I was upset I could not make it to Hernandez’s book reading, but enjoyed his talk in class and gained a lot of insight. A few things stood out to me about different aspects of the talk like digital publishing, how Hernandez got to where he is, and writing.
The main thing that stuck out about digital publishing is that it is changing a lot about who can get published and why. It is allowing more people to get published. Minorities, like women and people of color, are getting invited and welcomed to tell their stories and self publishing is opening up and getting easier for everyone digitally. They are even getting nominated and winning awards because of this opportunity. Another thing about digital publishing is it is cheaper. Hernandez mentioned that long poems take up a lot of space because they make so much negative space, for printed works, this mean more pages and ink which means more money, but digitally those factors disappear therefor it can be produced for less money.
I was very interested in his process of getting to how Hernandez got to where he is and the decisions he had to make to get there. one point he brought up a few times, the prestige of the print or publishers. He did not care as much if he got published digitally or physically, but he did care about the prestige of who was publishing it. His training as a poet also helped get him to success. Though he also writes short stories and he liked writing them for two reasons. You can send one to a publisher and then later send another to keep the connection going. It also pushed him to not be boring as a writer because he only had so many words to write an interesting story beginning to end.
My final note, Hernandez talked about putting your work out there and it really stuck with me as a fictional writer and a graphic designer. He encouraged writers to go to conventions and learn more about the community, to search for open markets, to hope to get published and paid, to get feedback, and to not give up. Put your work out there as soon as you can, someone right will see it, read it, and love it enough to get published. Hernandez reminded us that we will get rejected, but take the feed back and keep trying. And I think that was strongest point I took away from the entire talk because it is important to anyone in any field, keep trying.