criticism

Writers and Characters

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One of the best/hardest parts of being a writer is creating characters. I love making side characters with protagonist-like qualities and heroes with common attributes and humble beginnings. I love sympathetic villains as well as downright evil ones. I especially love books where it’s impossible to tell who’s right and who’s wrong. I just can’t get enough of them.

To create whole worlds, writers often put a bit of themselves into their characters. Sometimes, we almost look like them. Sometimes, we share personality traits. It’s how a writer gets to know their protagonists and antagonists so well. We write the things we know.

Now, it’s rare to find a character that is a complete copy of the creator. Some writers, especially those who share physical traits with their main characters, have been accused of creating “Mary Sues” and being poor writers for it. Interestingly enough, I have never see this accusation of lazy writing being thrown at male authors, such as John Green, who create characters that look like younger versions of themselves, over and over again (but that could just be my feminism talking). Either way, it’s wrong.

My main character has red hair, which I was born with. My locks faded to a shade somewhere between brown and blonde in later childhood, but I still possess the pale skin that so many European redheads are prone to have. Wanting to write about an Irish girl, it made sense to pick my original hair and skin color. I could describe on a personal level her constant struggles with sunburns and freckles. But unlike her, I’m not a genius, and I wouldn’t touch a bottle of milk if you paid me.

You see, writing a story about oneself is boring. Writers don’t come up with a thousand different versions of our world just to have themselves play the main role. We live by a mantra of “What if?” Why would a writer want to create someone they already know so well?

And if they do, so what? Maybe an author wants to be someone else for a bit. Maybe they want the world to know them better. And maybe that’s not a bad thing.

The Importance of Great Teachers

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Hey everyone! Windmill Keepers  is slowly making its way from the hands of our close friends and into the hands of their close friends. The spread begins! I’m proud to say this book has helped me come to another conclusion as well.

The day after we published to Amazon, I was talking to someone about my career and where I was headed in life. I admitted that I hadn’t been happy since I started my current job. He asked me what I wanted to be when my contract was finally up, and I didn’t have an immediate answer.

I have a graduate degree in Criminal Justice and Criminology, but it did me very little good when I graduated. There wasn’t anything open to a 23 year-old with no experience in the field, despite my fancy paper. Unable to break into investigations, as originally planned, I ended up joining a tiny, forgotten branch of the military. I managed to do some good at my last unit, but I wanted to move on in four years. I never expected to tricked into a seven-year contract. Now that I’m here, the only thing I can do is make the best of my situation and plan for my next career.

I’ve considered getting some more qualifications in forensics and working in a lab. After all, that was my concentration in college, and what I was best at. I’ve also considered going into robotics and possibly working in another country. But at the end of the day, I have a family to think of, and entry-level work at 31 sounds like financial suicide.

When I ran these options by my husband and sister, I added one more. I mentioned teaching, and they said that was where they could see me being the happiest. I can’t disagree with them.

I think having great teachers is extremely important. They’re the unsung heroes of America. In fact, their presence and words can alter a life. I can speak from experience on that one.

I was home-schooled until I was eight. When I finally started, the staff was worried I would be behind and placed me in second grade instead of third. My first teacher was Mrs. Moore. She was an old, puffy woman who wore lots of animal print button downs. Back in her golden years, teachers were still allowed to beat children who didn’t listen. To give you an indication of how that year would go for me, she missed those days terribly and often told us she wished America would bring it back.

We spent our days in a cinder block building, at the end of an abandoned road. There was nothing around us but cornfields, empty farm houses, and a military base on the horizon. The Midwestern sun turned our schoolhouse into an oven. With no air-conditioning, we had to make due with fans and open windows.

It was in the middle of this blistering heat that I remember silently crying as I wrote my mother and father an apology letter for being a bad daughter and student. Mrs. Moore watched me from her desk, tapping her long nails and lecturing to the class about how she used to beat ill-behaved children who talked in class. My face was red and hot, despite the fan blowing against the back of my neck.

When I was done, she read it to the class and said I didn’t do a good enough job because I didn’t admit to my guilt. She wrote an angry note in ugly red ink to my parents on the back. Then she told a girl across from me that once I fixed my attitude, she needed to teach me how to properly brush my hair. But I sat with my back to a fan, and it was that girl that had been talking – not me.

My parents sent me out of the room when they had a meeting with Mrs. Moore about the note. Apparently, my teacher admitted to calling me stupid in front of the class, and suggested that I couldn’t handle higher thinking. My summer vacation started a week early that year when my mother refused to send me back.

The next year, I had a new teacher, in a new grade and a new building. The old one was shutdown and replaced with an air-conditioned elementary school on base. Mrs. Guerrero had been a third grade teacher for just a little bit less than Mrs. Moore had been teaching second grade. But the difference changed my life.

Mrs. Guerrero encouraged me. She told me what I needed to work on, as well as what I was good at. With her, I won a poetry contest and placed third in the Young Authors program. She told me I was smart. When I saw Mrs. Moore in the hallway, I refused to look at her.

By fourth grade, I was in the advanced class. By seventh, I was homeschooling myself to skip eighth grade. The next year, I was a ninth grade student-worker at a college prep school. All along the way, I had amazing teachers that encouraged me and made me push myself (even if I nearly failed math in sixth grade).

Sometimes, I wonder where I would be if I had another Mrs. Moore in my life.  Would I have gone to college? Would I have tried to write a book? I have a feeling I wouldn’t have.

Teachers have such a huge impact on the people around them. They can make or break a young mind. I have so much thanks to give the people that encouraged me. I want to do that for another child. I know it will be scary starting something new after 30, but I think I can do it and keep my writing career as well. I have five years to go to get my qualifications and move into something better. I know I can make that happen. And when I do, I’m going to be someone else’s Mrs. Guerrero.

A. Kemp

P.S. Just a reminder that you can  purchase the e-book version of Windmill Keepers HERE for $5.99. If you like it, share it with a friend! Or review it on Amazon. Every bit helps 🙂

Traditional, Indie, and Self

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Back in June, I was supposed to attend UtopYA 2015. The government, however, owns a large part of my life (read: all of it), and told me to pack up my husband and move from the Keys all the way to Northern Cali. So, I. Kemp and the wonderful Gabriellia Kemp went in my stead.

One of the things I. Kemp brought back was an opinion that we were best off going the self-publishing route. Prior to this decision, I had been torn between which route to continue pursuing. I realize now that my hesitation was formed from the same uneducated opinions that non-writers often hold.

When I was still and college and far too optimistic for my own good, I thought that you sent an idea to an agent and they made a schedule for you to submit your work while pitching it to publishing houses. That was completely wrong. I learned during my first writer’s conference that it’s nearly impossible to get something published without first having it completed. This put my current work on hold and started Windmill Keepers.

When self-publishing was just starting to gain momentum from e-books, I read an article by an old editor who worked for a traditional publishing house. She spent about eight hundred or so words bashing self-published writers as being unprofessional, whining losers who couldn’t stomach the traditional route. I read the comments and saw dozens of people singing her praise. Almost all of them were employed by the Big Five. I was so foolish back then, that I believed them.

Indie publishing crossed my mind briefly, but for some reason I imagined them as being those dollar store romance books. Self-publishers, in my mind, were even worse than that. They were fan fiction with slightly altered names for the characters and places. I thought publishing through those routes was worse than not being published at all.

I was so, so wrong.  Continue reading →

How to Give and Receive Criticism

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Writing is an art that takes far more skill than one might expect. Natural talent only extends as far as one’s vocabulary. It’s an art that requires constant development, reworking, and creativity. This is why written works can be so personal for their creators – and why criticism can be so poorly received.

When I was in my early college years, I sent off a query with the first ten pages of my now-shelved manuscript attached. I was hopeful that I would get an instant reply, telling me I was the next J.K. Rowling. A quick rejection letter showed up in my inbox the next month and I spent half a week listening to sad punk songs about failure and rejection.

The letter wasn’t cruel or anything like that. It was a basic, cookie-cutter “no thank you.” But at the time, I kept saying that a reason or feedback would make me feel better. Seven years on, I know that’s not true. I would have been even more bitter, no matter how kind the criticism was. After all, I was convinced that I wrote something new, funny and creative. Back then, I wasn’t able to accept rejection with optimism. It took me a whole year of such experiences to learn that criticism was a blessing in disguise.

Even as an adult, it takes a certain degree of emotional maturity to handle negative comments. Very prideful people sometimes find it hard to admit mistakes and personal shortcomings. For example, I know of an extreme case where a young woman is so convinced of her knowledge that to this day she believes Mr. Rogers was a Navy Seal with several recorded kills and tattoo sleeves. Even after pulling up his full biography, which has his life-long occupation listed as being a Presbyterian minister, she refuses to believe it. She holds onto racist, and homophobic beliefs. Because she is afraid to accept any constructive criticism or challenges about her beliefs, she never grows. It’s sad, really.

If you never listen to the opinions of another, and refuse to reflect on your own thoughts and beliefs, then you are destined to stay in one place. The same is true of writing. If beta readers or editors tell an author that there was something lacking in a book, then it is important for the writer to consider their remarks. And if an author hears these comments over and over again, then the issue demands the writer’s attention.

Artists are great critics of their own work. Anyone who has ever reread or reviewed old writings and drawings knows the painful pride that comes from seeing intense improvement over old masterpieces. But when it comes to listening to others, we sometimes forget how to. And sometimes, we forget how to give criticism as well.

It doesn’t do anyone any good to send reviews like “this was a giant waste of money and time,” or “this book was disgusting” because at the end of the day, the writer may not know what they did wrong. If the author continues to get so many hurtful reviews, they may stop listening to feedback altogether, or even give up on writing. This is very similar what happened with E.L. James. The backlash against her writing was not necessarily wrong on a moral sense (the book was certainly glorifying abusive relationships and misrepresenting the BDSM community). The way the criticism was given, however, was not constructive. As such, she chose to ignore the hurtful comments and put out another book, this time sympathizing with the abuser by telling the story from his POV.

There may not be any guarantee that someone will listen to criticism, but if it is given, it should most definitely be constructive, rather than destructive. Help build your writing, as well as another’s by learning how to give and receive such comments. After all, as readers and writers, we’re all all in this together.