So, what have I been up to? Not writing. Programming.

I decided to talk about this because, for the first time in several years, I haven’t been writing (much). I’ve come to the conclusion that writing isn’t the career for me. Not because I’m bad at it (in my judgment) but because of reality. Namely, capitalism. Writing’s something I truly enjoy, but, as I wrote with the first draft of my first book, I was hoping it would provide me with what I needed to live and prosper. Unfortunately, it hasn’t. I only started to put things together too late, but I’m not cut out for all the things I have to do. It’s not that I’m going to give up on writing, but it’s not going to be my focus.

The biggest reason why is that I’m not willing to write to market, which is the number one requirement of a modern author. I have stories that I want to write and express, and I don’t like the idea of conforming to what readers want. I imagine you can understand the problem after reading that last sentence. It’s fundamentally a desire that’s incompatible with the reality we live in.

The other big problem is that I’m no good at marketing. I don’t think it’s a lack of capability (maybe it actually is, and the rest is an excuse) but because I don’t want to do. It isn’t at all what I’d like to be doing. Even if most of it doesn’t seem terribly complicated, my ideological objections are so great an obstacle I feel no joy at all when I do it (namely that I want to write, not market).

So what have I been doing for the last two weeks instead of writing more book reviews (I read a book I didn’t write a review for, by the way)? Well, besides editing and working on my stuff a little bit, I’ve been learning Python non-stop. Twenty years ago (it’s remarkable to say something like that and not be exaggerating), I learned some programming stuff. It was mostly Visual Basic (yeah, that was still a thing then), C++ and HTML. I wasn’t particularly good at it, and, as I did with most things in my youth, the moment I stopped understanding it easily, I dropped it. I also was the tech guy for the family, a role I sincerely despise(d).

Do I think this is the end of my creativity? No, I don’t think so. In fact, this is where it gets more relevant, I plan to try my hand at something like an ARG for the next book that comes out. I actually have an idea of what I could do, not that it will probably be much to write home about.

Anyway, I felt like talking about this and getting it off my chest. I have hardly had a moment to breathe the last two weeks, and I wanted to rant. I’m going to be doing more cramming for probably another month, but I hope by that point that I’m ready. I had grand plans of writing lots of short stories and stuff, but I’m not good enough at book writing and getting an audience to make a living off pursuing my passions. Nonetheless, I decided to write about what you can expect from me in the future:

Periodic updates about my writing/life. I will try to write a short story every month. Maybe a blog post or book review once every week or two. I’ll also try to have yearly or bi-yearly (twice a year because it could also mean once every two years) book releases. I actually have a few in the back log that I’ve been working on, but the new release strategy took me about a year to completely redo.

So now that I’ve written all that anyone could potentially be interested in, I’ll talk about why I came to this conclusion and started this journey back towards programming. I don’t want to talk about the personal life of too many people, but I’m not the only one to throw in the towel and go for programming. And this is before things really got started rolling this year.

Why programming and not writing? Well, the former is in demand. And the other, well, you’ve probably figured it out from my other blog posts. I’ve spent the last few years convinced about the evil of the big five and how they effectively formed a cartel on book standards. They do, but is there that much demand for reading? And of those who are reading, who wants something strange, uncomfortable and written with no regard to the reader? How many people are reading for entertainment (the despicable, outrageous act!)? Yeah, the big five serve that purpose, and they’ve got it down well. And so an author who wants to conform to that, who finds happiness there (and this is something I’m not condemning whatsoever; it would be short-sighted and ignorant of me to do so) can find some way into it.

Or… it would work fine if that’s how thing worked. But the system is built from the bottom to the top on exploitation. Like almost all creative pursuits that are put towards mass markets, the vast majority of authors (or song writers or script writers) are at the mercy of agents, publishing companies and arbitrary trends. I read innumerable stories of authors who almost clinch deals, and then the publishing company will not respond for months then just drop the person. That’s how business works, you can say. But is that right? Is it fine for writing to not be a way to live if you’re not interested in the status quo? Why, it’s unrealistic to expect it to work any other way, a straw man says. Yeah, without some sort of benevolent source of money/goodwill. What does that say about how much we value individuals? Yeah, writers are far from the tip of the spear. That’s the funny thing. I can seriously look at myself and say “This sucks, but there are worse things. I will not overshadow the much worse. I will do my best to fix or help those, and help myself by helping them.”

And that’s why I’m going to be writing less.