(but first, the backstory) :)

I decided I wanted to be a writer at age eleven, and started writing immediately. I didn’t have any ideas, though, and most of my early attempts petered out into writer’s block a few pages in. But I kept at it, and around the time I turned twelve I finally hit upon an idea that would become my first completed story, checking in at around 40,000 words.

I was immensely proud of my creation. Over the next few years I kept writing about the same characters, eventually completing nine separate novellas and leaving a number of them unfinished, totaling around half a million words. I thought they were brilliant. So did my sisters, who were the only ones to read them. I was convinced that I would shortly be published, become an internationally bestselling author, and be hailed as a literary genius.

I had never let my parents read them, because I wasn’t sure if they were going to like them or not, but my mother persisted. She pointed out that if I wanted to get better as a writer I needed to take criticism. So finally, with many misgivings, I printed out a copy of my first book and gave it to her to critique.

When I got it back, it was covered with red ink (yes…she used red). Starting by saying she liked the story and thought it had a lot of potential, my darling mother proceeded to go through and rip virtually every single aspect of the story to shreds, pointing out dozens of scenes that were implausible, poorly written, lacking characterization, ignored the laws of physics, or were just plain stupid.

I was crushed. Then, I was angry. I immediately resolved to never let my mother read anything else that I’d written, ever, and threw the marked-up copy into the back of my closet.

But I couldn’t ignore it. Once it was in my head it was stuck there, and the more I thought about it the more I realized my mother was right. Almost everything she had said was valid. My story had some good ideas in it, it had several very interesting characters, and some pretty decent scenes. The vast, vast majority of it, though, was absolute trash.

To this day, I have to give credit to my mother for giving me the truth about the quality of that early writing. That splash of cold water made me stop, take a step back from my work and view it critically, to recognize my own flaws and actively work on correcting them. If she hadn’t done this, I’m guessing that nobody else would have. And I shudder to think of the ego that I would have today - not to mention the quality of my writing.

Because of that, I’m inclined to feel sorry for Gloria Tesch. She’s young, naïve, and lacks the mental capacity to step back from her own work and view it analytically. And, since it seems her parents do nothing but encourage her and feed her ego, I don’t see anything changing for her in the near future.

Years from now, when Tesch has matured, I’m sure she’ll look back at the Maradonia-saga and wish like hell her parents had criticized it. Because she’s obviously a motivated individual, and with some constructive criticism and encouragement from her parents, she could have blossomed into a quality writer, and in ten years, she won’t have to look back at her first ‘published’ works and feel shame wash over her.

It’s a bad situation, and it’s not all Gloria’s fault. And I really feel bad for her. That being said, she put her material forth into the public domain, and I, at least, am not going to pull any punches with it because she’s a kid.

And since I have recently managed to acquire the first two books in the series, I’m going to spork them. Without mercy.

Thank you, so very, very much for this. We haven’t had a Tesch spork for quite a while now. Tesch I find is a far worse writer then Smeyer and PaoPao, with her self proclaimed title of “World’s youngest novelist.” Everything about her just makes me sick. But yes, people need to seek out critique more, not just on writing, on everything they do in life, whether it’s drawing or engineering, etc. I figure, it’s better to tell someone the truth and help them then dress up fake lies and watch as they get worse and worse.

Aww, you’ve got a nice story. I never showed my parents anything. Somehow, I figured out for myself I write crap.

And yay to the Tesch spork! It should be amusing.

My parents doesn’t really qualify for constructive criticism because they still don’t really grasp the English language fully… their first language is Chinese.
Which is why I often go to my friends, the II people and my teachers rather than my parents.

And sporks! Yayayay! Looking forward to that.