In working on a new story, I realized I was getting into some heavier topics and that the book would need a content warning. For those who might be wondering, the story is set in my Musimagium world and contains unicorns, so it’s very much on brand for me. But, it’s a bit deeper, a bit more dramatic than what I’ve been writing.
I realized something. I’m done writing shallow.
Maybe it’s because I read an author-focused newsletter where someone was moving into a new genre and they were reading all the subgenres, and all the tropes, and it sounded as if that person had absolutely no knowledge of the genre before they started to write it. And I wondered…why? I mean this business is difficult enough, and in this age of enshittification and AI, it is getting more difficult by the day. Why write something that you’re not familiar with, that you don’t love, unless you’re just widget-izing books. I admit, the newsletter, which was marketed to indie authors, really made me wonder if we had learned anything since the advent of the Kindle. Nope. Not really.
One of the biggest shifts I’ve made in my writing is that I write for me, what I want, and I’ve made writing my “happy place” and can tell when my mental health is suffering more than usual because the word count drops off and the well is dry. It’s why I focus so much on my creative nervous system and the ways in which I weave my writing into my core values, my spiritual work as an eco-spiritualist and soon-to-be veterinary chaplain, who focuses on the relationships we have with our animal companions and the wider, natural world. And, as someone with AuDHD, I’m done masking which means not smoothing off the rough edges. (Hence, this blog.)
That means for me, I’m going to write deeply in my world, diving into the stories I want to tell in the ways I want to tell them and to not shy away from things that need saying. Oh, and before I publish this story I’ll need to figure out how to do the content warning so I don’t give away spoilers.
