2021: What a Year of Chaotic Creation Taught Me

Not to be all, “What I did over summer break” here, but I feel like doing something radical like “taking a whole year off and just doing whatever the fuck I feel like while supporting myself solely with blogging and my backlist” is worth examining. Because first of all

It was terrifying. Anybody who’s switched careers or considered switching careers or took a gap year of any kind knows the terror of “what if.” Specifically: what if I’m fucking up my entire life when I could keep my head down and slog. And that was a valid concern for me. I was killing off a pen name and moving away from writing romance, but I was also trying to move into other areas like art and youtube videos and animation and even game design. If not for yous all, I would have been flat on my ass. Patreon support and private donations kept me afloat throughout 2021 and believe me, it wouldn’t have been a very creative year if I’d been plunged into sudden poverty. So, thank you all for that, because I’d forgotten that

I’ve done scary things in the past and I just forgot about it. 2022 is actually the tenth anniversary of my Fifty Shades of Grey recaps. It was absolutely terrifying to write those. I knew that a career in traditional publishing would never happen for me again when I started tearing into another, more successful (and, as it turns out, wildly vindictive) author’s work. I truly believed I would write those for an audience of eight or so people and then fade into obscurity and further poverty, a failure like I always knew I would be. But my entire life changed. I took that risk and it led to writing arguably my most successful series ever. How did I manage to forget that it all started with doing something scary, taking a leap of faith that was actually more of a l’appel du vide thing? Ten years ago, I was burned out and at the end of my rope, but somehow I’d forgotten that steering hard in a totally different direction was the way to go. Now,

There is so much more joy in creating. I’d reached a point where I wasn’t having fun anymore. I could still create stuff, I could still pay the bills, but I’d become monumentally dissatisfied with what I was devoting my time to. Now, I’m fully engaged and having fun, even with the stuff I started before I went off to find myself. I don’t want to give the impression that I dislike working on stuff to share with you all or that you’re all some kind of massive obligation I resent. There are just times that it becomes overwhelming and frustrating because it’s not going as quickly as I would like or I’m not able to work at the same pace 2012 Jenny was able to pull off. I never resented my awesome Trout Nation citizens, but I’ve resented myself for not cranking out the hits faster. This, in turn, fed into this awful self-loathing about how ungrateful and lazy I am, until the thought of making or doing anything was a nightmare. Now that the burnout is gone, the self-loathing and inward resentment cleared up enough to handle another really important block, which was my failure to realize that

If people want my work, they’ll buy it. This was a mind-blowing thought I had when I saw someone post one of those tired “I made a thing go buy it maybe”-style promotional tweets (which I have been guilty of in the past): why the fuck do people spend so much time apologizing for creating something and selling it? Like it’s some kind of imposition on our fellow humans who, and I cannot stress this enough, will not buy something they do not want. I had started to feel like I was inconveniencing people by releasing a book and promoting it, by having a Patreon and charging for blog posts on there, I just felt like everything I created was me actively making a nuisance of myself. I was like Oliver Twist, please sir, can you buy this? And then I thought about this one author back in the day whose Twitter feed was just every five minutes, buy my book, buy my book, 5 stars, buy my book. Even in the midst of a personal tragedy, she found time to tweet that it had happened, then responded to all the supportive replies with “it would make me feel better if you’d buy my book and leave a review.” I know in my heart, to its very depths, that I have never been that obnoxious about my self-promotion, and I also know for a fact that I never bought a book from that author because of how obnoxious and opportunistic she was. And guess what? That’s everybody’s choice on the whole planet. My fear that someone will buy my books, read my blog, join my Patreon, look at my videos, etc. because they feel somehow forced and then they will hate me forever is completely unfounded. I’m not scamming anyone for making stuff and offering it for sale. I also learned that

I don’t like writing books. I really, really don’t. You know what I do like to write? I like writing The Business Centaur’s Virgin Temp. I liked writing The Boss as a serial. I enjoy writing serials and I don’t enjoy sitting down, writing something in one big, long go, feeling lonely and invisible, putting it for sale, watching it make something of a blip for a few days, and then…that’s it. There’s really no sharing of the journey, no feeling that what I’m writing will even touch anybody’s eyeballs. I’m writing for an audience of one for a year, then I put it up for sale and…there it is. It’s just there. I’ve been cool with that in the past, during my traditional publishing career, because there wasn’t any other way. But after I wrote The Boss as a serial, I stayed dissatisfied for a lot of years, thinking more than once, “Gosh, I wish I could go back to what it was like writing The Boss.” I remember nights when I was so obsessed with getting that next chapter out, I’d be typing with one hand and cooking with the other. That was the energy that first drew me to writing through fanfic, and that’s the energy I need to get back to. On the fiction side, you’re going to see a pivot toward more serialized content that will later get published in book format for people who’d rather read it all in one go. But overall, my focus is going to be

BLOGGING.

I don’t know why I keep clinging to this idea that because I started out as a fiction writer, I must stay a fiction writer forever or die penniless in the streets. I don’t have to. Fiction is about to become a side job, a hobby/job, so I can focus on the writing that I realized I enjoy a lot more. That’s writing stuff here and sharing it with all of you and reading but never responding to your comments because I get easily overwhelmed. I like saying stuff and having people say stuff, often smarter stuff, back. I like feeling that I’m not just putting words into the void, the way I do with writing. What I learned is that to create, I need to have a community of like-minded people to share those ideas and projects with and I need to feel like I’m not working in a dark little office alone.

Thanks for bearing with me during a year of sparse blog content while I went out and:

• Started designing t-shirts and stuff
• Tried my hand at learning animation
• Spent some time figuring out Godot and whether or not I’d like to make a videogame
• Directed a production of Moana Jr. that broke records at its theater

Okay, quick break to be a proud director:

(This was my favorite scene of the show. These kids are, I believe, fourteen and seventeen and they made me cry every night.)

And of course, just time to figure out what I need to keep going in the “unprecedented times” we’re all so #blessed to be living in. I hope that everybody finds at least some little way to be an explorer this year, and may you all find your way through the burnout.