Bad Authors Commit Genocide
Getting away from my penchant for socio-religious commentary, I would like to talk about the most insufferable group of individuals I have yet encountered on the internet: authors.
I’ve written about it before, but I don’t like talking to people, or interacting with them, or being in close proximity with them, despite being an Outgoing Introvert for most of my life. Unfortunately for me, much of the “Author Game” is a hustle; trying to meet new people, collaborating, and sharing your work. And the reality we live in these days complicates matters further: there is simply too much content on the internet to stand out. Gone are the times when your work could be published because you were the only person in your village that could read or you had a rich father that was disappointed in you. Now you just need to be the only friend left in your friend group who is in their late 30s, childless, and has unlimited free time to fuck around with their latest “Romantasy” genre novel. (It also helps to have $250,000 to hire a PR firm to strategically buy books from select markets, artificially inflate your sales, and help earn a spot on the New York Times Best Seller list.)
Far from being the self-hating (and self-published) author that I am, I mostly jest, but I occasionally grow tired of some of the forums / discord channels where I encounter writers that seem to be writing something that they don’t entirely believe in themselves. Having just come off finishing a project, I can tell you that there were many points where I almost gave up. What kept me going was the fundamental belief in my head that what I was making justified it’s own existence (in my mind, at least). I don’t mean this in a “believe in yourself” kind of way, where the adulation of a dozen cheerleader-friends in your life both fuels and propels you across the finish line, but in having an acute awareness that what you are making has a fundamental right to exist. If the ideal literary character feels like a person that’s distinctly separated from your own personality, with will and ambition, then a narrative, likewise, should also be it’s own microcosm, ecosystem, open world, etc. Running out of steam is not acceptable. The book transports a world inside of it, like a life-saving starship through space, and to give up is equivalent to committing genocide.
The mentality that your writing is a form of expression, that it’s all about creating vibes, was something I saw reflected a lot on Instagram. “Bookstagrammers,” one of which I longed to be (“when I was but a child”), made money by pretending to read shit, and then making memes about it. Sure, memes are fine, but creating an identity about which “MMC (ie. male main character) is a hopeless romantic,” is basically a single degree removed from a “react streamer”. Because authors are molded by what sells, we are constantly eyeballing the market for what trends and “discussions” are occurring in media, so that our work has an opportunity to interact with it. If X is popular and you are writing about X, then readers will be more interested in what you have to say. But, friends, that is not the point of a book. A book about an alien planet in the middle of the Milky Way galaxy gives zero fucks about our political deconstructions. So I say it again: authors are molded by what sells, in the hope that their own work will, likewise, also sell.
If we aren’t writing about what’s happening topically in the external world, what then is the most fundamental thing we can write about? Relationships! (Interpersonal, romantic, voyeuristic, destructive, antagonistic, etc.) Since the dawn of human civilization we have prayed with and fought for others. We have made love with our lovers, wept for our departed, and laughed at bad jokes. These are all fundamental human experiences that drive a narrative forward. It doesn’t matter what the setting or angle is, that’s what makes a good story.
I think video games do this very well, especially ones like The Last of Us and the Uncharted franchise. While there are set-piece animation sequences and genre specific objectives like other adjacent titles, the strong emphasis on emotional complexity engages you. The character feels less and less like a digital avatar and more like a character in a play that you are watching from the audience. The same goes for a good book with characters that aren’t tethered to their writers’ subconscious fears and desires.
Anyways… Rant over. Go out there an make me proud! Don’t let my passion dissuade you.
In other news, this weekend I need to buy an ISBN for Turing’s Miscellany. Did you know they cost $100 now, if you need POD (print on demand)? Once the ISBN is in hand I can get my book properly formatted and distributed, so stay tuned for more news.
