Name: Alan Humason
First clue you wanted to be a writer; summarize the situation: Ninth Grade English Class, Lincoln Jr. High School. I began writing short stories and poems; my teacher (Mr. John Freisinger) took an interest; Grandparents sent me money for sending them stuff. I was lousy at everything else ~ so go figure.
Earliest remembered writing and publishing experience: Wrote a longish (66 lines) poem (a love poem at that) that Freisinger made me read aloud in front of the class. Heavy duty. 10th grade won an essay contest (and $50), giving a well-observed public beating to the class valedictorian in the process.
What part of your education helped you most on your path to writing? Having an alcoholic-then-dead father, an abusive older brother, a divorced-frustrated-remarried-horny-and-loud-as-hell mother, a self-important blonde stoner step-sister, brain-damaged and ultimately suicidal step-brother, and the (achieved) goal of being the only person in my family to actually graduate from college. On the flip side, my step-father never read anything, but encouraged me to send my stuff out into the world, so I did.
Who influenced you most along your way and how? In real (early) life, Mr. Freisinger, through allowing my writing to “bribe” him (his words) to A’s in class, basically granting me the sense of having sails to fill with my hot air. In college, the poets Edgar Bowers, Kenneth Rexroth, and Carl Shapiro, who gave me the time of day, read (or listened at coffeehouse open-mike sessions) my stuff and didn’t puke. Of course, in Letters I fell under the spell of Hemingway for a time, Kafka (everyone should read the story “The Great Wall of China”), Yeats, others. Later, magazine editor Jim Reynolds was key, because he was the ultimate managing editor, knew his Craft, and made me his son.
Most satisfying piece(s) you’ve ever written----its audience: I like the poems “Copeland’s Home” (which won the top honors of the writing competition when I was a grad student at San Jose State U.) and the six-part “The Impressionist Painter” (which I wrote as an exploration of the creative process and gave as a present to my Art History prof). I like the 14-page feature article on Yosemite, a collaboration I worked on at Sunset Magazine in 1985. And I thought I did a good job on a couple of travel articles for Sacramento Magazine freelancing in the last couple of years. Unpublished, I have a novella called “Silicon Valley Story,” about a transplanted software salesman who engages in corporate espionage with Japanese industrialists pursuing Artificial Intelligence, while (briefly successfully) lusting after a fine-looking coke-snorting neighbor woman in his apartment complex . . . a mass-market serio-comic fictional meditation on the 1980s ripe for cinema!
Your publications or venues for writing: I have lots of bylines; in the last several years mostly for Sacramento Magazine as a contributing editor. Otherwise the “creative stuff” is mostly for a cadre of friends and family. I do a certain amount of technical, marketing/PR, and “white paper” prose in my day-job ~ I’m pretty good at that stuff. I still do the occasional full-issue magazine critique (those can be loads of fun).
Nuggets of advice for young writers in middle school and high school: Don’t get hung up in technical details like “your intent” and “your grammar and spelling” so much as committed to your story, your idea, your thought. Be on the lookout and on your feet for the telling first ~ the other things you can return to, to fix as needed ~ and you will need to know how to do those things, too, in a coldly self-critical way, beyond expectation. Try to take an entire summer writing for at least several hours every day ~ see if you have the temperament and, come the autumn, if you maintain a momentum. Don’t be afraid to share. Do expect to meet a bunch of self-possessed whackos but so what? Observe and report. Feel and express. And always agree to endorse Marianne Love book dust jackets whenever she needs to fill some space!
