show my wife sometimes and then it’s off to a press or a publisher.

Devon: How would you describe your writing process?

Alex: I think again this goes back to what I’m writing. If I’m writing poetry, I often just have….can I show you some? I have these documents that are notes. Hopefully. And it’s like 60 pages long now, just ideas and words and sometimes whole parts of poems, sometimes titles, like if it’s all caps. Here “Custom Love Potions!” ha ha ha. I mean I don’t know where it comes from or why it’s there when I go back to it, but I have 60 pages of ideas and usually while I read I’m always taking notes or writing things down and I’ll go back and enter them into my notes. And this is just with poetry. With poetry the notes are kind of all over, lines, fragments, something I saw when I was walking. And then the notes for essays are usually much more structured. Like these are topics. Like monkey mind is something I’m really interested in. and then there are all these aspects of these topics that I’m interested in. then a free write and then talking about it in more neurological way. I guess when it comes to essays it much more planned out or regimented or outlined. Depending on what I’m going to write for the day, the night before I’ll decide what I’m going to write and that depends on deadlines. But if I’m open and I’m not constricted by schedule, ill just follow my notes. What do I feel like doing? Ill open up the document and see what I have and if nothing hits the ignition switch I might read a little bit. If I feel like working on one of those essays, I usually have a pretty good outline. Like oh, I need to do this research on how the brain factions when the brain is spacing out. Or usually I have those outlines, and I could spend a couple years just writing essays because I have so many ideas. I like for the process to be really organic and not limited. The more constraints I feel, the more I feel that writing is deadened for me. Time wise, it really depends on...when I was in graduate school and didn’t have a job, it was great I could write whenever I wanted. Now I have obligations where I have to teach and grade, which I love! But it takes a lot of time. And so as I’ve become older I’ve been more grounded in my profession, I have to dedicate certain days. So on Monday, I don’t schedule any meetings, I don’t answer my door, I don’t answer my phone, I turn off my e mail. And I just write. During the school year I try to give myself one day that way. In the summer I give myself as much as 4 days a week like that. I mean, it’s kind of cheesy to say “Oh, I would die if I didn’t write!” but I wouldn’t feel good. I would probably feel physically ill. It’s weird the way the body and mind interact. I have to write. So usually if I can schedule one day a week, I am thinking about it and writing things almost every day. Like that note page is usually open all day. Sometimes I just stare out the window and think about stuff. The process is very messy.

Heather: Something good comes out of it though!

Alex: Yeah, something great!

Devon: So how many works have you published?

Alex: I have published….six books. And I have two more under contract that have yet to be released. And I have rough drafts on two big memoirs that offers have been made on. And I turned them down because they aren’t finished. Individual poems, I don’t know, hundreds and hundreds of those. And essays, probably close to 50 essays. Most of the poems in a book, before they make it to a book have been published in literary journals or an essay might be published in Esquire before it appears in a book. So yeah, six books and hundreds and hundreds of individual publications.

Heather: So what genres have you published in?

Alex: I publish poetry, memoir, creative nonfiction, essays, book reviews. I’ve published sports journalism. I got to cover the World Series. It was awesome! I got to go to the World Series! I did have to stay up all night and write a piece that was due the next morning. But then I also write blurbs for books too, the little things that go on the backs of books. I guess that’s a kind of genre. Then I present papers, I have a conference in a month where I am talking about the essay and how it’s changed, I guess they are nonfiction pieces that are more craft-based and not memoir. And I’ve written those types of essays about poetry and nonfiction. I’ve written introductions for people’s books too, just kind of analytical essays about their work.

Heather: Which genre is your favorite?

Alex: Ahh, I don’t know, I don’t think I have a favorite! It’s just kind of cool to be able to spend one’s life immersed in language. But also to be able to create from this mess of language. I mean, I don’t even have tools. It’s all made up! That’s pretty amazing! I don’t have to use some kind of material, it all comes from the imagination. Its engagement with the letters of the alphabet, it just blows my mind!

Heather: 26 little tools?

Alex: Yeah, right? Yeah, I don't know. I guess it depends on my mood. Right now I’m in a groove of working on these essays. I’ve been writing a lot, I think since Felix was born, he just turned two, I’ve probably been writing about him constantly for two years. But that changes. I might read a book or poem or someone might send me a picture that makes me want to write art criticism or poems. Again, not feeling limited as to what I have to do. I’ve entered this really fortunate and kind of bewildering part of my career where I can kind of do anything I want. And it’s appreciated, if I do it and spend time on it, it’s going to get published. If I care about the work and spend time on it, it will get out into the world eventually. And I think as a young person, that was what everyone was freaked out about. It just happens, and not having that anxiety is hugely refreshing and invigorating for my work too.

Devon: How did you find your first publisher?

Alex: Umm, I think in graduate school, because professionalization and—for writers—publishing is such, like I said, a huge point of concern and a topic of discussion. It was always kind of in the ether. People were either always talking about publishing or, even in a more codified way, there were panels. So my graduate school brought in, each year, a panel of people that had published their first book. And they talked about what it was like and how it happened, and I also went to a graduate school in the Twin Cities—Minneapolis/St. Paul—and, I think, four of the top five top publishers were there, located in the area. And so they had really strong connections to my graduate program, and so I had started publishing some of my work when I was in graduate school, and I won a really big award—a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship—as a graduate student. And I was publishing in national journals, and so publishers just started to contact me about books. And, let’s see, I met some publishers at a conference and they asked if I had a manuscript put together and I was working on one, finishing it up. And they asked if they could see it, and so for book publishing, I was really sought after. And that’s not how it happens usually. I’ve been really, really lucky because usually people struggle; it’s so hard to publish your work, to find an outlet for it. So in some ways I kind of followed the path. I built up the small publications—poems, poems, poems, poems, poems—and then people started to notice them, I was getting some awards. But then, a lot of young poets submit to contests. There are hundreds of contests out there. You submit maybe a $25 reading fee and your manuscript, and then a judge picks the winner, and that’s published. So instead of doing that, I really avoided all of that mess, and somebody asked for it. I almost am embarrassed to say it; if I was with writers friends, I would feel really embarrassed, because some of them have really---like, my mentor in graduate school told me that he was rejected five-hundred-and-some times, individual poems. I just can’t imagine how. I was so frail when I started submitting poems that if that had happened to me, I probably would have just stopped, because a lot of it is about perseverance and tenacity because at some level it’s subjective. There’s all of these good poems, and then from those good poems, somebody in a editorial position picks which one they like best. But at some level they’re all good.

Heather: What was the first thing you published?

Alex: As an undergraduate, I published in a literary magazine, like Eleven 47 here, a poem called The Chanter, I think. And people were really surprised because I didn’t study any English, I played baseball—I was kind of a meathead. I think most people thought I was kind of a jock, so they were really surprised. They were like, “Wait, are you the Alex Lemon that’s writing all these crazy poems?” I was like, “Yeah man.” So that. But my first official national publication was a poem called Love is a Very Small Tsunami in a magazine called the Black Warrior Review that is published by the University of Alabama, I think. It’s a poem in my first book, and people started contacting me after that poem was out there.

Devon: How do you feel when you look back on those early works?

Alex: Well, there are things I would do differently, but I think any author who says there aren’t things they would change is a liar. Because you’re a different person every day. You know, I would write a different poem fifteen minutes from now than I would if I sat down and wrote it right now. So, I might not like them, they may not be as interesting to me now as they were then, but they were poems that I really had to write. They were definitely—like my first memoir is—I had to write about those things, about a specific topic to get it out of the way. So I’m not ashamed of them, but I’m also not like, “Look at this awesomeness!” But there’s things I would change—like when I read at a reading, like next week, I’ll edit while I go a little bit. Because, like I said, you’re a different person, and so sometimes I mix it up. And also, I can’t see that well so sometimes when I get excited my eyes bounce more, and so sometimes when I’m reading they’ll skip a line, and I’ll be like, “Oh sh--.” But I just keep going.

Heather: So how much do your manuscripts change through the publishing process?

Alex: It depends. My first book was with Tin House Books, so my first book of poems, I was working on ten years ago. I had a whole lot of editorial help. The first draft, it was maybe a hundred pages long, the second draft was maybe eighty-five, and it ended up being like a fifty-page book. The same was true for Happy; the first draft was like 550 pages long, so it shrunk to half that. And probably more, that manuscript, Happy changed more drastically than any of my other books because I was new to writing memoir. I had sold the book on a proposal, so the book was just an idea when I sold it, and so it wasn’t even written. Of course, when you talk about it and you want to sell it, you pretend like you know everything—where it’s going to go. But I didn’t, I actually had to write it and I didn’t know where it was going to go. I knew the story but I didn’t know how I was going to shape the story. And until I had—every time I had a conversation with my editor, it changed the book. That book changed radically, the beginning and the end changed, what I focused on. In the early drafts, it was more about high school. But I just turned in a book of poems this Fall; I just got comments on that manuscript, and the comments are in an email. There wasn’t like what I did with you guys—like line edits through the entire thing—all the comments were in an email. I have until March 15^th to turn in a book and they’ll publish it. That’s it. So, no line edits, just really thoughts about order. So really I’ve done the whole thing from the book changing so much and taking four years of one-on-one time—that’s how long Happy took working with an editor back and forth—to this new book—The Wish Book, which comes out next January—it’s going to change, but because of me not because of any editorial direction.

Devon: How did you see changes in your life when you started publishing?

Alex: I guess, the more I’ve published, the easier it’s become to publish. More publishing avenues have opened up to me. My interest in writing journalism and covering sports and doing things like that have only opened up after I published Happy or essays or things like that. So I’ve been asked to do—like I covered the election—I’ve been asked to do things like that because of a certain literary cache or something. Notoriety? Those things opened up, but also professionally, like for an English professor who is a writer, you get better jobs. You have better opportunities; you are a better candidate. Of course you have to be able to teach and do all those things, but it looks good for wherever you are, like it looks good for TCU that they have somebody here who publishes a bunch and gets awards and stuff like that. So those kind of things have changed, I’ve been asked to do a lot more readings, I’ve become busier. It’s really funny, I have more opportunities to publish and I have more opportunities to do fun and cool stuff, but I have less time to write than ever. The one thing that I really want, more time to write, is the one thing that seems to be dwindling as I publish more and more. I’m not sure, maybe at some level that changes again.

Devon: Maybe it’s something you have to change, like have two days a week to write instead of one.

Heather: Your phone goes off more.

Alex: Yeah, I think I’m getting to this point where I really have to check in with a lot of those rules I’ve made for myself. Like instead of just having one day, I need to be really overprotective. Maybe it’s two days. And I’m moving to this different area in my career where more lifetime fellowships and grants are opening up to me. And if and when I get those, they would give me time—I would take a year or two off of teaching and just work. So it’s always in flux, always a little bit of this, a little bit of that.

Heather: So how do you see authorship and readership changing in the next 50 or so years?

Alex: 50? This is something that I’ve talked about at conferences and that a lot of my friends and I talk about. I think there will always be artisanal small press publishing for poetry books. Nobody that publishes poetry makes a ton of money publishing poetry. They do it because they love literature, they do it because they love books. Most of the really good poetry publishers are non-profit, so they’re not interested in making a ton of money. I think those people that buy those books and read those books will always want to have books—like tangible. Just like art books or McSweeny’s Press. They publish cool-looking books, and they do wacky stuff all the time. I think there’s always going to be an element of publishing like that, so that there will be photography books, there will be art books, there will be poetry books. But at the same time, as technology makes it more and more available, they’re also going to publish eBooks on digital platforms, you know, all of my poetry books are now available on eBooks or iBooks, things like that—because it’s gotten really easy for them to transfer, to do both. So I don’t think it’s going to influence these small non-profit presses as much—the poetry ones. I think presses that publish prose more and more are going to have to rely on digital sales, because eventually most people are going to be reading digitally just because of its ease of access, you don’t have to carry books around—

Heather: It’s cheaper.

Alex: Yeah, it’s cheaper that all of your books are going to be on eReaders or iBooks or whatever. And so, I think, books like Happy, they will print fewer and fewer hardcopies, and more sales will go to digital publishing. And more and more big house publishing is going to have to go the way of digital publishing. I sold Happy on a proposal and that was right before the kind of sea-change into digital publishing. My agent just took this offer for another memoir that’s partial again, it was a rough draft, and they offered an amount that wasn’t as much. And my agent and I talked, and that has to do with just the changes in publishing. They are seeing a market drop-off in how may hardcopies they sell, and that’s going to change for writers like me—well, I also don’t fit in because I’m a professor and my living comes from being a professor—but for writers like me, as opposed to Steven King—Steven King is always going to make a ton of money, no matter what. But for people that are mid-list and lower on the list, they’re going to make less and less money as a writer with big house publishing because of that. And maybe once it’s all figured out some of those things will change. Technology’s been pretty cool because it’s also opened up a lot of opportunities for publishing too. There are more presses than ever, and people are pressing, even if they have a small Indie press, they’re publishing good books, and they can be beautiful books. But technology hasn’t been figured out for people like me, but it has made for more work. They want you to blog, and they want you to have a Facebook page, and they want you to have a Twitter account. So you spend all of this time with promotion that they want you to do instead of writing. Again, it’s like another way that you constantly write now.

Devon: Do you see any ways that it’s going to change your writing and your audience as it gets more digital?

Alex: I mean, because of technology, my audience has grown. There are just more avenues to disseminate whatever your product is—I hate to say writing is a product, but it is—with social networking and Twitter and that kind of stuff, more people are going to read by books than if they just sat in a library and there was no way to get them out there. So, more people are going to have the opportunity to read the books. I don’t think it’s going to change the way I write. I know some people are really interested in new media digital creation and all I want to say about that is that I’m not interested in it. Because there are people in English departments who, that’s what they spend their time doing. Nope—not my thing.

Devon: Our last question is, how do you feel about self-publishing?

Alex: I really don’t know. I guess I’ve been brought up in this culture to be really dismissive of self-publishing because I do feel like the gatekeepers—like the editors and publishers—they do have an influence in quality. And so, I’m all for self-publishing, if people could just disseminate their stuff, but I would want it to be good somehow. How do you force yourself to wait until the product is good? I would be for self-publishing if so much of self-publishing wasn’t terrible. Somehow it needs to be vetted, and how do you vet yourself? But I think self-publishing is exciting because it’s broken the constraints of publishing. So that idea, that there’s this sort of free market is really cool, but it’s also really disheartening to see how much of what people want to published shouldn’t be published. Does that make sense?

Devon: And also it’s the idea of where it came from, having an extra set of eyes on your work.

Alex: Yeah, for sure and so there is some sort of cache that comes with publishing houses or whatever, but also it just makes the work inherently better.

Heather: So much of it gets out there unpolished, before it’s ready.

Alex: Yeah, and I think that’s something that so very few people can do themselves, just to solely rely on themselves to work something until it’s good. Until that can somehow happen, 99% of self-publishing is just going to be terrible. And then it’s going to be a shame for that 1% because it’s going to get thrown in—“oh, it’s self published.” But I’m sure some of it’s good, it just gets washed away with how people dismiss the rest of it for being self-published.

Heather Dennie-English 30813

Monday, April 22, 2013

future of publishing article

Wednesday, April 10, 2013

Cartoons

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Saturday, February 16, 2013

Author Interview with Alex Lemon

Happy Valentine's Day!