Fuck You and Your SAM

So… as some of you might have caught on, I’ve been doing a lot of writing lately.

I haven’t published a lot yet, but I have a few stories for Project Eryss lined up… if you remember, that’s the erotic superhero project I’ve been working on for a while. I’ve posted a few characters on DeviantArt and Bluesky, and my Patreons have for some time had access to the first draft of the first version of the first story in the series, Welcome to Paragon Bay, which is mostly an introduction to the main setting, Paragon Bay, and also a bit of an erotic lesbian horror story with mind control. I’m like 75% done with both the second and the third story in the series; they’re called Holly Blackthorne and the Silent Choir (a witch for hire and her boyfriend/assistant team up with a monkey-girl to rescue their kidnapped girlfriend), and Watch the Stone Shine (a deconstruction/parody of “normal guy finds a hypno-trinket and takes revenge on all the bitchy women in his life by hypnotizing them and making them sex slaves” stories).  

The entire thing is kind of like “Astro City meets Empowered meets Mind Control University“.  Or possibly a prose version of MetrobayComix, with slightly fewer sex scenes but more plot, more snark and a slightly more grounded tone.  And with tons of inspiration and ideas collected from other places… Holly Blackthorne’s entire backstory, for example, is a deconstructive parody of the Harry Potter series where the setup is similar but the outcome is very different (because fuck J.K Rowling!) I admit this isn’t quite a mainstream thing… and probably even a large part of the hypnofetish crowd might lose interest because in some of the stories the hypnofetish is really toned down or not even present. But this is really me trying to write the kind of story I would have liked to read. And I know from experience that when it comes to online fiction and tastes, I’m “not like the other girls”.

So I have no idea if anyone but me wants to read these stories. But I still write them because… well, partly because I have stories to tell, and drawing comics takes a long time so at the time being a bigger project is just more convenient as prose. Besides, I have managed to do this thing where I write a little bit on my phone every day on the bus… I spend roughly an hour, 4 days a week, taking collective transport, so I might as well use those hours a little productively.

Of course, it doesn’t mean that I manage to write a whole lot every day. Some days I don’t have the energy or the will. But most days, once I plant my butt on the bus seat and pull out my phone, I use Google Docs to write about superheroines and other people making snarky remarks or being hypnotized and naked. It HAS made the bus trips a lot less boring. 

Now, just because I’m primarily writing for myself doesn’t mean I don’t want to make sure it’s accessible to others. Storytelling has its own rules and its own ways of clarity, and my prose writing still leaves a bit to be desired. I can’t afford hiring an editor (and really, for these stories I think I would rather just not have an editor who judged me for the themes and the material… I’m kind of in a “all my work sucks” phase so I just want to avoid that right now!), so I’ve done a lot of online writing courses, watched videos on storytelling and writing… to the point where Youtube begins recommending tons of “writing advice” videos. Some with very clickbaity titles and thumbnails like “The SECRET to GOOD WRITING!” or “The 10 mistakes ALL NEW WRITERS DO!”. And I’ve started to take those types of videos with a huge grain of salt. 

One channel that Youtube has been pushing is Story Grid… which is essentially a channel that keeps releasing writing tips video that seem to be saying the same things over and over and over, but are really just there to plug the Story Grid website where you can sign up for writing courses. People have said good things about the Story Grid vids… but honestly? I find them long-winded, poorly-paced, preachy and condescending. And yet, I kept occasionally clicking on them just because, hey, writing advice.  And then I end up playing them at double speed and skipping large sections because it’s SO BORING AND GET TO THE FUCKING POINT ALREADY! 

(I may actually have ADHD.)

And then today, I found the video that made me FURIOUS. And honestly? I think I needed to be. 

Now, I didn’t expect MUCH from a title like “The Secret Framework Behind Every Great Story” — titles like that are almost always pure bunk and clickbait. REALLY. The secret behind EVERY great story EVER told. This is Joseph Campbell “Monomyth” nonsense right there.  But when the middle-aged, smug-as-all-fuck white dude appeared on screen he made an IMMEDIATE bad choice. He looked at me in what I think was supposed to be a conspiring smile, and said:

“Have you ever read a book where you just couldn’t put it down? Where the voice was so compelling it felt like someone was whispering the story directly into your ear?”

“No, not really,” I replied. “I always loved reading, but I never had a problem putting the book down, if only momentarily. And ‘whispering the story directly into your ear’?! Unless you’re talking about audiobooks, hat the hell is that supposed to even mean?” I realized that I was MEANT to say “yep” and nod along, accepting this was some Great and Universal Truth that Happens to All Readers, but it had never happened to me. What did that mean? I wasn’t a real reader? I wasn’t in the club?

“Yep,” he went on, ignoring my response like only a Youtube video who can’t actually tell if you’re responding or not can. “That’s not luck. The magic doesn’t just happen by accident.”

“What magic?” I asked, because I was starting to get annoyed. “Written books spontaneously turning into audiobooks?”

“It comes from a storytelling decision so fundamental, so baked into the DNA of storytelling, that most writers overlook it entirely!” he said triumphantly. “And I’m going to show you what it is and how to put it in your own writing in this video!”

“You know, I’m starting to doubt that,” I said. So I was already in a bad mood when the video continued, and then the middle-aged, smug-as-all-fuck white dude, after bragging about his experience and his much-praised published work, hit me with the BIG one.

“I got to ask you a question: Why are you writing a book? Why are you putting a book out into the world? Who is that book for? Are you writing for yourself or are you writing for somebody else? For the reader? Too many writers think they’re writing books just for themselves, and I’ll tell you what writing something for yourself is: That’s called a ‘journal’! Which is totally fine. I’m all for journaling, I do some journaling on my own, but that’s different than writing a book. If you’re going to write a book. it needs to be in service to somebody else: it needs to be in service to the reader. Why are you taking their time? Why are you asking them to read your book? Why are you asking to spend a few moments of  their precious life?”

And that was when I yelled “FUCK OFF!” at the video. Luckily I was alone in my apartment, so nobody else heard it… of course this included the  middle-aged, smug-as-all-fuck white dude, who went on as if he was dispensing Universal Truths and Great Wisdom about defining your audience (he said we had to invent a single audience member — SAM for short —  and tailor the work to this audience member) and how the point in writing HAD to be to make that audience see the world a different way. 

Needless to say, this was no longer writing advice. It wasn’t advice on how to improve your craft and how to make the language work for you so that the story could more effectively capture your voice and deliver the story you wanted to tell… not that it ever had been. It was an ultimatum. It was a message that “you have to do it my way, or it doesn’t count”. And THAT is total bull.

You know how many great books, movies, cartoons, and stories began with someone trying to tell the kind of story THEY THEMSELVES needed to hear? So many brilliant works were born not from tailoring content for a demographic, but from the wild, vulnerable urge to say:  “This matters to me. Maybe it’ll matter to someone else too.” Writing solely for a “target audience” is a marketing mindset dressed up as creative gospel. Sure, it might work for copywriting, or for mass-market commercial fiction designed to appeal to focus groups. But it doesn’t speak to the full spectrum of what storytelling IS or CAN BE.

Not every writer works like a strategist. Some of us write to DISCOVER what we’re saying. Some of us don’t know what the story is until we feel our way into it. And if we have to start planning out narrative devices and imagining a SAM or start inventing an author persona or what have you before we can even start writing? Really, that video’s the sort of vid I’d show to people if I wanted to make sure they never started writing at all.  Because I don’t want to think marketing before I start writing. I don’t want to put on a costume to tell a story. I don’t want to role-play some curated version of myself to make sure my voice is “relevant” to an imaginary reader. I sure as FUCK aren’t out to “change how they view the world.” 

That’s not storytelling. That’s branding. That’s marketing advice, not creative process.

Look, I know some people really do thrive on structure. I know this system helps a lot of writers. And if you’re one of them, I’m genuinely happy for you. But for ME, this advice is worse than useless. It tells me the way I work — the only way I CAN work — isn’t valid.  And I refuse to accept that.

I’m not a great writer, I’ll admit that. I’ll probably never hit any sort of bestseller list. But I write because I have a story to tell. Because nobody else is telling the stories I want to read. So if I want to read them at all, I have to write them. If that makes me a “journaler” in your eyes — fine. You can keep your SAM. I’ll keep my story. And it’ll be MY story and not anyone else’s.