We were lucky to catch up with Alexandra Oberempt recently and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, Alexandra thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. What do you think it takes to be successful?
The perfect advice for being successful does not exist. As much as I rearrange language and formulate witty or thought-provoking phrases, I will never be able to put into words the secret to being successful. I could pull a Zuzu’s petals and say success is not material, rather it is in the things around us like family, friends, and happiness. I could say it is a mindset, that success is how one perceives their own accomplishments, that we are successful only when we allow ourselves to believe we have been successful. Success, as it is defined for us in the dictionary, is an accomplishment. Each of these definitions is valid. Yet, achieving “success” escapes us. Between graduate school, teaching classes, maintaining a social life, and finding time to write, draw, watch movies, and generally entertain my hobbies, some days it’s hard to see any sort of success. What has worked for me, especially in those moments where it feels like nothing has been achieved, I make lists. I write down—it’s very important to me that it’s a handwritten list—every little thing I have to do that day or that week and, albeit slowly sometimes, check them off as I go. It’s a helpful reminder of the things I have accomplished and it helps me stay motivated because there is satisfaction in crossing something off a list. Eventually, things get done. Eventually, you’re looking at a completed manuscript, a finished painting, a clean house, a doctorate…whatever it is. Eventually, success finds us.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
“I cannot let well enough alone. I get restless. I have to be doing different things. I am a very impatient person and headstrong. If I’ve made up my mind to do something, I can’t be persuaded out of it…” -Vivien Leigh
Vivien Leigh’s assessment of herself is a description I have come to adopt for myself. I have always been fascinated by what I have not done and what I can accomplish. This obsession has led to many career paths, hobbies, and passions that now define who I am. From film-making, to writing, to painting, to digital art and photography, to woodworking and sculpting, once I get an idea in my head, I will obsess over it until I have a product. However, there is a pattern to my madness. Growing up in a city full of magic, history, and tragedy, I fell in love with the darker sides of love and the human condition. My stories, poems, and artwork tend to involve Gothic themes, romance, and Southern magic (with a little touch of science-fiction). Born in South Carolina and raised in Charleston, I am a prideful city-southerner. I graduated cumlaude from the prettiest school in the USA, the College of Charleston, earning my Bachelor of Arts in English with a concentration in creative writing and literature. My master’s is from the University of South Carolina where I wrote my thesis, “Restoring Paradise through Providence: the Emergence of the Serendipitous Hero in The Hunger Games,” about the hero archetype in dystopian literature, specifically Katniss Everdeen. I am currently still attending USC while I work toward a Ph.D.
I wasn’t always seeking a Ph.D. In fact, I applied for college on the assumption I would become a dentist. Destiny called and somehow, it seems in the blink of an eye, I’m doing this interview on my couch, in Columbia after registering for classes for a degree I never expected…I guess one way or another I was going to be a doctor.
My preferred field of study is Young Adult dystopian fiction and heroism, themes that inspire most of my work. The other half of my passions lie with Romantic and Victorian monsters, romance, and melancholia. I like to think my best works are the ones that combine the two. While I am not yet published, my in-the-works novel series does just this, merging the tropes of dystopian worlds and the chosen hero with the mythological monsters and the pensive storytelling of the Gothic. Many of my short stories, too, consider the genres of Gothic and Science Fiction, while my poetry tends to center around my life in the South.
My biggest passion is writing novels. Currently, I am in the midst of an epic dystopian trilogy—the details of which can be found on my website (if any literary agents are reading this)—and a Southern-Gothic middle-grade fiction novel centered around lightning bugs. However, I am not just a writer. Much of my storytelling can be found in my art. Most of my work is digital, but I have been known to do traditional work. Traditional is where I started, originally painting pictures of my beagle, Maggie, which turned into selling pet portraits for a bit of extra money around the holidays, taking not one, but two AP art courses in High School, and placing in a competition for two of my pieces at the Coastal Carolina Fair.
Looking back on my life, picking up on the patterns that keep appearing, it seems it was always meant to go this way. Now, because I study literature for a living, I am totally and completely immersed in the thing that sparks my creative passion—stories. I have loved stories all my life, in any form, and am constantly attempting to tell my own, in any way.
I am a storyteller.
What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?
I love this question because often people assume the most rewarding thing about being an artist or creative is finishing a project: completing a collection of poems, having a studio of paintings, or finalizing a novel. These are all fun. It was especially exciting when I completed the first draft of my manuscript. However, for me, it’s not about the finished work, it’s in the process. In my writing, I am most excited for the journey that comes before and after writing “the end.” I love knowing a story is never quite finished, that by adding detail to a baseline concept, I am creating worlds, giving life to characters, and making fiction seem real. Through the process of building a story, I am unraveling my own ideas about life, religion, the universe, science, mythos, and destiny. It has become a way for me to find myself. My artwork is an outlet for me to connect with the stories I love. Portraiture, character design, and fan art (mostly found on my Instagram) put realism both into my writing and into the worlds that have inspired me. It brings a visual element to the process of storytelling and I can imagine, especially with stories that have not yet had a theatrical adaptation, what those characters look like, their body language, and their personality. If you’ve ever played an omnipotent game like “The Sims,” you’ll understand the euphoria that comes with the process of creation. In my academics, researching theories, indulging in wild analysis, and attempting to find patterns between genres are what keep me interested in the work. I do not look forward to completing my dissertation, but to discovering all the pathways that will lead to its conclusion. I am anticipating finding details I missed in my favorite stories that allow me to process the human psyche as I develop why novels like “The Hunger Games” and “Twilight” became an intrinsic part of my generation’s culture. I am rewarded every day by being fully immersed in the stories I love whether they are from my own creation or another’s. Constantly, I am surrounded by the beautiful art form of storytelling.
Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?
A Renaissance Man is a person who has a wide interest and is an expert in various areas of life. Not only do I strive to be this type of person in my creative endeavors, I am also driven by the desire to unlock the secrets of the masters. The Renaissance, though now has become synonymous with beauty and genius, was an era where creatives and philosophers revitalized the greatness of antiquity. Until I am published and/or made credible by my own work, I will study how my inspirations have made a lasting impact on their audiences. I want to rouse the same emotions as Jean-Honoré Fragonard’s “The Swing,” Alfred Eisenstaedt’s “V-J Day in Times Square,” and Eugène Delacroix’s “Liberty Leading the People.” I want to emulate the melancholy of John Keats, the ennui of Percy Shelley, the romanticism of Wordsworth, and the epicness of “Beowulf” and Shakespeare. I want to mimic authors like Suzanne Collins, Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, Margaret Mitchell, Rick Riordan, Henry James, and Mary Shelley. I want to find patterns between “Pride and Prejudice” and “Twilight” and to understand how those romances transcend time. I want to study Kubrick and Spielberg, want to know how “Star Wars” became the ultimate retelling of Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey, how “Friends” won the heart of America in the ’90s and again in the 2010s, how James Cameron’s “Avatar” became the number one grossing film of all time and how “Titanic” did it first, how Pink Floyd’s “The Wall” became a staple of rock and roll. I could list thousands of paintings, novels, poems, movies, TV shows, and songs and still not break the surface of what by which I am inspired. My friends make fun of me almost every time I pick a movie because I say the same thing: “this is the best of all time,” but I’m never lying. Each is the best in its own right. My goal then, much like Romantics, is to invoke everlasting emotion, praise the beauty of the human condition, and defy oblivion by creating things that will affect the soul. To quote my own work, “To fear oblivion is human. To fear mortality is divine.” To create is a defiance against both.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://andyriverswriter.wixsite.com/andyrivers
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/_andyrivers/