“We lived in God’s blind spot.“
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A. Kemp
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.
When I was younger, we spent a lot of time inside libraries. It was a free way for my parents to entertain us. When I got older, I would ride my bike to the library on my father’s air force base and spend hours sorting through books on the paranormal and epic fantasy adventures. I did this on weekends and even through summer vacations. Eventually, I would learn that my grandmother used to work for a library. It kind of makes sense that I was comfortable sitting between the stacks of books, reading about ghosts and sword fights. It’s in my veins.
My family never really had a lot of money, so buying books was rare. Libraries were a free place for us, where checking out a dozen books didn’t feel like bankrupting our budget. It was a safe haven from the summer heat, and also where I could learn anything I wanted. To me, libraries were and still are magical.
One thing I remember very clearly from my grade school days was watching Matilda. In the very beginning, the main character ends up walking to the library everyday to read a tiny mountain of books. Eventually, the librarian gives her a library card, despite her young age. That scene actually made me want to work in a library for a long time. Giving people access to books felt like one of the most important jobs in the world. In a way, I think it still is.
In 2002, a Malawian teenager named William Kamkwamba built a windmill to power appliances from his home. He went on to build even more, and eventually made a solar powered water pump for his village. He did this by reading books he found in the library. It’s amazing what people can do, when given the resources.
Even in an age where electronic sources are taking over, I still feel that libraries have a place in our world. Lending programs such as Openlibrary and KDP are proof that online libraries are possible. They should be everywhere. Books aren’t something our country should be withholding and not being able to afford education doesn’t mean a person shouldn’t have access to it. Such a barrier is a detriment to our society.
Libraries have done more than just educate me. They gave me access to adventures and magic. I found a thousand creepy stories to recite at slumber parties. Even when things were crashing down around me, the books I found gave me a place to hide and recenter myself.
Whenever I go online and look at my account on KDP, I can see how many pages someone has read of my book through the lending library. It makes me happy to know that someone stumbled upon my book and enjoyed it enough to keep reading, even on their weekends. I feel almost like the authors I found hiding in my favorite libraries.
In the end, that’s all I ever needed.
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
Whenever I sit down to write a new character, I end up pausing to double check my research. I think one of the most important aspects of literary casts is diversity, but it’s something you have to do right. It is dangerous to fall into the trap of describing unfamiliar characters through stereotypes. I believe, however, that it is equally as bad to ignore a character’s culture.
We live in a vastly complicated world, and it’s not pretty by any means. Racism, sexism, and countless other deplorable beliefs exist in our day-to-day lives. Some of us are lucky and do not encounter these problems very often. Others, not so much. This is something I became increasingly aware of as I learned to be more socially conscious with my writing.
When a character comes from a specific culture, they bring their baggage with them. You cannot take a white character and change their race without that shift affecting their lives. When you face different prejudices, you develop a different mindset, after all.
In the case of a devout Muslim character, for example, they are going to carry some of their religious background with them. That background is going to be vastly different from that of a devout Catholic. In that same regard, a Muslim character in Somalia is going to encounter different problems than one living in France. Location, history, and sociology are all things one has to consider when they try to introduce minority characters.
Ignoring a group’s social struggles and pressures paints an untrue picture of the world. It does not mean that a character can’t be an anomaly from their social group. In fact, that could be a huge part of their personality. This variance, however, is something the author should point out. I feel this is especially true when writing for young audiences.
And this is where things get tricky in terms of balancing a character. While a person should carry some marks of their culture, these imprints should not be counted on to create an entire character. Humans are far more complex than that.
In my book, for example, I have a girl from India who bears scars of abuse for being an unwanted daughter. Female abuse and infanticide is a serious problem in India. While it does not represent all of India, and there are many Indian families that love and cherish their daughters, it is a problem that still exists throughout the country. This character carries this maltreatment in the burns on her back.
Her scars, however, do not define her person in its entirety. She has managed to rise above the psychological trauma. She is fashionable, physically strong, a loyal friend, a feminist, a romantic, funny, and just a little bit strange. Her culture encouraged the growth of these traits through both good and bad experiences. She is the product of her society, but not the embodiment of it.
I want to see more honest depictions of different cultures in literature, especially where children are involved. And while I’m trying my best to get everything right, I know there are points where I am going to mess up. I’m not from the cultures I am trying to represent and so there is no way I could write them with perfect accuracy. I have struggled with this notion for some time. I worry that I am doing more harm than good, but whitewashing my books feels worse.
There has recently been a movement to see more diverse books, characters, and authors in our bookstore. While I cannot and should not be the forefront of this movement, I hope that I can help support it. The most I can ask is that if I get something wrong, then someone will let me know. Explain to me where I messed up. That way, I can acknowledge my mistake and take steps to never make the same error. I want to make things better, not worse.
I’ve written about empowering young girls before on a previous blog, but I felt like it needed to be mentioned again. There’s a lot going on in the world right now, and very little of it is good. Still, I don’t want to give up hope that our generation can turn things around.
As a writer, I want to see the world get better instead of worse. For that reason, I’ve always tried to be socially conscious when writing. After all, books had a profound impact on me as a young teen. Every time I sit down at the keyboard, I try to create real characters. They’re people of different races, from different cultures and backgrounds. I’m of the view that minorities shouldn’t be tokens you get gold stars for (such as: “my main character has a black friend, so I did a good job”). They deserve to be main characters, and our increasingly diverse population of young people deserve to see themselves reflected as heroes in literature.
I try to fight against misconceptions that I had as a young child. Hijabs do not equal oppression, a boy crying does not make him weak, and having a mental disorder does not make someone violent or evil. These are some of the messages I try to send. Young female characters, in particular, hold a special place in my heart.
As a child, I read dozens and dozens of adventures with boys as the main character. Treasure Island, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, Kidnapped, Oliver Twist, The Yearling and even Watership Down (which was about rabbits) all had male heroes. Modern day books such as Holes, Harry Potter, Airborn, Looking for Alaska, and Unwind also feature male heroes. Needless to say, there were a lot of heroic, adventurous boys on my schools’ required reading lists and not a lot of girls. Thankfully, things have started to change.
In the YA genre, female writers have been making great strides, and they’ve brought a lot of their girl power with them. Female-centered stories with strong leads began to emerge in rapid succession once a new generation of writers got their turn at the plate. Now, a huge section of the YA market is dedicated to female protagonists. Male writers have also started creating stronger female characters. Kenneth Oppel’s Kate de Vries and Scott Westerfield’s Deryn Sharp played hugely important and powerful roles throughout their respective trilogies. It was a change I was glad to see happen.
It always pleases me when I see girls being depicted as powerful, be it though traditional or nontraditional roles. IN addition, diverse female characters send the message that women can be masters of their own story. This should be true of every female, regardless of their race, if they are boyish or girly, fat or thin, weak or strong.
Girls hold up half the sky, and they deserve the same respect and rights as men – be it in literature or real life. This is a message I am always trying to send through my female characters. After all, it’s hard to be a girl. Every woman on television is thin, beautiful, rich, well-dressed, and overwhelmingly white. Our lives are determined by corporations and governments that are 80% to 97% male. Women are 51% of the population, but we are voiceless when it comes to determining the laws that govern us. This is one of many reasons why we need feminism to achieve equality. In literature, I feel like women are finally starting to gain ground.
When I was young, I wanted to write, but I also wanted to get into robotics and engineering. My science teachers never encouraged me. I was told by a teacher in grade school that girls had a harder time in math and science. When I grew up and learned why such statements were wrong, I promised to do better. I hope I’ve done just that.
A.i. Kemp 