M. Huw Evans, Special Guest Judge of the Dystopia/Utopia
chapter
Biography:
M. “Huw” Evans writes and edits in Seattle. He attended Clarion West, Kij Johnson’s novel workshop, and UW’s editing program. Huw co-edited the anthology Pocket Workshop and co-published Ex Marginalia. He’s working with three others to start a new small press: Homeward.
BAM: Where are you?
Huw: Seattle, Washington, USA
BAM: Where’s your writing space?
Huw: My cozy little study at home—though when I’m
really into a project, I can write anywhere (so long as I’ve got my earbuds
in).
BAM: Could you tell me about your target audience?
Huw: Last year, I wrote a novel for my kids—I realized
that I had a very limited window in which to write a kid’s book for my kids
while they were still kids. It was the most fun I’ve ever had writing, and I
think that had a lot to do with knowing exactly who my audience was. Going
forward, I want to try this with other writings—choosing a very specific
audience and keeping those readers close in my head whenever I’m writing.
Also, always in my head when I’m writing are the voices of two of my Clarion
West instructors, Connie Willis and Stephen Graham Jones, so I guess I’m always
writing to them a bit, too.
BAM: Is there something you passionately want the
human race to stop doing that might subtly appear in your writing?
Huw: So many things. Today, the one that comes to
mind is cutting down the trees in cities in order to squeeze in more big, ugly modern
houses.
Huw: I never watch shows or movies
while writing—I’m too easily distracted—but I do listen to music. It has to be
either music that I know so well that it goes in one ear and out the other
without involving the conscious part of my brain too much or music that is kind
of monotonous in some way. It could be repetitive electronic music,
impressionist piano, renaissance choral or lute music. Sometimes I just put my
earbuds in with no sound at all, and this helps me focus (it also lets my
family know that I’m trying to work).
BAM: What deceased or living writer do you want to
meet?
Huw: Hard to narrow it down to one. I’ve been super lucky to have met many of the living writers whom I most admire. I regret never having met Ursula Le Guin, so she’s definitely on my list of deceased authors to meet.
Huw: More than anything, it’s other
books that inspire me to start writing. I’ll go long periods without writing,
and usually what pulls me back in is reading some really wonderful passage in a
novel—or maybe it’s a poem or even a quote someone posted online—but usually
it’s a novel. Sometimes it’s an idea or a metaphor that strikes something in me
and gets me thinking in new ways. When a piece of writing really moves me or
changes the way that I see the world or understand other people, that makes me
want to write—makes me want to have that same kind of effect on others. And
then the thing that keeps me writing once I’ve gotten going is the stream of
new things that emerge—the things I had never expected or intended but which
find their way out of my brain onto the page. I don’t plan ahead very much when
I write—at least not for first drafts—but even when I do try to plan out scenes
or progressions of events, I almost always end up surprising myself. I’ll be
writing what I’d expected to be a straightforward scene for getting characters
from point A to point B while communicating important story information (and
hopefully keeping the reader entertained), and then, suddenly, I’ll find that
there’s a deep philosophical conversation going on between the lines, and it’s
real-world stuff that I’ve been stewing over but that I hadn’t seen as connected
in any way to the work-in-progress, and it makes the scene so much more
interesting than I’d ever have imagined it could be. That’s what keeps me
going—the surprises. There aren’t enough surprises in life; I treasure them
when they show up.
BAM: If you ever get writer's block, how do you
overcome it?
HUW: I’ve
heard lots of different definitions of writer’s block. For me, the most useful
one is inability to write the thing that I want to be writing at the time that
I want to be writing it—despite having ideal conditions for writing. I’ve had
this happen. I’m not a very disciplined writer, and I don’t set myself hard
deadlines (and outside of academic settings, I’ve never written to anyone
else’s deadlines), so when I can’t manage to write the thing I want to be
writing, I just accept that something in me isn’t really ready to write it
yet—no matter how much I might want to—and so I either write something
completely different (a poem, an essay, a journal entry, a few paragraphs of
foodie porn) or I stop writing and do something else altogether (play music,
make art, walk in nature, play games with kids). Also, having kids is just a
fantastic resource for writers in general—if I’m stuck because I can’t see my
way through a plot problem or can’t understand a character’s motivations, I’ll
often tell my kids about the scenario (sometimes in an age-appropriate diluted
form) and let them pick it apart. They’re really great at helping me see why
something’s not working, and often that’s enough to get me unstuck. Overall,
though, for me, maybe the most useful thing is to tell myself that every phase
of a writing project—including the “stuck” times—are part of my brain’s
process, and that in order to write my best work, I need to accept and embrace
the signals my brain’s giving me: if the way is blocked, find another way … or
just wait for the block to melt.
Huw’s Social media:
Website
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