From Cyborg Love Stories to Sapphic Gore: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly of Writing

The first novel I ever attempted to write was a cyborg love story.

A scientist decided to craft her perfect mate and, somehow, ended up with a cyborg. The anti-cyborg government decided their love ruined their plan to dismantle all non-human entities and started hunting them.

Really, looking back, it’s not the worst plot I’ve ever come up with, but the writing and characters are best placed in a b-movie (are their c-movies? d-movies? that’s more accurate LOL). I remember that my scientist had gold eyes (no idea why) and the cyborg had one eye in the middle of their forehead (yeah, I clearly got cyborgs confused with cyclopes). Needless to say, it never got published :) In fact, I never showed anyone the story, and it sits on a floppy disc (yes, I’m that old) somewhere in the universe for which I have no idea exactly the coordinates.

Since then, I’ve studied writing, joined many different writing groups, and fulfilled a dream of going back to school and getting my MFA in Writing. I’ve published books, editing anthologies, and become a freelance fiction editor to work with authors and help them enhance their work and, of course, to help them understand the different between an AI creature and a giant from Geek mythology. Oh, and my work-in-progress is a sapphic horror with plenty of gore.

The journey has been wild, and here’s a summary of what I’ve learned about the writing community as well as myself:

The good: Writing is our lives, dreams, therapy, and purpose. It’s the reason we get up in the morning. Creating worlds, characters, and stories is something that runs through us even in those times of writer’s block. For me, it’s the only thing I’ve ever truly wanted to do, and I am thrilled, privileged, and humbled to be a storyteller like so many before and many after. The indie community is extremely supportive and helps boost each other up. Getting something published for the first time is elating, and even if a story never sees the pages of a publisher’s catalogue, sitting down and constructing a story from start to finish is a huge accomplishment that fuels creativity. It’s an incredible occupation!

The bad: We must be our own marketing team, or at least, most of us must be our own cheering squad. The lucky few will land big contracts from big publishers and have teams come up with strategies to sell books. For those who stay in the indie word, by choice or because of living in the slush piles, the responsibility for book selling rests completely on our shoulders. So, if you are an introvert, if you’re not great on TikTok or Instagram, if you don’t want to have an account of every new social platform that comes up, it really isn’t a choice. You have to step up and that can be extremely draining not only mentally but in terms of your time that could be spent writing.

The ugly: It’s no secret that writers get crushed under the sole of egotistical editors, receive a ton of negative reviews from disgruntle readers, and often have their souls squashed by the never ending wait for a publishers response (I submitted a manuscript back in 2014 and still haven’t heard back. Fingers crossed!). We’re expected to accept silence from submissions that go unacknowledged. We are pitted against fellow authors for a rare seat at the table. This is the side of writing and publishing we aren’t meant to speak out about.

So, why do we do it? Is the good worth the bad and the ugly? That’s a decision we all have to make for ourselves. There’s no shame in deciding to move forward in a career that brings more joy. Many of us consider quitting, myself included. There’s times with the bad and the ugly get the best of me, and I want nothing more than to restore my sanity and step away. That’s normal. For me, it’s the good that keeps me going. I remember why I started writing, decades ago, as a little kid buying her first diary with money she earned from cat sitting. Writing was an outlet. It was my joy, and even on the worst days, it still is.

Sometimes, that joy is clouded with disappointment, envy, or frustration, but it’s still there, and while I have to dig deep at times, once I pull it out, it keeps me going.

Happy writing :)