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So, there's a dirty little secret in indie publishing a lot of people won't tell you, and if you aren't aware of it, self-publishing feels even scarier than it actually is.

There's a subset of self-published indie authors who write a ludicrous number of books a year, we're talking double digit releases of full novels, and these folks make a lot of money telling you how you can do the same thing. A lot of them feature in breathless puff pieces about how "competitive" self-publishing is as an industry now.

A lot of these authors aren't being completely honest with you, though. They'll give you secrets for time management and plotting and outlining and marketing and what have you. But the way they're able to write, edit, and publish 10+ books a year, by and large, is that they're hiring ghostwriters.

They're using upwork or fiverr to find people to outline, draft, edit, and market their books. Most of them, presumably, do write some of their own stuff! But many "prolific" indie writers are absolutely using ghostwriters to speed up their process, get higher Amazon best-seller ratings, and, bluntly, make more money faster.

When you see some godawful puff piece floating around about how some indie writer is thinking about having to start using AI to "stay competitive in self-publishing", the part the journalist isn't telling you is that the 'indie writer' in question is planning to use AI instead of paying some guy on Upwork to do the drafting.

If you are writing your books the old fashioned way and are trying to build a readerbase who cares about your work, you don't need to use AI to 'stay competitive', because you're not competing with these people. You're playing an entirely different game.

#As someone who ghostwrites on Upwork #this is ABSOLUTELY true

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What i made instead of writing.....

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trying to finish writing something after the fleeting moment of inspiration has passed

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"Can't wait to see where you take this story" well I can't wait to see where this story takes me either

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IT’S NOT ‘PEEKED’ MY INTEREST

OR ‘PEAKED’

BUT PIQUED

‘PIQUED MY INTEREST’

THIS HAS BEEN A CAPSLOCK PSA

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Friendly reminder to not punish yourself for creating. 

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the most important question you can ask yourself when designing a magic system in fiction is "wouldn't it be fucked up if this happened"

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as annoying as the established writerly phenomenon of "I've been stuck on this awkward little transition scene for days and finally realized the story would be stronger if I just cut it" is, it doesn't hold a candle to "I've done the reflection and this awkward little transition scene I've been stuck on for days is actually load-bearing, which means that unfortunately I still need to write the damn thing."

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How to Tell If That Post of Advice Is AI Bullshit

Right, I wasn't going to write more on this, but every time I block an obvious AI-driven blog, five more clutter up the tags. So this is my current (April 2024) advice on how to spot AI posts passing themselves off as useful writing advice.

No Personality - Look up a long-running writing blog, you'll notice most people try to make their posts engaging and coming from a personal perspective. We do this because we're writers and, well, we want to convey a sense of ourselves to our readers. A lot of AI posts are straight-forward - no sense of an actual person writing them, no variation in tone or text.

No Examples - No attempts to show how pieces of advice would work in a story, or cite a work where you could see it in action. An AI post might tell you to describe a person by highlighting two or three features, and that's great, but it's hard to figure out how that works without an example.

Short, Unhelpful Definitions - A lot of what I've seen amount to two or three-sentence listicles. 'When you want to write foreshadowing, include a hint of what you want foreshadowed in an earlier chapter.' Cool beans, could've figured that out myself.

SEO/AI Prompt Language Included - I've seen way too many posts start with "this post is about..." or "now we will discuss..." or "in this post we will..." in every single blog. This language is meant to catch a search engine or is ChatGPT reframing the prompt question. It's not a natural way of writing a post for the average tumblr user.

Oddly Clinical Language - Right, I'm calling out that post that tried to give advice on writing gay characters that called us "homosexuals" the entire time. That's a generative machine trying to stay within certain parameters, not an actual person who knows that's not a word you'd use unless you were trying to be insulting or dunking on your own gay ass in the funniest way possible.

Too Perfect - Most generative AI does not make mistakes (this is how many a student gets caught trying to use it to cheat). You can find ways to make it sound more natural and have it make mistakes, but that takes time and effort, and neither of those are really a factor in these posts. They also tend to have really polished graphics and use the same format every time.

Maximized Tags (That Are Pointless) - Anyone who uses more than 10 one-word tags is a cop. Okay, fine, I'm joking, but there's a minimal amount of tags that are actually useful when promoting a post. More tags are not going to get a post noticed by the algorithm, there is no algorithm. Not everyone has to use their tags to make snarky comments, but if your tags look like a spambot, I'm gonna assume you're a spambot.

No Reblogs From The Rest of Writblr - I'm always finding new Writblr folks who have been around for awhile, but every real person I've seen reblogs posts from other people. We've all got other stuff to do, I'm writing this blog to help others and so are they, the whole point of tumblr is to pass along something you think is great.

While you'll probably see some variation in the future - as people get wise to obviously generated text, they'll try to make it look less generated - but overall, there's still going to be tells to when something is fake.

I don't have any real advice for what to do about this (other than block those blogs, which is what I do). Like most AI bullshit, I suspect most of these blogs are just another grift, attempting to build large follower counts to leverage or sell something to in the future. They may progress past these tattletale features, but I'm still going to block them when I see them. I don't see any value in writing advice compiled from the work of better writers who put the effort in when I can just go find those writers myself.

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thinking more about authorial insecurity in fiction... it truly is frustrating to me when an author is clearly ashamed of their own premises, or is preemptively responding to imagined criticism. this is where you get a lot of unfunny humor about how stupid genre conventions are and how Unrealistic fantastical/speculative elements are. like ultimately the reason that authors undercut and overexplain their own works is because they're insecure about audience reaction and want to get ahead of the haters by proclaiming that they're Not Cringe. this will not work because I, the ultimate hater, will eventually find them and make one million posts about how much I despise irony poisoning

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I regret to inform you that Discord's new Terms of Service includes an arbitration clause. You can find it here https://discord.com/terms/#16. This clause includes an opt-out, which I have transcribed here:

You can decline this agreement to arbitrate by emailing an opt-out notice to [email protected] within 30 days of April 15, 2024 or when you first register your Discord account, whichever is later; otherwise, you shall be bound to arbitrate disputes in accordance with the terms of these paragraphs. If you opt out of these arbitration provisions, Discord also will not be bound by them.

These clauses are underhanded ways that corporations seek to deprive you of your right to participate in class-action lawsuits and your right to a jury trial. (This does only apply to us users ,other people still spread the word though )

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I regret to inform you that Discord's new Terms of Service includes an arbitration clause. You can find it here https://discord.com/terms/#16. This clause includes an opt-out, which I have transcribed here:

You can decline this agreement to arbitrate by emailing an opt-out notice to [email protected] within 30 days of April 15, 2024 or when you first register your Discord account, whichever is later; otherwise, you shall be bound to arbitrate disputes in accordance with the terms of these paragraphs. If you opt out of these arbitration provisions, Discord also will not be bound by them.

These clauses are underhanded ways that corporations seek to deprive you of your right to participate in class-action lawsuits and your right to a jury trial. (This does only apply to us users ,other people still spread the word though )

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“everyone is going to hate it” someone will love it. someone will reach out to you and tell you it changed their life. someone will hold it close and treasure it forever in a way you can’t even understand. keep going

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