confessions of a failed author

some musings on the need for creative dissidence...

First off, that’s an unapologetically dramatic and click-baity title. If you’re here for some drama, I haven’t got any to offer. 🤓 .

Spoiler alert: I don’t actually consider myself a failed author, though many people would.

I’m not a failure because I’ve published five books. I did this entirely by myself (other than the cover design).

I’m also not a failure because I recently finished the first draft of another novel.

I have a multitude of evidence that tells me that I’ve succeeded at becoming an author.

Except perhaps the one that matters most to our modern culture: I don’t sell many books. In that way, I am a failure.

I am, however, a conscious failure - and I think that’s my greatest success of all.

Stick with me, it’ll all make sense in the end. I hope.

Earlier this year, I deactivated my paid subscriptions here on Substack. I canceled all future monthly payments and refunded the money of the two (heartwarmingly optimistic) folk who paid for a yearly subscription. I’d gone into it with an experimental mindset, telling myself I ought not to dismiss the idea without having at least tried it first.

Well, I tried it and it weighed like a stack of anvils on my soul. (dramatic again, but I’m a Four, it’s how we roll). Despite having offered no ‘extras’ and setting a clear expectation that this was to be considered patronage in the old-fashioned sense, I felt the weight of obligation very, very deeply.

There were a couple of reasons for this:

1. First, and most important - I have ideological/philosophical/ethical issues with Substack as an entity. They have some dubious practices of courting the most offensive and hateful personages and offering them large incentives to begin spewing forth their toxins from this platform. Apparently, extreme right-wing hate-mongers are delighted to pay to read someone expounding on the virtues of, and validating, their vitriol.

Additionally, I found out that Stripe (the company that processes payments) uses J.P. Morgan Chase as their bank. That bank is the world’s biggest investor in fossil fuels. It also was extremely quick to rollback their DEI policies¹ amid the absolute f*ckwittery of Agent Orange’s recent edicts. I feel better knowing that I’m not contributing to Substack’s (or Stripe’s) coffers, however minutely, at all.

I also cost them $12 by disconnecting my Stripe account. 😎

2. I struggle mightily with ANY kind of perceived ‘restriction’ on my creative process - even when it’s only imagined. I came to a natural pause in my desire to write for/publish here in December and it plagued me to have the subscriptions on an indefinite hold - particularly the year-long commitments.²

This second reason brings me to the root of my issue with all of this and why I have chosen to be a ‘failure’.

I believe that creativity and commerce are unhealthy bedfellows, especially when the relationship has become as toxic as the Age of the Algorithm has made it. Now, don’t misunderstand me - I will defend to my last breath, the rights of creative people to be adequately compensated for their work. However, under the current model, none of us ever will.

So I would rather GIVE my work away, than be a party to the capitalist co-opting of creative work.

Do not, for a moment, imagine that any of the corporate platforms - Amazon, Google, Meta and now, Substack, have even the tiniest bit of concern about fair compensation for the creatives who literally build and support their platforms.³ We are, as far at they’re concerned, content providers who will burn ourselves out to frazzled crisps scrabbling for the few coins tossed into the dirt at our feet. The algorithm rules us and has been yanking on our puppet strings for years.

Not only that, they try to sell us the dream;

“Oh, you too can live your creative dream! Look! It’s easier than ever to publish your book/grow your channel/sell your art/classes/writing - we’ll even let you do it for FREE!”

Except it isn’t free. Not by a long shot.

It’s been a few years now, since I accepted that I wasn’t going to be able to play the game; I wasn’t willing to spend hours of my life marketing and advertising my books; I wasn’t willing to put in kind of the effort it takes to make my work a (financial) success in today’s commercial landscape.

In part, it’s because my brain detaches from the things I create once they’re done - I kind of forget about them and move on and don’t really have any desire to look back or dwell on them. But mostly it’s because it became very clear to me, very quickly, that the rules are always going to be changing and the people in charge - which is to say billionaire technoligarchs - have no interest in taking care of the people who are taking care of them.

I have an overdeveloped sense of justice. Pair that with hyper-empathy (the two are probably related anyway) and I’m quick to see unfairness. I identify strongly with my working-class roots and am quite sure that, in a past life, I was probably involved in a peasant uprising. I have no time for exploitation and manipulation and that, unfortunately, is the foundation upon which our current digital architecture is built.

There are creatives on the internet who are one algorithmic tweak away from utter financial ruin and they spend most of their days running to stand still.

That is not a life I choose for myself. That isn’t a life I would wish on anyone.

Instead I choose ‘‘failure’.

I choose my creative freedom; I choose looking for other ways to support and be supported. I choose generosity and mutual benefit over profit and ‘growth’; I choose to toil in relative obscurity over relentless self-promotion.

The time for performative murmurings is over. I’m making a lot of changes in my day-to-day world right now, as I sift through incoming knowledge and weigh it all against my most deeply-held values.

What I do know is this: I will not allow my art/words to be used to support an unjust regime.

I don’t know if I’ll be continuing to write here on Substack - I’m still sitting with my options and their implications, though if I do go elsewhere, I will let you know.

For now, though, I have at least one more thing I want to write about…and in doing so, I may come to a decision.

so until then,

be kind to one another, and don’t let the bastards grind you down,

~m. xo

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ps. My books have all earned out now - more or less. They’ve paid for the cost of their covers - which is all I ask them to do. As such, and given the ongoing atrocities being visited upon innocent people in the U.S. (atrocities that are supported by the kowtowing of corporate powers) I am considering removing my books from the Amazon store. They’d still be available on Apple Books, Kobo etc. but Amazon and I will be parting ways before too long - I don’t sell many books, but any money in Bezos’s pocket is too much. There are other ways of getting both ebooks and print copies into people’s hands. Again, I’ll let you know.

1. So, apparently, did Paypal.

2. This is hard evidence of the capitalist brainwashing of transactional value alive and well in my brain.

3. Think about this for a moment - indie authors dominate Amazon as far as sales/revenue (I’m thinking Kindle Unlimited here). If everyone stopped making videos, what would happen to YouTube? What about Instagram and Facebook - if everyone stopped posting, why would advertisers pay them? And if no-one charged for their Substack letters…how long do you think it would remain a ‘free’ platform?