Story 9

Story 9
Feature on William Lund
By Kevin Pabst

“I just wanted to make sure you understand how extremely practical the twenty-odd years I spent as a writer were, and how far they were from anything creatively fulfilling.” said William Lund, instructor of English at Anoka-Ramey Community College. Lund is a man who has done a little bit of everything you can do as a writer. He’s written books for young men he calls “reluctant readers,” he’s worked on advertisement for ad agencies, written brochures, videos and instruction manuals.

Lund says that being a writer to him was “a means to an end,” and that although writing came easily to him he wasn’t creatively driven in the ways he’d heard other writers were. Before he graduated from Westmar College, a small private school in Iowa, Lund worked for his school’s newspaper and did a “fair amount of creative writing,” as he says.

As he transitioned to graduate school he continued to excel at writing. He won a short story competition, a play writing competition, and several of his plays were put on by the graduate acting department. He said all of this and finished his thought with “I don’t know if any of your instructors have told you this, but good fiction writers “need” to write, whether they’re published or not.”

After graduating from Westmar, Lund moved on to Ball State University to earn his MA. He also mentions that, “I did four years of doctoral work at the University of Minnesota but never finished the Ph.D.” To top off his education he spent a year of graduate school at St. Thomas University for education.

Lund, with his education complete, moved on to teaching, but only did so for a few years. He says, “After a few years teaching in a difficult school, I was ‘burned out’” and the opportunity fell in my lap to make quite a bit more money writing in the business world.” This opportunity would lead to Lund’s transition from education into the realm of technical writing. He wrote manuals and “instruction materials” for different computer companies for four years. On those four years, he says, “Although it wasn’t particularly fulfilling, it paid well and was secure, and I found it easy to do.”

Change would come once again to Lund’s life, when he moved to a different company that wanted to have him work on marketing materials. He says that this marketing company he worked for “farmed me out to write speeches, promotional materials, even stage shows for major companies that were producing meetings internationally.”

His previous experience prepared him well, though, for his next position at an ad agency. He says himself that this is where he “did all of the things I was doing before, plus ad copy, brochures, direct mail, corporate videos—pretty much anything that sold stuff and involved words.” Like the rest of Lund’s career this position wasn’t permanent, and he decided he “didn’t have enough control over my own time” and moved to freelance work.

This is where Lund admits to enjoying himself the most, where he was tasked with writing 26 books targeted at “’reluctant’ readers,” late junior high and high school boys. He was given a specific topic, “anything from a specific career to a specific mammal” and he researched the topic, and wrote a book that might appeal to the book series’ audience.

Lund says “these jobs, like most of the professional writing I worked on throughout those two decades, were nothing that I was passionate about.” In 2002, after the September 11 attacks Lund says he was “depressed and confused,” and decided to move to Fort Lauderdale, FL. Soon, a “friend of a friend” who was a dean for Broward Community College needed a technical writer. Lund says,”I thought—well, why not? It couldn’t be worse than writing another newsletter or brochure.”

“The thing was, I loved it [teaching].” Lund says, and continues, “I taught a couple of semesters and discovered that, although I hated Florida, I loved teaching again.” He says that he moved back to Minnesota, and has been teaching since those first semesters in Florida.

Looking back at his career, Lund says that despite his practical look at his writing ability, using it as a tool, there have been things he has enjoyed. He wrote for the humor column for multiple campus papers, and in the’80s he wrote for some local Twin Cities papers. He says, “I loved doing it and have regularly thought of doing it again. “

When asked if he wished to return to writing from teaching full-time, he had this to say:
“No, no, never—they’re going to have to drag me from the classroom as I clutch at the doorframe with bloodied fingernails.”