Successful authors can be very triggering

Or how to avoid the green eyed monster if you're an up and coming writer

I’d like to refer to myself here as an UAC writer. Up And Coming. I might be a bit long in the tooth but I think I qualify. I could also perhaps say I was a FFW or Fucking Failed Writer, but in 2024 I’m heavily into re-framing. I like it as a word - re-frame. It implies that you take any shit scenario, and you look at it in a different way. So one way at looking at my writing career so far is that I haven’t generated enough money to support my entire family so I have failed. This is the kind of thought I would have on a Monday morning when I am firing up my laptop for another day at work. Another re-frame though is that I am on an upwards trajectory. The trajectory looks like this:

So there are moments when it looks like my career as a writer is actually going to take the fuck off, and there are moments when it is as stagnant as a pool of unattended urine in a toilet that has been closed to the public since Christmas.

Whatever… the truth is that in January we all need to re-frame like mad buggers. So instead of 24 hours of darkness and bitter cold we see ‘opportunities to watch TV in the evenings and remain in my pyjamas declining all social requests.’ And being back at work means ‘seeing colleagues and therefore remembering I am a human rather than just a flannel that wipes up children and mess and looks online for ultimate comfort shoes for thrills’.

In January there seems to be a glut of recommendations in newspapers and blogs and content sources about ‘up and coming authors’. They rarely seem to profile the ones that sank without a trace, or the ones that looked like they might make it to the big time and then fizzled out.

This weekend there was one such celebratory ‘authors to watch’ in the Observer and they were all YOUNG. I saw the cover and was immediately TRIGGERED (that’s another word I like because it’s just so true- the idea that one image can impact you so suddenly and shift your mood in one second). In that moment, I purposefully wished each author on the cover ill health. I also hoped that their books would flop, and end up in charity shops within 6 months. Then I took a deep breath and thought about envy, and how it’s supposed to be helpful because it’s bringing your attention to something you really want for yourself. So I did a quick skim of the article, and I wished them well. Then I tried to visualise myself on the cover in next years edition. Except it would be ‘10 WRITERS WHO ARE ‘GETTING ON A BIT,’ TO WATCH OUT FOR IN 2025’. I would be wearing a Vampire Wife’s dress (not the one that everyone wears which is green but a more edgy, unknown one that Susie Bick would have custom made). The interview would go something like this:

Interviewer: So you have finally created this book which has outsold every book known to woman and has just been picked up by Reese Witherspoon and Nicole Kidman to be turned into a hit TV series. How do you feel?

Anniki: I honestly can tell you that I have always read these lists and wished every writer well because the truth is it takes time and a lot of luck to have a successful book and let’s face it. This time it’s me! I AM A WINNER! I have actually made it and can finally tell everyone to fuck off.

Interviewer: You did write a slightly bitter Substack about wishing ill health on writers that were in these types of lists. Why do you think you did that back then?

Anniki: It was January. I was trying to do something called ‘re-framing’ and the thing is that my first instinct when I see lists of writers who are THIS YEAR’S ONES TO WATCH is to rip my eyes out of my skull and shut half of my face in the Toastie maker. I don’t appreciate the idea that there are only a finite number of writers that we have to be aware of. It’s not fair.

Interviewer: And yet you are taking part in this interview and this feature and you’re standing next to other up and coming writers so what’s that about?

Anniki: Yes well it’s problematic. But can we talk about Reese Witherspoon instead and how I am also starring in a new film with the guy out of Saltburn who is basically obsessed with my writing and has been messaging me for months now?

Interview wraps up soon after this…and Anniki goes to meeting with SALTBURN actor who proceeds to tell her that inspiration for his character in the film was based on seeing her once on an obscure podcast social media post etc.

The thing is that whether you are an UAC writer or a FFW one having successful people paraded in front of you - be it celebrities or people so young that they weren’t born when you wrote your first book…well it’s hard. I think the main thing to do is to acknowledge this. Next and this is what I am trying to do…is to re-frame. So I say to myself - okay they look like a giant show off, and like their parents are actually wealthy and paid all their bills off, so they could attend that swanky writing school BUT at least there are still writers who are making it! At least we are not all being consumed by AI robots who are writing hundreds of books and are like the Terminator marching through Waterstones’s, and eliminating the human writers, because they can absorb the DNA of a successful book and write it up in 40 seconds flat, and then draw up their own social media and marketing campaign. They can understand funnels and touch points, and so are not only better writers but they are better at making their books dominate the market! Let’s celebrate the fact there are still humans writing (not for long maybe).

Next use the envy, the insufferable, weep-inducing, envy to fuel your writing. So here I am writing this piece about how much pure, unadulterated jealousy I feel towards up and coming writers. I am now thinking that the feeling is so strong, that I can make an entire character out of this feeling. I am next thinking that the book I am working on right now needs to have some of this feeling injected into it. I am then trying to fight the instinct that tells me that there is no point writing another book because nobody is going to read it anyway (or by the time it comes out the Terminator writers will have arrived and I’ll be irrelevant).

The thing is and this is definitely true…there is not a finite amount of writerly success. Sure there are trust fund kids, wealthy wives, and celebrities who have a strong advantage when it comes to pursuing creativity. My point is that there is fuck all we can do about writers having unfair advantages apart from keep going. We can channel our anger and envy and frustration. We write. We try and remember that Rome was not built in a day. We also remember that news is made by new people and that young, fresh writers are part and parcel of that phenomenon too.

Besides I think one of the cover stars actually had a hairy mole on their chin and I rejoiced at that. It’s justice. No writer is perfect. Then I thought about how they’d probably go and have that expensive laser treatment, and how that was a good thing for them.

I wished them well.

In fact if you watch me I am moving in an upward trajectory into the universe because I am full to the brim with positive feelings and successful re-frames. There’s a crescent of stars flying out of my left foot as I fly past you at great speed, and you can hardly see me now, because you’re squinting into the sun, but if you look closer just for one moment now, you’ll see a woman, a tiny woman, disappearing behind the sun with stars all over her, like the most beautiful up and coming writer you’ve ever seen, a sour apple vape hanging out of her left pocket, and she is wishing all you up and coming writers the very fucking best for 2024.