Why I must keep showing up as a writer

And a tale that will make your blood boil if you want to be a published author

Photo by jules a. on Unsplash

Hello and welcome to Rosy’s Ramblings.

This week, I went back to my local Writing Group, having stopped going when I lost my motivation. My cosy crime novel was published, and then unpublished. One of the group members asked, “How can you be unpublished?” Good question.

The struggle has made me stronger

Basically, my traditional publisher cancelled my contract, which I wrote about here, and it was an incredibly difficult piece to write. I was in a pretty dark place at the time.

I cannot for the life of me understand why she did this. The book was doing really well and received some great reviews. Nonetheless, it happened, she broke my heart, and I moved on. Looking back, I am glad that we parted company. We were not well suited to working together and I can now see it as a positive, rather than a negative experience, although I feel badly bruised, not to mention incredibly let down.

I am going down the self-publishing route and my book will be available again very soon, after my publisher removed it from Waterstones, Foyles, W H Smith and Amazon. My experience of the traditional publishing world has been tainted and I will be very wary of any offers that come my way, although I think the chances of that happening now are pretty slim. Now I know how the publishing world works.

My happy place where I spend a lot of my time reading through what I’ve written

The biggest lesson I have learned from the whole experience is that I must keep on showing up. Even on my darkest days, when I was feeling incredibly low, I showed up. I sat at my desk and wrote. It wasn’t easy. If I’m honest, it was painful. But I knew that if I stopped, I might never start again. And that would have broken me. It wasn’t an option.

So I forced myself to sit at my desk. Editing Book 2 was my focus, even though the whole time I was thinking, ‘What’s the point?’ If nobody is going to read it, why am I putting myself through this? But I kept on going. Putting one foot in front of the other, much like a marathon runner, forcing myself to focus on my second book. Showing up, day in, day out. Every, single, day.

Gradually, and very slowly, I could feel the magic returning. That buzz you get when your writing takes shape, comes together and feels right. And I knew from that moment on, I had to keep writing. I wasn’t going to let a bad experience affect me so deeply ever again. I will keep on showing up as a writer as long as there is breath in my body.

During this process, I discovered that Substack was my anchor. I knew that I couldn’t let my subscribers down, many of whom have become my friends. If nothing else, I would show up for them. For you. I owe each and every one of you a debt of gratitude. Probably without even realising it, you all helped me through this incredibly difficult time. From here on, it’s onward and upwards. No more plummeting into the depths of despair.

Consistency is key. Showing up regularly on Substack, writing daily and producing work. That is what makes a writer great. And one day, I will be a great writer.

A tale that will make your blood boil if you want to be a published author

With all the hype about AI and why, as writers, we should be fiercely opposed to AI generated books, I understand the advantages and, let’s face it, AI has it’s uses. It is incredible when searching for something on Google, but that is just the beginning, as we all know. There are a million and one other uses, for which it has to be commended. However, to generate a novel and then a writer to pass it off as their own work is, in my opinion, despicable. But is that any worse than when a celebrity gets a ghost writer to write their book for them? The author will do all the hard work while the ‘celebrity’ will input some ideas, but it is the writer who has done all the creative work. So why shouldn’t they be credited on the front cover?

I heard recently that an author had been approached by their agent to ghost write a book for a celebrity, which could turn into a series, and the first thing they had to do was sign an NDA.

While I can completely understand this writer taking on this project, and hats off to them for tackling such a difficult task, it begs the question of, ‘What is the difference between a robot writing your book or another (lovely) human being?’ If that writer is not going to be credited with all their effort and skill in creating the work, why should the celebrity be allowed to pass it off as their own? To my mind, there is no difference whatsoever in asking AI to write a book and passing that off as your own work, and getting a ghost writer to write it for you.

My blood was boiling when I heard the author relaying the story and once again, I have no issue whatsoever with them taking on this work, which I hope will turn out to be very lucrative, because they deserve to be well paid for their work. What my gripe is why and how should the ‘celebrity’ be allowed to pass this work off as their own? I know, I know. This has been going on for years, but I had no idea that it was so blatant. It is lying and cheating on a grand scale.

Which just goes to prove what I, and millions of other authors around the world have known for some time, that it’s not always great writing that sells books. It’s the famous name and glamorous image on the front or back cover, purporting that this incredibly successful person has written a book. The fact that their name is allowed to be put on the front cover is an absolute travesty. Why should that be acceptable? I don’t think it should be allowed, just as an AI generated book should not be passed off as the work of somebody who purports to have produced it. A robot has gleaned that work from other writers’ work. Mined it from their copyrighted writing, which we all know about from the recent Meta storm which the Society of Authors strongly opposed on our behalf. It’s like taking an exam and Googling the answers on your phone and then filling in the exam paper and getting top marks! That wouldn’t be allowed so why should this?

In some respects, it almost makes me want to hang up my writing hat and focus on my other passion, golf. After all, if nobody is ever going to be able to read what I write, what is the point?

But writing is part of who I am and I need to write. So I will continue pushing forward and getting my work out there through self publishing and doing the best that I can. At least then, I will have complete control over what happens to my work. No lengthy contracts to negotiate, which seemingly aren’t worth the paper they are written on, and no never ending delays of up to six months at a time, waiting to hear back from a publisher or agent. That is half a year. A book can been written, edited and polished in that time. And besides, I’m not famous, so why would anyone want to buy my book? Oh, yeah, it’s a great story. Sadly, though, that’s not enough these days in the dog eat dog world of publishing.

I hope your publishing experiences have been better than mine. Do let me know in the comments if you have had a similar experience. Or whether you think ghost written books are acceptable. I’m sure somebody has an opposing opinion to mine.

In the meantime, have a great week. Keep healthy, keep happy and keep writing!

Take care,