I was riding my bike through Ball State’s campus yesterday. After working the morning at the library, I stopped in at the campus Barnes & Noble bookstore and signed their stock of Where Am I Wearing? So, if you are itching for a signed copy of the new edition of the book, there’s about 20 there.

To order a copy call (765)285-8080. Make sure you tell them that you want an autographed one.

A little help, please

Apparently Amazon doesn’t transfer reviews from one edition to the next. So instead of having 27 reviews, the new edition of WEARING has 2. Bummer. Could you help me with that?

Reviews matter. Think about when you are shopping for a book on a subject. Do you buy the book with 2 reviews or 200?

If you have read WEARING, the 1st or the 2nd edition, please consider leaving an honest review. Here is the new edition’s Amazon page.

For other ways to support my work or the work of your favorite author read this post: Show the Love! How to Support Your Favorite Authors

All These Stories & No One to Tell Them To

While I was still an undergraduate student, I never knew what to do with my writing. I cannot even guess at how many writing courses I took, whether under my telecommunications major or my creative writing minor. No matter which style of writing I was assigned to, it seemed like I was crafting a new story every day.

It was great to have so much material piling up, and sometimes the workshops were enlightening (although in most cases, my peers hadn’t bothered reading any of the material), but there was nothing to do with it. Although I always thought my writing could be better, there was definitely prose I wanted to publish.

But where to start?

I figured the best thing to do was inquire from those who’d already published their works—professors. Interestingly enough, most of them said not to. They wanted me to attend a MFA program before I ever considered writing.

What a pipe-bomb! At first, I thought maybe I just sucked. Maybe they read my material and thought, Man, this guy is awful. Soon enough, though, I came to realize they were telling all of my peers the very same thing.

Doing What They Said Not To Do

Now I definitely had no intention on dismissing my professors’ advice, but publishing was the very thing I wanted to do.
I’d been writing novels since high school. In my room, I had about three novels I spent years on, redrafted, but never sent out. Maybe down the road I’d rework one, but even before all of the creative courses, I knew what bad literature looked like.
But I did have some stories I thought people would enjoy. Excluded wasn’t the first novel I wrote—I think it was the third—but it definitely had something to it. I pulled Excluded out of the pile and wrote about three more drafts of it. I had my dorm-mate at the time review it (he was the biggest cynic I knew), and he sampled the story. “I don’t think this will work for a class, but it’s damn creepy.”

Once I had a clean draft, I brought it to a few professors and asked them what they thought, while reminding them it was horror (genre fiction is often shunned in literary circles). All they really told me was, “Why horror? It’s well-written, but it’s genre fiction.”

At this point, I knew I had to draw my own conclusions. I was urged not to publish because a) I wrote mainstream fiction and b) I had not attended MFA workshops. That’s when I started gathering criticism from people I knew personally and trusted to rip me a new one if my stories sucked. Overall, Excluded was definitely giving people nightmares.

I was certain I wanted to publish Excluded, but I was new to publishing world. I didn’t want to jump in and query agents and New York publishers until I procured a bit of publishing insight. I started looking at the works my professors published.
Now there were definitely some professors with pretty big publishers. A lot of them, though, were with independent presses. I wondered if I could see that level of success without a MFA.

Before long, I landed a contract for Excluded. Since then, it’s been a fun ride. I’ve learned a lot more about the publishing industry than I ever thought I would. I never realized how much leg work is expected from an author, but it’s all enjoyable.
From time to time, though, I receive some curious brows and dismissing stares. Some people just won’t accept a work of fiction as valid unless your name has a MFA tagged to it. The thing is, you don’t really need to go through all the workshops to find success in writing. The rules are quite simple: read and write. Write every day. Challenge yourself. Use prompts when you have to (there’s no such thing as writer’s block).

To be honest, a MFA program may still be in my future. I like the idea of being a professor, and I loved the ones I had. To be fair, some of them were really behind the Excluded deal and gave me the go-ahead. With writing, there’s no one way to do it. I mean, if you’re writing for the first time, definitely learn the craft. If you suck, you suck—but you can get better! If you don’t write often, you should probably write and rewrite extensively and ask for feedback before you send anything out.

Most importantly, remember your aspirations when you face rejection. Rejection letters are by far the best starting point for a writer. You’ve read a lot. You’ve written a lot. But why did they say no? All you have to do is focus on what they accepted. Research a bit if you need to. Read a lot more. You’ll instinctively notice the difference between your writing and the next guy.

If you believe in your writing, travel where it takes you. A MFA next to your name will demonstrate you’re quite good at what you do, but so will a great story.

Like what you read? Read more from C.M. Humphries at his blog.

And don’t forget to check out Excluded on Kindle…

I live in Muncie, Indiana. I don’t have to be here. I choose to be here.

My wife Annie stopped working 10-months ago after the birth of our second child. That’s when it dawned on us: we could live anywhere. I could do my job from Key West, California, or Colorado. We had a brief discussion about where we want to live and the result surprised us both: we wouldn’t want to live anywhere else.

On more than one occasion I’ve had someone in Muncie who I was meeting for the first time say, “Dude, why are you here?” I’m not sure how to take this.

Is it a compliment? Are vagabonding, traveling authors / speakers too interesting for Muncie?

Or is it an insult? Who in their right mind, if they could live anywhere, would choose the Midwest or Muncie? There’s a bumper sticker that I’ve seen in town that reads: Is Muncie Necessary?

I’ll admit, from the ages of 12 to 22 all I wanted to do was leave the Midwest, and that’s exactly what I did as soon as I had the chance. From 20 to 30 I traveled around the world a couple of times. From Australian beaches, I’ve watched the sun rise out of the pacific and a few months later watched it set behind Himalayan peaks. I lived in Key West and North Carolina.

But I’m back.

I’m here because it is home.

I’m here because my family and friends are here.

I’m here to watch my children run barefoot through the same yards I ran through when I was their age.

I’m here because the people are friendly.

I’m here because I realized that flat fields of corn are beautiful.

I’m here because I live in a 2,400 square-foot home that costs less than rent for a 240 square-foot apartment in New York City.

I’m here because there is no rush hour.

I’m here because deer walk through my backyard.

I’m here because my daughter can make perfect snow angels in our front yard.

I’m here because reservations aren’t required.

There are places in the world I could live, where I would be surrounded by folks who saw the world more like me — not always the case here in Muncie — but that would be too easy. I like having my views challenged and my mind changed. I like challenging others to see the world in a different way.

I recently caught a lecture at Ball State by Richard Longworth the author of Caught in the Middle: America’s Heartland in the Age of Globalism. He paints a pretty grim future for the Midwest. Agriculture isn’t the future and neither is manufacturing.

What is the future of the Midwest then? He’s not sure. Whatever the future is, I’ll be here, to see it.

A few years ago I wouldn’t have written this. I made up slogans for the Midwest – A Great Place to Leave!

I remember something mom used to say to me when I was faced with yet another long summer afternoon in which all the baseballs, soccerballs, basketballs, swords, lawn darts, and laser guns were strewn about the yard. I would complain to her, “I’m bored!” and she would respond, “Only boring people get bored.”

The day is what you make of it and so is your hometown. I’ve decided to stop complaining about where I live and instead actively try to make it better and more interesting.

All of that starts with seeing home differently. I love Muncie. I love Indiana. I love the Midwest.

Where do you live? Dude, why are you there?

Sign up here

Attending the lecture will earn you 1 CPE credit, and, if you stick around until the end, I’ll hook you up with the never-before seen preface to the new edition of Where Am I Wearing?

Here are the rest of the details…

Common Threads: Searching for Community in a Globalized World

Description:

*1 CPE CREDIT AVAILABLE* (Can you believe you could get a CPE credit for listening to me?!)

Kelsey Timmerman followed the labels of his clothes around the world to meet to the people who made them. During this Guest Lecture, Kelsey will bridge the divide between producer and consumer as he tells their stories and how they relate to issues such as globalization, poverty, child labor, global development, sweatshops, and individual and corporate social responsibility.

Advanced Preparation: None

Level: Update

Presenter: Kelsey Timmerman, Author and speaker

Date: 22 Feb 2012

Time: 3:00pm Eastern Time (US & Canada)
Show event date/time in different time zone

Event Type: Guest Lecture

Duration: 1 hour

I did not grow up in a community of writers or artists. I grew up in a community of farmers, and then non-writer college students, and then SCUBA divers. I have never talked craft over a cup of caffeinated anything.

Because of all of this, or perhaps in spite of all of this, I am the writer I am today. I’m not saying I’m a fantabulous writer, but I tell stories that allow me to do what I love and earn a living. What I lack in writing tools, I try to make up for by doing interesting stuff. I live by Dave Barry’s writing advice: “Do things, not think things.”

I’m a doer every bit as much as I’m a writer.

Knowing a lot of writers doesn’t make you a writer

This weekend I had the pleasure of addressing students at the Wabash Entrepreneur Summit. Afterwards a student who wants to be a writer came up to me and said something like, “I want to be a writer, but I’m stuck in Crawfordsville, Indiana, where there isn’t a community of writers to inspire me.”

Crawfordsville, Indiana, is the perfect place to be a writer. You don’t have other writers or a city full of activities to disturb you from the thing that actually makes you a writer: WRITING!

(Also, rent is a heck of a lot cheaper in Indiana! A major bonus for living and working as a writer in the Midwest.)

Let’s cut the crap. You can surround yourself with a community of Pulitzer Prize winning authors and you aren’t going to catch their genius like you catch a cold. I don’t mean to discount the benefit of inserting yourself into your local or the virtual writing community, but too many writers overemphasize community and underemphasize alone time writing.

Community is important, but don’t let it or the lack of it hold you back. I’m a committee member of the Midwest Writers Workshop. This is a fantastic conference nearly 40-years-old that I owe a lot. Because of the Midwest Writers Workshop I found the agent who sold my first book, and I landed one of my first big ($3,000) magazine assignments. I searched for a community of writers and found a good one.

The Midwest Writers Workshop and other conferences have played a crucial part in my writing career. I would be living someone else’s dream right now instead of my own, if it weren’t for writing conferences.

So, again, community is important. But knowing a lot of writers doesn’t make you a writer, writing does.

Stop talking about writing and write.

Stop being a tortured artist and create.

Stop daydreaming about your first book signing (overrated) and lose yourself in the story bouncing around in that melon of yours.

You have all of the tools it takes to be a writer; now let go of the excuses holding you back.

Don’t think. Do.

–

I’d love to introduce you to my community of writers. Join the Midwest Writer on March 17th for a one-day intensive session with bestselling author Shirley Jump and picture book author Peter J. Welling.

Registration for the summer conference will begin soon. Check here for details.

Since 2005 Boo has visited a slum near Mumbai and documents life there in the book. The Times review ends with this passage:

Another thing that makes her uncomfortable is policy wonkery, and by design “Beautiful Forevers,” a book as depressing as it is memorable, has no summing-up chapter full of recommendations. “I respect the division of labor,” she said. “My job is to lay it out clearly, not to give my policy prescriptions.” She added: “Very little journalism is world changing. But if change is to happen, it will be because people with power have a better sense of what’s happening to people who have none.”

I was Skyping with a group of students the other day and one of them asked me, “What do you do and what has your work done to help the people you write about?” I’ve been asked this question many times. It hits me hard each time.

I usually say something like Boo said, “I’m just the storyteller. It’s not my job to do, but to show.”

Am I copping out?

Typically I’ll confess that the lives of the garment workers I met, who are now suffering a cruel global economy, have gotten harder since I met them, and that I haven’t changed their world, but I hope to have changed those who have read my work. Maybe my readers have the skills and focus to do something that can change the world and my writing inspired or encouraged them to do so.

I’m just the writer.

That said, I do end with a prescriptive last chapter in Where Am I Wearing? (The new edition out in April has even more of this) because I’m also a person who has changed and wants to make a difference.

What’s a journalist’s or a writer’s job?

Anyhow, he got me thinking about repdigits.

11

I was carefree. I spent my days pounding the pavement of our basketball court, driving a Go-Kart around the dirt track in our field, and playing TECMO Bowl (the first awesome football video game.)

22

Oh my God! Oh my God! I’m almost an adult! Or am I an adult? I think 22 has to be the scariest age in which you aren’t worried about dying. In a sense, your childhood has started to fade a way and responsibilities come into focus. Of course, I was still able to push off many of those responsibilities for another 6 years or so, but that didn’t mean that they still didn’t scare the shit out of me.

33

I have created life! Twice! And these little creatures that call me “Dada” are needy. They need comforted at all hours of the night. They need food and shelter. And someday they’ll be 11 and need basketballs and video games. And someday they’ll be 22 and I’ll see their eyes quivering with excitement, fear, and growing pains of expectation and regret.

At 11 I couldn’t imagine being 22. At 22 I couldn’t imagine being 33. And now I look at those who are 44 and can’t imagine what life will be like. My heart hurts thinking about releasing my kids into a world with name calling bullies, and test scores and game scores and other such judgments. I’m ready for them to sleep through the night, but I’m not ready for them to grow up to a size that I can’t hold them, and to a self-awareness in which they won’t run into my arms with hugs and kisses when I walk in the door.

I’m not ready for 44. Heck, I’m not ready for 34. But I can assure you that I will be. 33 is where I’m supposed to be. 33 is excitement about a growing career. It’s moments of contentment between stretches of exhaustion. It’s 2 kids and 6 trips up the stairs to comfort them. It’s being in the trenches of early parenthood with my wife who knew me and has grown with me since I was 11 and 22.

What does 33 look like to you?

The inspiration of Dr. Seuss

Before he was Dr. Seuss, Theodor Geisel was stuck on a ship returning to the States from Europe listening to the thump thump thump of the engine.  Inspired by the rhythm, he wrote his first children’s book: And to Think I Saw it on Mulberry Street.

The rejection of Dr. Seuss

He pitched the book and was rejected 27 times before a chance encounter with a friend who had just landed an editing job.  Geisel told his friend about his book, about the rejection, and told him he was fed up and about to destroy the book.  The friend read it and Dr. Seuss was born.

#28

You never know where inspiration is going to come from.  It could be from a T-shirt or an engine.

Knowing when to listen to and when to reject the opinion of others is key.  Imagine a room full of all of the people who have rejected your ideas and work.  Geisel’s room had 27 people in it. Now imagine going around that room and telling each of them your idea and each of them gives you a big thumbs down. Do you walk out of the room and go find #28?

Unless you do, you’ll never know the places you’ll go.

(Another blog post brought to you courtesy of NPR’s Morning Edition)