An Absurdly Long Essay Requiring Coffee and Cheese
As you write your novel, you are in this wonderful, cozy vacuum surrounded by Nicolas Cage pillows and cheap Walmart blankets that shed weird fuzzy shit but remind you of college toga parties when the world was your horny oyster. Then you brain-birth your meticulously pampered book baby into the callous cybervoid, and it is no longer just you reading. Publication autopsies your story meat for anyone’s and everyone’s critique—some welcome, some…requiring beer to digest.
Not gonna lie, I did not cope well at first. In fact, I coped horribly, spiraling into depression and panic at any hint of negativity. I wanted to rage-quit writing more times than I can count—because I’m clearly such a calm, collected, and stoic person without any penchant for chaos. My self-destructive tendencies flared with every mediocre and negative review until I had dug myself into a festering, pus-oozing pit of loathing and despair. I burned out again and again, freezing my ability to create, chaining my imagination, and sapping my enjoyment from writing, the one thing that has ever fully quieted my mind and told my mayhem-riddled brain to shut the hell up. It’s the only time I feel normal, if such a concept exists, like there isn’t a storm in my skull threatening with Vin Diesel’s voice to let loose the apocalypse whenever I fuck up. Without writing as therapy, as a cathartic and necessary release, I was lost, empty, wandering without direction or a wise Disney character to guide me. After almost three years since my debut attacked the internet, I finally made a change.
There’s a Gandhi quote that’s followed me through life, with many different people in many different situations parroting it back to me (often unsolicited): “You can’t change how people treat you or what they say about you. All you can do is change how you react to it.” Well, no offense to Gandhi, but for many years, I thought that was a load of shit. (Pause reading here while the sun smites me.) My reactions always seemed visceral and uncontrollable with my smorgasbord of mental illnesses and outcast personality—outcast as in the weird shadow creature living in an oddly glowing lair, not outcast as in the teen movie star who only needs to change their overalls and hat to be cool (no offense to overalls and hats).
For years, others’ opinions defined me, and I compromised myself based on negative feedback. I have been told that I have an obscene level of graphic violence and sex in my books (thank you), that I use too much profanity (fuck yes), that my mental health rep from my own experiences was wrong (fury intensifies), that the same book is too little and too much, that I have no plot, that one of my books should never have been written, and that I have a “ridiculous” number of queer characters—which only makes me want to be more ridiculous. There is far more unfavorable feedback, but to avoid diving into a carton of ice cream, I’ll stop there. Point is, I started writing what I thought my critics wanted to read. I always wish to grow as a writer, and I am certainly not perfect, but I couldn’t detach objective feedback from subjective, and my writing suffered. This summer, I wrote 50,000 words of what I thought other people wanted only to throw it all out and slam into my worst block ever.
So I made some changes akin to a two-thirds through the movie montage when the main dude cleans up the apartment, hikes a random mountain in a city with no mountains, smiles at strangers, and gets their shit together to win the job, the girl, the guy, the cheese platter. For me, it was about winning my sanity, and fucking dammit, Gandhi was right. I conditioned my reactions, trained myself to recognize the beginnings of spirals, and stopped myself before I plunged into sewage-soaked abysses. I focused on my current project and constantly reminded myself about what I lost when I lost writing, what I never wanted to lose again. With an exhaustive level of force and energy, I learned to push away negativity, even though I never thought I could let bad reviews go. Pessimism gets stuck in my brain and burrows into every thought, consuming me with a parasitic intent. I dwell on things for unhealthy lengths of time, and I’ve always done so. I had to practice replacing the parasitic thoughts with positivity—don’t worry, I am still the same rage demon I’ve always been, just in a character-destructive and not self-destructive sort of way.
It was not easy. It was not fun. It took months to rewire my masochistic brain into something less explosive. I was not ready to change till I was, and change is something that cannot be forced. This change will be different for everyone, depending on what affects you most. However, recently, I noticed that new negative reviews, despite the initial sting, have not capsized me into an ocean of misery. I am able to read them, grunt, tell the mirror a five-paragraph defense replete with block quotes and citations, then move on. What has helped me most is to always remember that writing is for me. It is how I survive, how I make sense of a nonsensical world, how I process this messy, crazy, wonderful thing we call life. Others write for different reasons, but for me, writing is selfish, necessary. So if my books aren’t for everyone—or for anyone, it sometimes seems lol—then I have to let that be.
My whole point with this girthy, veiny, swollen newsletter is that I hope you never compromise yourself, that you never lose your love of writing or whatever your passion may be. If you do lose your spark, may you find an inferno and let it burn. You will find your tribe. You will find your home. And there will always be haters (is that word still cool?), but we’ll write them into our stories and make them villain fodder. WRITE ON! RAGE ON! HARNESS THE STARS, AND GROW THOSE WINGS! Okay, calming down…
New Interviews
A million thanks to the wonderful A.J. Calvin for interviewing me in this “Guest Author Interview”!
Massive thanks to the incredible DJ Bowman-Smith, too, for interviewing me on the Words & Pictures Podcast!
Recent Reads
As the days get shorter and the nights get longer, I find myself ravenous for tree corpses. Here are some phenomenal forest carcasses I’ve read recently.
Singing Star-Crossed Scales by M.J. Falke
Bound by Kat Kinney
In My Dreams I Hold a Knife by Ashley Winstead
To Bleed a Crystal Bloom and To Snap a Silver Stem by Sarah A. Parker
The Darker Half: Volume 13 by Derek R. King and Julie Kusma
The Witch Collector by Charissa Weaks
Midwinter Magic and Mayhem, edited by Frances Evelyn, with contributing stories by Anna Tizard, Anya Pavelle, Ash Fitzsimmons, E. Menozzi, E.P. Stavs, Joan Wendland, T.M. Kohl, and Terry Kerr
Hopeless, Breathless by M.E. Aster
Podcasts/Channels to Stalk
The Writing Community Chat Show, Story of a Storyteller, The Tiny Bookcase, Boomers on Books, The Shadow’s Project, Steve Talks Books, What The Book, Human Chapters, Words & Pictures, Talk Wordy to Me
Aggressive Love & Happy Thanksgiving
It’s Thanksgiving this Thursday in the US, a time of gratitude and food comas. I am going to be corny for a moment (BRACE YOURSELVES) and say that I massively appreciate all of you elite newsletter subscribers—truly (that em dash was unnecessary, but damn, it felt good). The cybervoid would not be the same without you, and I value your support and email addresses. I hope this week is a good one, and if it’s a bad one, may an immortal wizard army appear on your doorstep to vanquish your enemies into an abyss where Teletubbies twerk to “Baby Shark” and there is never enough toilet paper. I apparently cannot be serious for longer than a minute.
Lots of love & chaos,
Halo