My 2024 Author “Wrapped”

Authors have been doing a cute trend on social media where they present their career highs and lows from 2024 in the same format as a Spotify Wrapped slideshow. The books they released, the signings they attended, the deals they got, the agents they signed with. It’s cute and inspirational, and everyone is having a great time. But I feel like my “Wrapped” moment of 2024 isn’t something that can be adequately conveyed in a social media post.

Most of my 2024 as a writer was spent in despair. I lost my author Facebook pages, which had an undeniable impact on my social media reach when it came to advertising my new releases and current projects. I started looking for a part-time job, because being a full-time writer was, after twenty years, no longer a viable option. I felt like a failure. I’ve written before about how I felt the first time my career tanked: My dream wasn’t meant to come true for me. It was meant to come true for someone else. Now, the universe has made things right, and what I deserve is to be no one, forever.

Those thoughts are so destructive and so insistent when I’m at my lowest, or at any small setback, and they started creeping back. I’d wasted my entire life chasing after something I should have never hoped for. The idea that I could be an author, a successful one, was ridiculous. I’d been chasing a pipe dream for twenty years that I could never get back. Every high was a fluke; every low was deserved.

At the same time, I was suffering from a feeling of, “If I stop, they’ve beaten me.” Who? Everyone who has ever wanted me to fail, who has ever predicted that I would fail, anyone who wanted me to leave the party. The seventh-grade teacher who wouldn’t allow me to pick my own topic for a “future careers” project, forcing me to write about working at McDonald’s because “that’s where you’re going to end up.” The one-time social media mutual who publicly lamented, “I wish everyone would just shun her already,” before I was aware that she’d unfollowed me. The former critique group friend who’d snidely predicted that my self-publishing efforts would fail. For so many years, all that kept me going was the belief that if I quit, if I went and did something else, I would be throwing away my chance to prove those people wrong.

Any time I spoke my mind about a book or told the truth about the industry, I worried in the back of my mind, “what if this hurts me later? What if I really am bitter or jealous?” And… I was bitter and jealous. Not because I envied other people’s success (the idea of kissing asses, going on press tours, or getting up early to be a morning show is a cold-sweat inducing nightmare), but because I envied that they seemed to be happy to write. Success, monetary or otherwise, didn’t figure into my calculations at all. I just hated, loathed, and despised seeing anyone genuinely excited about belonging to a world I was growing increasingly resentful of. I hated that other people weren’t as miserable behind the keyboard as I was.

I went out and got that part-time job. Instead of getting up and moping my way down to my office, sitting behind a keyboard and lamenting that there’s never enough time or brain to get everything done, that I’m too old to keep up with marketing trends, that every book I release is going to sell thirty copies before its Amazon sales rank slips to an eight-figure number, I get up and drive to the city. I park my car in the parking garage and walk down an alley strewn with dead pigeon parts (because peregrines are brutal creatures). I get a taco or a sushi roll on my lunch break, and I don’t have to worry about whether my latest promo post gets over ten views. Nobody gives a shit about my opinions or my ideas. There’s no pressure to say the right thing or find some magical formula for success. For a few hours a day, I don’t have to chase anything. I just package candy and occasionally ring up a customer at the register.

And that makes me happy.

It doesn’t fucking matter if I prove anyone wrong. I don’t have to prove anything to anyone. For two decades, my identity and self-worth were inseparable from being an author. I clung to being an author like I would cease to exist entirely if I didn’t get one more book out, if I didn’t make a big sale, if every dollar I earned didn’t come directly from what I put on the page. And it made me hate writing. After my first book, every single moment of writing was a thankless chore. Occasionally, I found elements of it that I truly loved. But putting words on the page out of spite still felt bad, even when the money was good. I spent most of my day, every day, ruminating about what I failure I am for never making the USA Today list again, for not “beating” the negative perception of me I’m irrationally certain that everyone who’s ever met me or interacted with my work shares.

I made being a writer my entire life. Now, I’m in the process of building a life where writing is something I do, like watching TV or brushing my teeth. I’m not a writer. I’m Jenny Trout, and I write. But I also direct and act in live theater. I also work for a chocolatier. I also really enjoy sleeping. And now, sometimes I enjoy writing. But it’s not who I am. I don’t have to keep doing it to prove to the world or detractors that I somehow deserve to be considered a person. I can walk away from writing at any time, never publish another book or blog post, never weigh in on another publishing scandal if I don’t feel like it. I can close all my social media accounts and disappear, and never feel a moment of regret, if that’s the way I want to go. If I need money, guess what? There are other part-time jobs I can add to the one I already have. I can work at a gas station and still be a worthy person. I can work at McDonald’s and not prove that shitty teacher right. Because ultimately, I should be doing what makes me happy. And if that’s me walking away, it’s nobody’s business but my own.

That knowledge is freeing, but it doesn’t exactly fit in a Canva graphic. It’s changed the way I feel about writing, though. I enjoy it again. I’m excited about the possibilities. Instead of facing an endless uphill climb and brutal backslides, I see a path forward to a refreshed career. Will I still say the things I want to say, even if they make me unpopular? Sure. But will I spend as much time ruminating on the overall lack of ethics and the injustices authors are expected to swallow behind a smile? No. Because I don’t need anything. I have nothing to prove. I’m doing it for the love that got me into it. And that makes me want to do it.

And it makes me want to make 2025 my best publishing year ever.