For the last six years, I’ve been a fiction ghostwriter, mostly the romance genre. It’s not that I haven’t written my own books and short stories before, they just haven’t gone further than my portfolio. By day, I’ve worked retail management. Life is pretty expensive here in the Great White North, so the retail gigs weren’t really a choice. I’ve finally applied for university and got accepted last fall, so my life in retail is for now, at an end. But that was only the beginning of a strange series of events that brought me here.

In the middle of November, I contracted a pretty severe case of tonsilitis from my retail job that hospitalized me. I couldn’t even get out of bed long enough to work on projects, nonetheless study the basics for school, or even go to work. I quit my retail job and ghostwriting altogether in mid December, needing a break after hitting that double grind for almost four years straight and having almost nothing to show for it near the end of it all.

I don’t really like to talk about myself—in actuality, I hide behind my characters and stories, simply because I don’t find myself interesting at all, but going within to look at where you are in life is a necessary evil sometimes.

My current project is a romantasy series, simply dubbed Roxanna’s story in the meantime. Enemies-to-lovers, travelling dimensions, the whole deal. It’s just fun (at least to me). As much fun as it has been to write for myself for once, it’s been a struggle to write since I’m not forced by looming deadlines and clients to publish or to even write at all, but the bills are starting to pile up as I near the end of my first semester. It’s strange to write solely for the self, especially after the last few years of post-covid struggle. I’d like to go back to ghostwriting at some point but I need to write for myself for once, to remind myself why I write at all.

It’s one of my most disorganized, messiest projects yet, but wanting to know what it will look like, what I will look like, on the other side keeps me motivated, keeps me at my keyboard when I’d rather be playing Animal Crossing or sleeping (in class, obviously. What else is Calculus for?)

It’s a scary but exciting journey, creating and learning things I’ve never attempted before. I don’t even know what I want out of life or for myself, but I exist. That is enough. I recommend everyone goes on this journey at some point. I sure as hell need to hit the textbooks and update my portfolio soon, though.

Some people have no social graces. If you’re a writer, especially fiction, you know the haughty, “So when are you getting a real job?” and shit-eating grins that follow, “Maybe one day you won’t have to work retail.” Shut up, Kimberly. You work retail too. Have you seen the prices of groceries right now? Damn straight most of us are working a multitude of jobs to keep ahead of uncertainty, no one is judging but you. Now as a university student, and out of retail for now, I’ve gotten a lot of laughs and those same wonderful folks adding the, “writing isn’t paying, is it? You gotta go back to school now?” line to the trash talk.

Bitch, maybe I write space opera in my spare time and don’t want my spaceships flying backwards off the runway. I’m studying physics for fun (yes, there are some decent career fields that come with a physics degree, but writing has always been my sole purpose in life. But adding trigonometry to my daily schedule alongside reading and drafting wasn’t easy).

But seriously. What is everyone’s problem with writers in general?

We live in some trying times of conflict, environmental disasters, and uncertainty in the workplace, especially the creative arts. Everything from AI ethics to market saturation threatens our livelihoods, and more often than not, we see writers who write part time outside their 9-5s and those who pour 12 hour days into their writing schedule yet still can’t keep their lights on. Trying times is understatement of the century.

So, what is the point of writing anymore?

Capitalism Has Killed Art

Seriously. The amount of people who write now with the thought of “how do I monetize this?” and not “this is fun!” is staggering to me. Just browse the r/writing subreddit for the amount of Redditors looking for shortcuts to success, often monetary, is depressing. Many writing articles from a quick Google search include caveats and warnings of things to do and not to do if you want to be published and make money, so forget mastering the craft for the sake of mastery. I’ll never fault anyone for wanting to pad their wallets out but writing is the worst way to go about it.

As great as social media sites like TikTok and YouTube have been in increasing book sales and reader-writer relationships, it’s given us an almost unrealistic representation of the writer lifestyle; the fancy standing desks, the aesthetic drinks, and laid-back, soft life many writers show off when they’re not even writing fulltime, but instead selling courses, subsidizing their lifestyle from a stellar day job, or relying on partners to subsidize them can’t be ignored.

I love those videos. They’re fun. I aspire to not have to put in long hours, eat store brand ketchup, and stay home in a designer home (the current apartment aesthetic is “minimalist blue collar boyfriend and ADHD university student.” Not exactly great content, so be glad I’m sparing you from that). There are many authors on TikTok and YouTube who do talk about the realities of said lifestyle: the ups, the downs, and the not-so-aesthetic long work hours, the years dedicated to fruitless labour, but once you fall into the wrong algorithm… oh, boy. It’s an uphill battle to pull yourself out of the self-depreciating, demotivated spiral of broke artiste and convince TikTok you like to be depressed by the current state of the industry.

Let me tell you my secret to survive it all: don’t sweat it.

So What?

Writing isn’t about the money. And if you don’t earn money, so what? And if you do earn money, so what? If you brag about it, the same people who trash talked you about your career choice will just say, “you got lucky,” or the classic, “anyone can write a book.” Their response is basically “so what?”

I don’t care enough to surround myself with people like that, so I don’t get the chance to rub contracts or drafts in their faces, I take that to people who do care about me and celebrate wins. My response back is, “so what? Also, I got French’s ketchup this week and it wasn’t student loans paying for it this time!”

It’s time to drop expectations.

What I think harms a lot of people before they even begin the journey of writing are their own expectations. Fears. The thought that they need to succeed and no chances whatsoever to fail. Who said? That’s rhetorical.

Whoever said you’re going to fail isn’t going to start themselves. Frankly, if your hobbies involve the deep emotional introspection, the creativity, the research, and discipline it takes to create write a story of any length, without any time to think about others’ past time, profitable or not, then you’re already leagues ahead of them. It’s easier said than done, both writing and changing your mindset, but it’s worth it.

I come from a low class background myself, where schools are so badly funded most kids I grew up with are barely literate now, many are knee deep in debts to simply survive, and addictions run rampant. I don’t have a trust fund or family able to assist in any regard (shout out to my dad for reading my Substack!). From here in the gutters, you’ll hear the old saying: writing isn’t profitable. I know it’s rampant everywhere, but when you’re already in a bad situation with limited options, it really hits.

But why does something need to be profitable to be worth doing, anyway? Life needs to be about more than survival, to want to survive. Frankly, the expectation that people need to write something to absolutely be read by a wide audience when the writer simply wants to create something for themselves and a close circle of people is not discussed enough. Sometimes writing is a chance to heal, a way to show others they can heal, too. No strings attached.

Define Your Own Success, Don’t Let Others Define It for You

Sure, we should aspire to create the best thing we can, but sometimes the best thing we create is simply art. It isn’t a product. To me, those are the best kinds of stories. The kinds with a soul, to simply exist without the outside world tarnishing it. The stories without monetary value because they’re above commodification. Maybe that’s the reason fanfiction is so popular and has been for decades: it was made to share the love for things already made with love.

I have at least a half dozen books sitting on my hard drive. Maybe I should back up my laptop sometime before it dies and I lose them all. I don’t care. The ones I need to finish will be finished in their own time, and the ones I may lose can be rewritten better. Client books are of course, backed up. I’m not an ass to someone paying money ahead of time for a service. I might lose time on my personal production schedule, but there’s plenty of ways I can make up for it.

For now, I’m going to bed after this long motivational rant(?). I gotta get up in the morning to write better, to study harder, to fuel better, more emotionally fulfilling, stories I write for myself and those around me that love to argue that the best kind of ketchup are the packets stolen from fast food joints during midnight group writing sessions.