grifters – Kara Jorgensen

I’m the first to admit that I do not have the answers when it comes to writing or being an author. Hell, I’m still shocked they let me teach students, but after ten plus years of being an indie author, publishing ten books and a bunch of short stories, I have learned a thing or two. It’s funny because I posted a similar blog a year or two ago, but after teaching my novel writing class this past semester, I realized there are a few things I really think new authors should know.

You have to be your biggest fan. I often see writers who come from a fanfic background get down about the lack of validation and encouragement when they come nonfanfic writers because your stories go out when they’re finished rather than as they work on them. You are probably never going to get that same validation on your work unless you post the draft live on your blog or on Patreon, so my suggestion is to become your biggest cheerleader. You need to love what you’re working on and light your fire for your characters. That isn’t to say there aren’t going to be hard days where you are frustrated or hating the process. You just have to be excited to see these characters go on their journey more than anyone else. Write for yourself first and foremost to keep that excitement alive.
Take care of your body. My partner and I are both from artistic backgrounds, and the number one thing they always remind me of is to take care of my body. If you want to have a long and sustainable career as a writer, you need to take care of your hands and your back. Resist the urge to curl up like a shrimp while you type, make sure your wrists are in an ergonomic position to avoid carpel tunnel, stretch those fingies and wrists, and take breaks. I’ve been stressing this to my students lately because what you can do at 18 or 21 is infinitely harder at 34.
Avoid burnout. Something we all need to know the warning signs of and try to prevent is burnout. Burnout is basically when you run your brain into the ground by overtaxing it and not giving yourself enough rest. It can also be caused by compounded stress. Sometimes, it is unavoidable due to bad things intersecting all at once, but if you can help it, be on the look out for suddenly feeling run down, actively avoiding your work, everything suddenly being far harder than it normally is. This can be due to other health issues, but if this feels more mental than physical (or is mental and turning physical), it may be burnout. Radical rest is the best medicine. Your deadlines and readers can wait for you to take care of yourself. Being burnout for a long prolonged period can lead to permanent damage, so please rest when you feel it coming on.
Learn about taxes early. I know this is probably not as big of an issue outside the US, but please learn about how taxes work for independent creators in your state. I always thought taxes were very scary, but the IRS is not going to bust into your house like the Kool-Aid Man and arrest you. What you can figure out is what counts against your taxes (losses/things needed to create your products), how to do quarterly taxes (which will save your money in the long run if you make a decent amount per year), and what the threshold is for upgrading to an LLC or having a professional handle your taxes and advise you. I know it is stressful and varies from state to state, but figuring this stuff out took a lot off my plate. If you want to sell things on Etsy or from a storefront online, you should also figure out how to do sales tax and such as well.
Learn that authors are not your competition. They are your coworkers. No reader exclusively reads one author and no one else, so there is no reason to treat other authors like the enemy. I know that often this comes from a place of jealousy, but treat the people who are doing better than you are inspiration or case studies. See what they are doing in terms of marketing or interactions and try to apply that to your work. Don’t copy people; learn from them. Other authors are your community, and they are often the ones who step up to help out newer authors. Fine supportive people. It may take a bit, but also don’t be afraid to leave groups that are catty or mean spirited. They aren’t your friends, and you can do better.
Be true to yourself and your vision. This is sort of similar to point one, but it can be easy to get caught up in doing what everyone else is doing. Authors see people are making book boxes or Tiktoks or book trailers, and suddenly, you’re worried that these things are the key to success. No one thing is, and if doing Tiktoks isn’t something you want to do because you hate video, then don’t do it. It’s best to stay focused on what you want and how you want your writing life to look and focus on how to make that work rather than fling spaghetti and do everything while hoping something sticks. If you try to do everything, you will burn yourself out and get less done.
Remember that not everything you see online is real. People lie. Shocking, I know, but yes, people on the internet lie about their success or pull a Wizard of Oz to make their success look grander than it really is. There are a lot of people online who are grifters who just want to sell you their course or get you to listen to their money-making podcast, so they tell you what you want to hear. They have the secret to make a million dollars or how to make four figures a month. Someone can make a million dollars over fifteen years and call themselves a million dollar author, or they might make $50k in a month, but what they don’t say is that they spent $30k in ads. You might also see authors who claim to have personal assistants when, in reality, it’s a chatbot or them under a different Facebook or email account pretending to be someone else. Trust me that it is more common than you would think, especially from people who try to act like authorities online.
Don’t use AI. There are also a lot of people who will tell you AI can help you write faster or that it can help you with research. It can’t. AI is basically the mediocrity machine. It picks the most common dreck and smooshes it together on command, but it cannot think, it cannot create emotional depth, and it isn’t consistent. There are TONS of resources online that can teach you to become a better writer, but AI isn’t it. It isn’t a shortcut to success, but it is a shortcut to losing your career because most readers do not want to read AI written or aided stories, and yes, you can tell. From a creative writing teacher perspective, every bit of AI writing I have seen has been far worse quality than anything newbie writers in my classes have turned in. It’s soulless. If you can’t convince yourself to write and have to turn to AI in order to do it, you are in the wrong field and should leave to make room for those who do give a shit about craft and their readers.

I’ve been thinking about brands, online personalities, and sincerity a lot lately. Without harping on past posts, let’s summarize the reason for this rumination as recent-past online trauma (if you know, you know).

Something you hear a lot as a new author is figuring out your “brand.” What’s your author brand? Build your author brand in 5 easy steps! Build your brand!

What building your brand should be is targeting your product to your ideal reader. Note: I said product. Your book is a product; you are not a product. I do have an author brand. I call it being a romantic goremonger. I write books with some gory, highly descriptive gross bits (usually medical in nature or having to do with a cadaver) while balancing that with lots of emotional intimacy between the two main characters. My ideal reader also enjoys historicals and is probably queer (or enjoys queer books) since those are basically all that I write. If you like Anne Rice, KJ Charles, Jordan L. Hawk, Cat Sebastian, Allie Therin, and Arden Powell, you’ll probably like my books.

What I don’t like and have come to actively distrust is creatives who treat their social media as an extension of their brand. There’s a big difference between throwing your audience a bone by posting a smutty snippet or sharing some cool research from your latest project and treating everything you post like it’s a direct reflection on you. When the latter happens, often people start posting less about things they actually care about and more about things that will reflect well on them as a brand. It’s the same reason corporations only post rainbow stuff in June or Black history infographics in February. It’s not that they care about any of these groups or want to foster equity of any sort. It’s that if they don’t, it’ll reflect poorly on their public image.

Years ago, I saw this mostly when authors completely refused to post anything “political” on their pages by abstaining from every mentioning a problem a person of color might face or that LGBT people exist. This was mostly due to the fear that people wouldn’t want to buy from them due to their lack of a stance (or conservative stance) on an issue. Unfortunately, we’re also starting to see it happen in the other direction where people make token posts about Palestine or trans rights because they feel they have to, not because they actually give a shit about either group. The idea is once again a preservation of their audience rather than a sincere post about something they care about. I’m totally fine with someone saying, “Hey, I’m not going to post about X because I don’t know enough about it.” I’d rather someone step back and educate themselves than make a knee-jerk post because they feel they have to. You should be supporting people of color, queer people, disabled people, etc. because you want to, not because you feel social pressure to do so. The social pressure on social media can absolutely drive this sort of insincerity, and I hate it immensely. The worst part is how many people seem very happy to tick off the boxes that make someone acceptable before supporting them when in reality it’s all for show and they don’t actually care.

Kara, how do you tell if someone cares? Well, at a glance, you really can’t.

This is the internet where everything is online for all to see, yet nothing is truly real. I think the only way you can truly judge is by looking at patterns of behavior. Do they continue support after X month is over? Do they seem to genuinely care about this topic/group? Do they retweet people who aren’t themselves posting about X thing? At the same time, some people only use their social media accounts for updates about their own stuff, so you have to take that into consideration. At a time where many people want a black and white litmus test for goodness or good rep, I’m here to remind you that nothing is that straightforward.

Going off of this, I will say the one rule of thumb that hasn’t proven me wrong yet is anyone who gets online and touts themself as an authority on anything is probably full of shit. Anyone who acts like they are the most queer, the most trans, the most Latinx, the most whatever because it makes them an absolute, unquestionable authority is probably pulling a Wizard of Oz act and hoping you can’t look behind the curtain to see who they really are. Authority should always be questioned, no matter if it’s in the community or outside of it. I feel like most people who know anything about something know that there is still a lot left to learn, and they are open to criticism or open to new information or outside perspectives. If someone’s online brand is that they are trying to cultivate a following that looks only to them or sees them as the ultimate authority on a marginalization or topic (like publishing), I would be very cautious as those people are usually grifters.

Has the idea of an author brand gone too far? I do kind of think so. The problem truly begins once a person gets a large enough following online. It seems around 3k-5k followers on most platforms is enough for fans/followers to start treating them less as a person and more of some random avatar that they can say whatever they want to as if they don’t have feelings. It’s weird, but I’ve seen it many times where people will suddenly say things to a person with a larger account that they would never say to someone they’re friends with who has 500 followers. The size of the account means the intimacy disappears and with it the humanity of the person holding the account. When we do that, we reduce a real person to only their posts, which makes it easier for grifters to turn themselves into an authority or “brand” that posts only to appease rather than sharing things they actually care about. Ultimately, it’s a problem that lies with the fans/followers as much as the creators. People don’t magically attain a different status when they reach a certain number of followers, and they are never going to appease everyone. Expecting them to do so will only lead to heartbreak, so keep your expectations in moderation and check yourself for parasocial relationships.

Tag: grifters

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