WINNEMUCCA - Nearly every writer has a pile of rejection letters before a publisher finally accepts a manuscript and agrees to publish it.
A young man from Winnemucca says he has a fair start on the pile of rejection letters, but he also has a copy of his first book in his hand. He did what a growing number of other writers and photographers, even musicians are doing - he self-published his first book.
John Finch lived in Winnemucca from kindergarten through the beginning of ninth grade at Lowry High School. His mom, Deb Gillam, still lives in Winnemucca and couldn't be more proud.
"She's over the moon," says Finch.
The book is a compilation of free-style poetry titled, "Willows, Women, Highways and the Sea." Finch said he's been writing since fourth grade. He credited two Winnemucca teachers for inspiring and encouraging him to continue writing: French Ford Middle School fifth grade teacher Dixie Southwick, and Winnemucca Junior High School teacher Tom Asbury.
After studying film in college for a year, he dropped out of college and hitchhiked around the West for a time. His experiences are the subject matter of some of his writing, leaving him astonished at "the kindness of strangers, and the belief that the world isn't as scary as the evening news shows it to be."
Influenced by "On the Road" writer and poet Jack Kerouac, he has continued to gather the kind of life experiences that should give a writer widely varied background material.
He's worked at jobs as diverse as tutoring, machining and packaging, and washing dishes. The tutoring jobs hit a chord, particularly one where he worked to teach inner city youth about poetry.
"They didn't like it much at first," he said, adding that when he introduced poetry using rap music the young people really responded."
Finch said he realized he needed to go back to college and get a well-rounded education for a career. He wasn't giving up on writing, just tempering the dream with the realities of making a living. Tutoring made him realize he really wanted to teach. He's back in college now working for a teaching degree.
Finch worked with self-publishing programs while helping people who were trying to learn and improve their writing in the Salt Lake Community College Writing Center.
The center is nonprofit, funded through the college, but focused on helping non-students - people in the community. He helped those in the center self-publish some of their writings.
Self-publishing isn't costly. The free program Finch has used is Create Space, from Amazon - the only cost is for the actual copies of the book. Finch did all the formatting for his book of free verse, and even drew the cover art.
He said, "We ordered about 15 books; mom took 10 back to Winnemucca."
Proud mom Deb Gillam can be found working afternoons at Khoury's market. Finch's book and many other self-published offerings are available at Amazon.com
Finch says he will definitely continue writing; he has been putting his poetry on the Internet for awhile and has been published in a couple of poetry magazines - interestingly, one from Poland. He has written a novel, and a novella, though he says he doesn't plan to publish either.
"I wrote them just to learn the process of writing a book."
As the Create Space website notes, "The publishing industry is evolving. Hundreds of thousands of authors are publishing profitable work right now instead of waiting for agents and publishers to give them the green light. "
Websites like Create Space offer tools to self-publish and distribute books, DVDs, CDs, video downloads and MP-3s.[[In-content Ad]]
