If there’s something I hate seeing online, it’s the glorification of hustle culture. For those of you who are not chronically online, hustle culture is the hyper capitalistic, you must be on 24/7, #girlboss, #productivity, work myself to death with a smile because I’m making more money than you attitude. As you can probably guess from my past screeds, I’m not a fan of capitalism for many reasons, but as an author/creator/artist, it’s particularly shitty to be expected to grind yourself to dust while supposedly doing what you love. Because if you aren’t, you’re apparently doing it wrong.

I believe artists should be able to make money from their art. I believe there should be social/governmental safety nets to allow us to do so as there are in other countries. I believe artists should be compensated fairly for their work and do it in a time frame that is aligns with their process and health. I feel like these are all very reasonable things to believe, but if you start looking at how people behave online, especially in certain online writing circles, you’ll see that is not the case.

Something I’ve noticed over the past five years of watching authortube (authors on YouTube), writertube (writers on YouTube), and writertok (writers on Tiktok) is the prevalence of hustle culture but in a way that is softer and almost more insidious because it is less obvious. I do want to preface this by saying that I see this more often with younger or less experienced writers than with people who have multiple books published, though I will touch upon some of those people later.

Beneath the aesthetic “A Day in the Life” or “Write With Me” videos is the looming threat of toxic productivity. No longer are authors writing in their pajamas gremlin style, they are out in the world writing and making content and recording B roll while doing it. The problem is that one must still write in order to have content to pump out into the world, and when your social media relies on you being a #writer, you must perform being a writer. The performance of writing is pretty clear in these videos, but the part that I find to be most toxic is the focus on large daily word counts.

Now, there are some people whose natural writing rhythm is 3k words a day or to fast draft. That’s totally fine. We all have our own pace. My problem is with the people who write for the sake of getting those large word counts, draft the same book ad nauseam, chasing their tail but never finishing anything. Or even worse, they beat themselves up over a no word or low word count day, even when the word count is perfectly normal for many writers. I’ve watched so many young or unpublished writers do this and burn themselves out. There are times when I’ve suspected a writer is burnt out and not writing, though they read off some giant word count while never talking about their project in any detail.

I’ve complained about Tiktok and the capitalist drive to produce content, but the mixing of word count and content does nothing to help writers. It gives completely unrealistic expectations to newbies, it’s fake in some cases, and in others, it drives people’s mental health into the ground when they try to maintain high levels of productivity for way too long. As much as the idea of NaNoWriMo started out as a good thing, I lay the blame for this trend at their feet. I think a lot of younger writer thought, If I can write 1666 words a day for a month, surely I can do more and for longer, without understanding that NaNo is not meant to set the pace for the entirety of their career or life. As with most things relating to hustle culture, it almost automatically excludes people without ideal circumstances, so people with lower energy levels, people with kids, with demanding jobs, etc. Those people can never be #AuthorGoals if they aren’t typing 3k a day while taking aesthetic B roll at a coffee shop.

My hope is that newer writers will understand that a lot of what they see online is not real or is heavily curated to make it look better than it truly is. There are ways to be productive and have goals without running yourself into the ground or creating a facade in order to live up to perceived expectations. The key is to focus less on content production or high daily word counts and more on what works best for you at this stage of your life. For some, it is fast drafting, but for many, a more moderate or slower approach is healthier. Don’t get caught up in what you think you should be doing because someone online tells you that you should or because you see someone successful doing it. You don’t know how much help they have or how many hours they have to work.

Going off this, be wary of people who consider themselves to be writing gurus or who churn out 10+ books a year. Many people whose sole job is writing can write 4-6 books a year, but if someone is publishing every month, be skeptical. Often, those people use ghost writers, people on Fiverr, or now, they rely on AI to do the heavy lifting with their books. They may also have assistants who run all their social media profiles or spouses who take care of all the day-to-day life stuff that you’re still doing. Don’t fall for the aesthetic hustle culture you see in online writing communities. Being a YouTube or Tiktok personality with never be a substitute for good writing or maintaining your sanity and health through good habits when it comes to a building long-term career.