How do you go from being a teacher to an author?
I had been teaching 7th grade language arts for four years in southern California when I met my future wife, a Lutheran pastor in training from Minnesota. I proposed to her before she went back to seminary and we were married the following summer.
In the meanwhile, I wrote poems on the weekend and published these occasionally in lit magazines. In one of my seventh grade books on settler life I first came across the story of the Dakota Conflict and was fascinated. I had never heard of this troubling historical event before—the largest mass execution in the United States—and I wanted to know more.
After we were married my wife was assigned to a small parish out on the prairies. We were to live just fives mile from where this very conflict I read about had started. I knew then that I had to write about it, that the subject was calling to me from out of time! This same summer I won a chapbook contest and my first book was published, Hour of the Red Tide. The release of this modest chapbook of poems gave me confidence. I started to wonder if I had a novel in me.
I finished a halting, very rough draft the summer we were married, but it was enough. There was something there. The next year I started teaching high school English in our small town but the writing itch wouldn’t go away. After much discussion with my wife, I decided to enroll in an MFA program for creative writing in Mankato, Minnesota the following year.
Do you ever teach your own book? Who else do you love to teach?
I don’t teach my own book, but I do talk about in my classes. While I can illustrate many of the struggles of the writing process from personal experience, I want my students to separate me as a teacher from my writing. I guess I don’t want to force my book on my students. Generally, the ones interested in creative writing end up getting a copy anyways!
In my creative writing classes I love to teach Stephen King’s On Writing, which is the best book I know on the subject. It’s the one that inspired me to set about writing The Night Birds. I like John Gardner, but he’s a bit of a snob and perhaps too intellectual for many undergraduates. In my last fiction workshop I used Ron Carlon Writes a Story. I will often use short story collections in workshops and these vary from year to year.
How much writing do you do on a regular basis?
I wish I could tell you everyday, but my life doesn’t work like that. I have two daughters, one a toddler, the other a newborn. Being a new parent takes up much time and energy. Fatherhood takes priority over the writing. When I’m in a zone, I do write every day. I tend to write in the mornings, before first light. I love the idea of the rest of the world sleeping while I’m at my computer composing. In the morning my brain is fresh and uncluttered. I love the half awake dream state of writing and the coffee going cool on my desktop.
Do you get any input from your students during the writing process?
I often share works in progress, because a workshop is a community and we’re all in this together. I don’t solicit comments, however. It’s awkward for students to critique their teachers; that’s asking too much of them.
Advice for first time authors?
Seek out the strange. There is nothing new under the sun, but there a thousand different ways to tell the same old story. Find that way. Cultivate friendships in the community with other writers and listen to feedback. It was this search for community that sent me back to an MFA program where I made friendships that will last a lifetime. Read every chance you get and stay immersed in good literature, from the epics of the past to the poetry of the present. Dive into books and come up for air long enough to explore the world around you fully alive and attuned in the beautiful strangeness of all that is around you.
Are you working on anything at the moment?
I’m working on a contemporary story set in the same landscape as The Night Birds. It’s a more personal story in some ways, but still one that blends history and folklore and mystery at once.
