Why I quit writing

There’s been some stuff going around Twitter about me lately, so I figured everyone is owed a bit of the story. Damage control, if you will. Maybe it’ll backfire, I don’t know, and I don’t particularly care. But I want the truth out there, because the bits and pieces that are public paint a picture of someone I am not. So screw it…I’m going to shine a light on the cockroaches.

Though I’ve struggled with conflicting feedback, the most recent issues started in May 2022. Vortex’s launch was the worst of all my novels, and though I know deep down it was because I hadn’t marketed it much (first in series and all), I was disappointed. The reviews were fine, but no one seemed to know it existed, and if they did, it wasn’t their thing (again my fault for leaping from sci-fi to fantasy and then back to sci-fi again). I plodded on with the sequel, but the words of a single beta reader stuck in my brain…the story is creative, but your pose is problematic, and if you don’t let us get deep in the main character’s head, you’re going to lose the reader real quick.

It confused to me, because I’d always believed I write in close third person. We spend too much time your main character’s head, some readers have said. But that beta reader was confident, and that means something. The critique grated on me.

In late summer 2022, I posted in a marketing Facebook group, desperate for help. I was nearly certain Vortex’s lack of sales came from being a standalone/first in an unfinished series, but I wanted a second opinion. After all, my prose was problematic, wasn’t it? The group checked the Amazon listing and was unanimous that a sequel would help move things along, and I was about to continue work on Resonance when I received two private messages from editors. They’d read Vortex’s sample and found the writing tedious, boring, dense, and a whole lot of unflattering adjectives.

I was stunned. Here I was with 12+ completed novels, a voice I was so deep into that I couldn’t switch off without an editor literally rewriting it, a stable of beta readers who’d said nothing like this over the course of five years, and no way to rewrite Resonance into something that both matched Vortex and wasn’t tedious. Combined with the beta feedback that said I wasn’t getting deep enough into the main character’s head, I finally realized I was using too many words where they didn’t matter and not enough where they did.

And so, I stopped writing, feeling humiliated and betrayed by the people who’d said I was good enough to self-publish. The five-star reviews? Meaningless. The Realm Award for Treason’s Crown? An obvious mistake, especially when a third editor told me yes, your books need work.

I tried to ignore it all and decided the most professional thing to do about the entire situation would be to pretend to be a successful author. Fake it until you make it, right? They say it works. And so, in October, a full month after shelving Resonance, I was invited to participate in a launch party for another author, and against my better judgment, I agreed. Part of the celebration was a giveaway that included a print copy from each author. I’ve mentioned the outcome on Instagram…the winner didn’t want Vortex and specifically asked for it be sent to someone else. I was crushed. Still am. What kind of author is so terrible that readers feel it’s acceptable to decline their free book?

Even so, I realized how much I still loved Resonance, so I sent both a stripped-down version of chapter one along with the original to a dozen test readers to find out which they preferred. Desperation, I guess. I really wanted to make it work. All but one preferred the stripped-down version with half the word count of the original, and that single reader still wanted a bit cut.

Like before, I stared at the messages in utter shock as they rolled in. That terse, curt version of my prose wasn’t Josiah, it certainly didn’t match his voice in Vortex, and it meant that every book I’d written was too short once the fluff was deleted. Suddenly, all the complaints about flat characters in Shadows of War made sense. When your 95,000-word space opera is stripped of all extraneous words and becomes a 50,000-word novel, of course there’s a lot of plot and character development missing!

I tried to move on. I dithered in some other hobbies, spent too much on Legos, went on lots of weekend road trips, buried myself in work, left most of my writing Facebook groups, read popular YA fantasy to see what the big deal with the bestsellers was. But the critique grated on me. I had to figure out a way to fix my writing. I pecked at Resonance a bit more over the next several weeks, but I could never manage more than a hundred or so words.

Shortly after that experiment, I learned an acquaintance had written a flash piece “inspired by” the first chapter of Vortex…then had it published (traditionally, contrary to the wording in their public post below). I didn’t think much of the news at first, but it gnawed at me until I was able to get my hands on the story. I felt nauseated when I read about the main character trapped in a sci-fi cocoon-like tube that encased her body perfectly, unable to move, with the ceiling inches from her nose, just like Coralie. I feel sick even typing the words now. Worse than just using my work for inspiration, this writer had taken my very specific ideas and made them better, good enough to be published.

At that point, I was done. Since I hadn’t been able to move on from writing in the past, I threw away my books so they couldn’t stare at me from the bookshelf in my office every freaking day. I packed up the actual Realm Award and put it away. It was a calculated move and much less dramatic than it sounds, since the books are replaceable. Hello, I wrote them, people! I can buy a new copy on Amazon anytime I please! Besides, the Fairyloot hardcovers that replaced them are much prettier.

And wouldn’t you know, as soon as I made a joke about it, a former writing acquaintance showed up. I’d blocked her several years ago for following my editor around the internet and taking shots at her ability showed up. She told everyone I “was bipolar,” needed “checked on” and once again, she slammed my editor. For the record, her concern is not in good faith.

The same day, a troll who once managed to give Asrian Skies so many one-star reviews that its average was once a 1.7 replied to another tweet of mine telling me how poor my grasp of the English language is. I can’t bear to check my reviews, but I assume he’s been back to his old tricks–only instead of just one book for him to harm, I now have a dozen.

Since I know some will assume, no, I don’t believe I incurred this harassment by being honest about my writing struggles. In the first case, celebrating an award only seemed to exacerbate the issue. In the second, I was such a new writer when the attacks began that I hadn’t had time to become a cynic. I’d just released my debut! Life was fantastic!

Until it wasn’t.

So.

No, I don’t have bipolar depression. I’ve been trying to do the professional thing and pretend I’m an author, an act that falls apart every time someone else tells me – or worse, my readers – that my writing is terrible. No, you don’t need to check on me. Yes, I am devastated about how this whole writing thing ended, but who wouldn’t be sad over the things that have happened over the past nine months?

I wanted to title this blog post Why I’m Quitting Writing, but that’s not really what it ended up being about. Am I really quitting writing? Yes. No. I don’t know. For now, yes. On a completely rational level, it’s impossible to love stories that’ve had nothing but criticism, and I am here to tell you that even if you love a story, it’s an absolute slog to write a novel on the best of days.

This is not the best of days. Or years, really. The grief and betrayal is incredibly difficult to handle, especially for someone who comes from a world where if you meet standards, you succeed. If you don’t, you don’t. And it’s clear from reader reactions over the past year that I don’t meet even the most basic standards.

I just hope people get it a bit more now.