The Support of a Mentor

If you follow this blog regularly, it should be no surprise to you that I've had a hard life. I've been beaten, broken, abused and poor so how was I able to carry on? What ever made me think that I was capable of anything when the world was constantly telling me that I was worthless?

The support of a mentor is what gave me my strength and the belief I have in myself. Without someone taking the time to say, 'you can do this', I might never have tried. And that is why I owe everything I will ever have to Conrad Fink.

Every once and a while someone enters our life who supports us, encourages us, and wants too see us succeed because they believe we have what it takes. I met Conrad Fink during the fall of 2010 and the courage he showed me will last a lifetime.

You may be thinking, what could a Hispanic, college-aged girl from a rough neighborhood ever have in common with a white, 80-year-old former vice president of the Associated Press? Well nothing. I can honestly say that Conrad Fink and I probably had very little in common besides our love of writing and the thirst for democracy and social justice.

The first time I took a class with Conrad Fink, I was more than nervous. His classrooms are set up around a round-table, where everyone is expected to participate, and where everyone is vulnerable to his criticism, which hits like a nun with a ruler.

Rumor was that Conrad Fink was a grouchy old tyrant, who thought he knew everything about journalism and writing. There were some who even refused to take his classes because of the level of effort he expected from his students. Being the perfectionist that I am, I thought I was up for the challenge. And so my goal for the semester was to work hard and impress Conrad Fink.

Hours were spent, perfecting opinion pieces and coming up with ideas for future editorials.

"You've got good ideas, Villarreal." He said to me once after class. "I've been in this business for a long time, and I can tell you're different." He said. "You take the time to think about the world around you, something your other classmates don't do. Take that, and run with it." He told me and goddammit I did. That was one of the best moments of my life because a legend was telling me I had something special. I couldn't let him down.

When I went home that night, I was determined to write a new column that was going to blow him and the rest of the class away. I wrote about something controversial, but extremely timely. There was a young girl who'd been gang raped and the boys who allegedly committed the act had documented it with their cellphones and were putting up all over social media. This way my story. My chance to be heard. My chance to voice my concerns about sexual violence and social media. I showed the story to my editor and she wanted to run it the very next day. "Wait," I said. "Let me show it to Fink first."

Since the semester started, I'd made a habit of doing my homework on the floor outside Fink's office, waiting for him to be done teaching so I could badger him in to helping me with my writing. He never complained about me taking up all his office hours, in fact I think he was impressed that I wanted his opinion so often. He noticed everything. Even how I carried a notepad with me everywhere, something I'd been doing since fifth grade.

But when I showed Fink my story that day, after waiting for him for a few hours, he was furious.
"Did you watch the video?" he asked.

"No of course not," I replied. "It's child pornography. It's illegal."

"It doesn't matter," he shouted. "You don't write an article about a football game without having seen it. You don't do this Villarreal!"

"Fine," I shouted. "I'll take that part out, but it's going to run tomorrow."

Fink balled up the story and threw it. "No one should ever read this." he shouted. He accused me of not knowing the basic rules of reporting and he was right.

Conrad Fink (Associated Press)

"Okay," I said, picking up the story. "I won't let it run." I said trying not to cry. I grabbed my things and left, feeling awful for missing something so big and for letting Fink down.

When I got home that evening, I sent him an email, apologizing and attached a news article that had gotten attention a while back, hoping to gain his trust back. The next day he gave me a signed copy of one of his books, saying that he knew I was going to have a great career. He believed in me and it was because I didn't crack when things got tough, because I was still willing to try again even though I had failed the first time.

Fink knew that I wouldn't quit and for a long time after his death, I felt guilty. I wanted him to see me publish my first book, to prove that all his effort was not wasted, but he died before that could happen. For those of us who don't believe in the afterlife, I have to push everything that Fink taught me to others. That's how his legacy will live.

Love,
Kris

Handling Criticism

With the wide span of social media, it's easy for a new author to be eaten alive by the Facebook and Twitter masses. The reality is that even if your book doesn't become a bestseller, you will still have your fair share of critics. Everyone isn't going to like your book, and you need to be sure that you can handle reading those gut-wrenching, negative reviews.

Reviews are crucial. For most Americans, reviews of restaurants, books, and movies guide our lives.

If a book has too few stars, I won't read it. I'll typically thumb through the pages of the reviews to see why it was so poorly rated, but that's it. A few bad reviews on your book and it can be difficult to recover, and that's why it's important to prepare yourself for criticism and to learn how to handle it once your novel, which you love, is published.

It can be difficult to hear the opinions of others, and if being attacked on social media is new to you it can be earth-shattering. Luckily for me I have already experienced what it feels like to enrage thousands of strangers and can share with you what I'm sure you already know: it fucking sucks.

A few years ago when I was just catching my bearings as a writer, I wrote a column for my college newspaper on the implications of shopping at Wal-Mart. When I wrote the piece, I thought nothing of it, surely there were many people on my college campus who felt as I did, and those who didn't, I assumed would ignore the piece altogether.

But the demographics of my college skewed conservatively and the next day after the column ran, I got a call from my editor telling me that radio talk-show pundit Neal Boortz had read the article and was discussing it on his morning show.

At first, I panicked. I wasn't sure why of all the columns I'd written, this guy decided to pick up on this one, and I didn't realize just how popular of a radio host he was. Hate mail flooded in to the newspaper almost simultaneously. People that I didn't even know were talking about me, saying rude, judgmental things, and then to top it off this guy wrote a column about me.

I could have let this break me, shatter me to pieces and give up writing all together, but instead I used it as fuel to the fire. This guy thought I would never amount to anything, and I decided to prove him wrong.

With the release of my debut novel Logost, I'm reminded that there will be those who love the book, there will be those who feel they can't relate, and the there will be those few hateful people who never seem to like anything. Ignore those people, have faith in the product you created and don't let their opinions of it drive you crazy. Do you like your book? If the answer is 'yes' then that's all that really matters.

Love,
Kris