No Matter How You Slice It!

HANK: The secret to her success? Cheese. More on that in a minute. But she's always got a smile and a warm welcome. She's the hardest workin' woman in show biz. (She was one of my first pals in mystery world--we started out as new Guppies together. Know what that means? If not, read on.) And she's a true friend of Jungle Red. We are button-burstingly proud of new national best-seller Avery Aames.

Avery is an overnight success! It just took about...two decades of perseverance and guts and dedication. And--along the way--some criticism. Yikes. Some pretty tough criticism.

Don’t Let Criticism Crush You!

AVERY: Criticism. What you do with it might speak worlds about who you are and where you are in your life.

My parents always thought I was talented. They praised me. They critiqued me, as well, but always with love. According to them, I could do anything if I set my mind to it. I happened to be an overachiever, so they didn’t have to praise too hard. I carried a mental whip in my head at all times. Do better, do it faster.

I had always loved to write. Around the age of eleven, I’d tried my hand at a number of Nancy Drew chapters. When I hit the impressionable age of twelve, I encountered an English teacher who advised me I shouldn’t consider writing my future vocation. In fact, I remember a comment on a paper from him saying that I had no talent.

Can you imagine writing that to an impressionable twelve-year-old? No talent? Whatsoever?

Because I respected the teacher, the comment speared an arrow through my creative soul. For the rest of the year, I tried to put the comment from my mind, and I concentrated on the thing in which I “was” talented…math.
And yet I liked the creative arts: writing, dancing, acting. So in eighth grade--when I was feeling pretty cocky and assured--I put aside the teacher’s words and tried my hand at writing a play. It was a snarky turn on The Night Before Christmas. It earned rave “peer” reviews. Laughs were good, silliness even better. I didn’t lord my success over my former teacher. I had moved on. [At least I had convinced myself that I had.]

Then I entered high school, and somehow I was “blessed” with another teacher who wanted to thwart me. As I studied Shakespeare, all of my former teacher’s negativity roiled through my mind. My hand froze when it came to putting pen to paper. I didn’t believe I could write anything worthwhile. Oh, I could write a thesis paper. I had the talent to argue a case. But could I write something creative? Not a chance. All trial chapters of my first mystery fell into the waste basket. All my poetry was shredded into confetti. Snarky plays? A thing of the past. I sought solace on the stage (with scripts or plays written by “masters). And I focused on math.

I moved on to college, and I chose as my major…math. That lasted about a semester. I truly understood algebra and geometry, but trig and calc and beyond? Oh, my, no. English continued to woo me like a siren. I wanted to read. I wanted to create. I returned to studying the written word by convincing myself that if I couldn’t “do,” then I could teach.

I would have been a good teacher, but life took a turn in my senior year. I was offered an opportunity that led me to Los Angeles, and I made a living as an actress for a number of years. I acted in “Murder, She Wrote,” and “Hart to Hart” and “Matlock.” I sold Wonder Bread and Kentucky Fried Chicken and Diet Pepsi. I danced and sang on stages around the country.

Along the way, I decided to try my hand at writing a screenplay.

What happened? You guessed it. All those little snipes from my teachers came back to haunt me. I stunk. I wasn’t any good whatsoever. But I was determined to become good, to erase the “tapes” in my head that said I couldn’t be. I took classes. I wrote a number of scripts. I won awards. But every time an agent rejected me, every time a fellow author would read my material and make a comment, I would crumble. Their words would splice through the scar tissue that had built up over the years--scar tissue knitted together with the words: You stink, you can’t do it, you might as well give up.

Luckily, I joined a Sisters in Crime Internet group called the Guppies. I had left Los Angeles (for my husband’s career) and I didn’t know where to turn locally for a writing group, but I wanted to write. I needed to write. I’d started writing my first mystery. It stunk. (I didn’t need my seventh grade English teacher to tell me.) I needed to learn about story arc, and developing character. I needed a critique group, and to learn everything I could about the business. I needed to learn how to handle rejection and how to persevere. (You’ve probably heard the phrase, “This is a hard business.” It is.) The group got me through the dark times, through the criticism, through the rejection. They still do.

I’m paid to write now (yeah!), but I will continue to get criticism. From my agent, from my editor, from those lovely reviewers (professional and non) who will that I stink and I should give up.

But I will persevere, because writing is what I love to do. Need to do. It is a journey. How I handle the criticism will tell eons about who I am.

Believe you can.
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HANK: GO Guppies! And such a good segue for Avery to bring it up--because tomorrow we're featuring the Guppies--and the very clever and helpful way they--I mean we!--we handle crit groups. And how you can get in on the fun! (Wait til you see some of the manuscripts that are ready to go...amazing! And thanks for letting me snag the Guppy logo.)

But for now...what's the meanest thing anyone's ever said about your work? Did you have a teacher or professor who gave you nightmares? Or did you have one that changed your life in a good way?

(I keep remembering that review someone got on Amazon, I forget who. But the review said: "Your book was so bad, I wish I could unread it.")

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HANK: I found that snazzy photo of actress "Daryl Wood" on IMDb....hmm..doesn't she look..familiar?
Avery Aames is the author of The Long Quiche Goodbye, the first in A Cheese Shop Mystery series for Berkley Prime Crime. The Long Quiche Goodbye debuted July 6 and has already hit national bestseller mass market paperback lists -- #7 for Barnes and Noble and #13 for Bookscan. Avery likes to read, cook, garden, and do amateur photography.

She blogs at Mystery Lovers Kitchen, a blog for foodies who love mysteries, http://www.mysteryloverskitchen.com/

as well as at Killer Characters, a blog overtaken by cozy authors’ characters, http://www.killercharacters.com/

You can purchase The Long Quiche Goodbye at Avery’s bookseller page: http://www.averyaames.com/book1_sellers.html

And look for a sneak preview of Lost and Fondue, book two in the series, which may be found at the end of The Long Quiche Goodbye.