It’s by no means exactly straightforward to be a author — skilled or in any other case. I imply, it’s straightforward within the sense of, hey, anyone can open a phrase processor and begin (fiercely or methodically) placing a narrative down on the web page, one mad phrase at a time. But it surely’s additionally fairly onerous: you must reckon with a tough trade, a scarcity of respect and recognition from the non-writers in your life, a schedule that absolutely isn’t conducive, a dearth of correct locations to truly sit down and make the phrases occur, and so forth. Writing all the time, all the time seems like an act that vacillates wildly between the Herculean and the Sisyphean — all the time tough, typically triumphant, typically you’re pancaked by the boulder you’ve been shoving up the hill for days, weeks, months, years.
However I additionally suppose that, oof, ooh boy, 2025 has actually hammered the nails in, hasn’t it? Hammered these fuckers in deep.
It’s like, okay —
First, the world sucks, and it’s onerous to push by way of the wall of pulsating snarge simply to seek out some clear runway by which to take off and get some clear skies for a pleasant writing day.
Second, every part is getting costlier, which regularly means doing extra non-writing work, which leaves treasured little time for the writing work.
Third, I dunno that guide gross sales are down, however the trade is definitely seeming more durable on some people this yr — perhaps that is simply what I’m seeing, however I do know a lot extra authors on this previous yr who’ve had actual difficulties with the trade (not the work, however the trade). Difficulties getting revealed, difficulties with advances, difficulties getting consideration above the noise. It doesn’t assist that movie and tv is in such a bizarre place, which makes it more durable to safe any further cash from the random guide possibility — and overseas rights gross sales appear down, too, for most folk I do know.
(And once more, that is all as prices are going up.)
Fourth, tendencies appear to be dominating extra — and this isn’t a knock in opposition to the writers or readers of these tendencies, however slightly a knock in opposition to publishers who actually, actually are leaning more durable than ever on mentioned tendencies. (All the time a fraught path. Each development is a bubble, and each bubble is match to burst.)
Fifth, the itchy demise rash of generative AI and LLMs continues to pop up in every single place, its digital blisters uglying up every part they contact. The worth of writing is below assault by the shitsucking techlords which might be cramming it into every part, and it’s additional below assault by the customers of AI, customers within the truest sense who gladly fetishize concepts whereas dismissing the work and energy essential to create nice issues.
In loads of methods, that is fairly demoralizing. It’s onerous to not really feel like that is overwhelming — even insurmountable.
However I wish to current and protect some optimism right here — and never as a result of I really feel obligated to tap-dance in order to not depart you feeling absolute pants-shittingly unhappy on the cusp of a brand new yr, however as a result of I truthfully possess this optimism, and it’s optimism partly that comes from what I wrote the opposite day (the open letter in opposition to the open letter in opposition to AI blah blah blah factor).
It goes a bit of one thing like this —
AI will not be clever. There isn’t any sentience there. There’s no there there. It presents no actual thoughts, no actual cognition, definitely no creativeness. And we all know this as a result of the best way it was and is constructed requires that the shitsucking techlords steal all our crap and feed it into the plagiaristic artbarf machine. Severely. It doesn’t give you something by itself. It solely has what it has taken. It presents nothing of its personal. It presents every part of ours. It’s a comic who can solely steal jokes. It has no humor, and no understanding of humor. It doensn’t perceive something. It doesn’t know something. As a result of, drum roll please, it’s not clever. It’s not human.
AI won’t ever be higher than you or me. It would by no means be higher than the sum whole of human artwork and existence. It may solely be behind, beneath, lesser. It would all the time be attempting to catch up, to pilfer and thieve, to rapidly gorge itself on the meals we make after which throw all of it again up once more as if it’s a culinary grasp. But it surely’s no grasp. It’s not even an apprentice. It’s only a actually fancy Xerox Machine — a haughty Lorum Ipsum generator.
It doesn’t have what you and I’ve.
We’re most compelled by — and affected by — authentic work. And I perceive right here that authentic is fraught as an thought. In loads of methods, nothing is ever authentic. All the things has, in its method, come earlier than. And therein you would possibly suppose, nicely, that’s how the AI will get us, innit? If nothing is authentic, it will probably simply scoop all of it up and reprocess it accordingly, and produce “new” issues advert infinitum. We’re cooked. However there is an element of originality within the issues we love and that issue is all the time, all the time, all the time the lens by way of which the factor is seen. And that lense is the storyteller. The storyteller or tellers who inform a story, whether or not we’re speaking guide or movie or track or music video or portray or no matter, is the distinctive issue. They’re the unique and essential half — a keystone that locks the entire thing collectively. Perspective issues. Expertise issues. The preparations we select or are obsessed by actually fucking matter. Put in a different way, we lend our creativeness — an creativeness cast within the fires of our experiences and our traumas and our opinions and our households and mates and and and — to the work, and that can not be reproduced. Not by AI. Not by different writers. Not by any drive within the recognized universe. To not get all writers are particular snowflakes on you, however perhaps we’re particular snowflakes. Perhaps we’re every a uniquely crystalline configuration.
And this isn’t nearly AI, both — that is about publishers who need tendencies, that is about filmmakers who wish to make movies. A number of the most wonderful issues are all the time the issues that set the tendencies, slightly than the issues that comply with them. And films this yr, it wasn’t the Repeated Franchise Work that basically sang. It was Sinners, it was Weapons, it was Sirat and One Battle After One other and Black Bag and the Baltimorons.
What I’m attempting to say is: we’re going to fucking win.
We, the folks — we, the people — are going to fucking win.
I wish to say it once more and also you say it with me:
WE ARE GOING TO FUCKING WIN.
We’re it, man. We’re the rationale for the season. All the things that has ever mattered (within the human world, not the pure world, to be clear) comes from folks. People and communities. Not from machines, not from firms, however from folks and communities who not solely have concepts however the wherewithal to pursue these concepts with effort, dedication, studying, and sheer teeth-gritting bloody-mindedness. I would like you to really feel that in your bones. I would like you to really feel the energy you possess as an individual on this world who tells tales. We’re going to what?
We’re going to win. How?
I would like you to inform these tales. Your tales. Those that matter most to you — not those that feed machines, not those that feed corporations, however the ones that feed you, and by proxy, the viewers past you.
In a way, most of my annual resolutions are in all probability some model of this: write who you’re, fuck tendencies, get bizarre, and particularly this yr, fuck the machine. However this yr I would like you to not solely implement that but additionally to do it with hope in your coronary heart and spite in your tooth. I would like you to be one of the best, weirdest model of your self you might be. Flip off all of your unhappy bummer imposter worries, shut down your doubts. Demolish the guardrails and kick over the street closed indicators. Get bizarre with it. Get YOU with it. I wish to see that on the web page. We all wish to see that on the web page. No AI can do what you do. No AI might be who you’re. No development wants to tell the work. You’re the development. You might be your personal style. Fuck all of it. None of that shit issues. It’s all one thing that another person made up. Rip that shit out of your coronary heart and your guts and your head and fingerpaint with the viscera on the web page. Put you there. Within the phrases. In between the phrases. Make decisions. Wield your self.
That’s how we win.
I’ll let you know, briefly, the factor that obtained me to this optimism — it wasn’t simply my publish the opposite day, but it surely was together with one thing else.
It was the information that Scott Hawkins is lastly writing a second novel.
(It’s known as Blacktail, and it’s out in fall 2026.)
I’m an acolyte of his first guide — The Library at Mount Char, which you need to undoubtedly learn in the event you haven’t, and you need to achieve this with minimal investigation. It’s an excellent bizarre fucking guide, in one of the simplest ways doable. I typically say that it vibes like if somebody took an city fantasy conceit and wrote it as the right horror that conceit actually is. The story is really its personal factor. I couldn’t have written that guide. You could possibly not have written that guide. And for rattling fucking positive the artbarf machine couldn’t have written that guide. Solely Scott Hawkins might have written it. And he did write it.
And that’s a particular magic.
He did write it.
How fucking wonderful is that? He wrote it. It exists. No one else might’ve carried out it however him. AND HE DID IT. We’ve it! We get to have this guide that he selected to jot down. And that’s true of so many books! So many books which might be the only real product of their authors not simply within the literal sense however within the deeper, metaphysical sense. No one out there’s writing a Hailey Piper or Eric LaRocca guide moreover Hailey Piper and Eric LaRocca. No one else might have written Paul Tremblay’s Cabin on the Finish of the World or CJ Leede’s Maeve Fly or Nat Cassidy’s Mary or Premee Mohamed’s Butcher within the Forest. No one out there’s Le Guin or King or Poppy Brite or Josh Malerman or Tananarive Due or Robin Hobb or John Scalzi or mates of mine like Kevin Hearne, Delilah Dawson, Adam Christopher. No different guide is The Starless Sea or Hap & Leonard or Brown Lady Dreaming or Annihilation or or or or or — like, I’ve to select a spot to cease right here as a result of I might do that for days. Days! Weeks! Limitless lists of books that might’ve solely been written by the writers who wrote them — writers who did write them and now we have them. We’ve these books. We’ve these books.
WE HAVE THESE BOOKS
That’s a miracle — however not a uncommon miracle. A miracle like a dawn, or a wierd cloud, or a bizarre chicken. A miracle that occurs typically, that perhaps we don’t recognize sufficient. It’s particular. Tales are particular. Storytellers are particular.
Machines aren’t particular.
Publishers aren’t particular.
Not one of the bullshit that drags us down is particular.
However the work — the work and what the work produces — is totally particular.
And we’re completely going to fucking win.
So, I simply need you to vibe that shit. I would like you to really feel good about that. I would like you to really feel highly effective on this regard. We’ve all these books and the perfect, absolutely the zenith, of what a machine can do with these books is steal them and photocopy them into some weaker, sadder model. It may by no means make something higher than the issues it takes. The machine is weak. The machine doesn’t have concepts. It doesn’t do work. It has our concepts, our work. Meaning one thing. It wouldn’t steal what we do if what we do wasn’t particular.
Meaning you get to go be particular.
Meaning you possibly can write the bizarre factor, the large factor, the factor solely you possibly can write. Meaning you get to make miracles. Meaning the AI can’t do what we do as a result of the AI doesn’t know what we do. The extra we reject tendencies and formulation and tropes, the extra the AI can’t pin us the fuck down. The extra we duck and transfer, feint and dodge, the extra the machine can’t monitor us. We cowl ourselves within the mud of our personal creation so the Predator can’t discover us.
So, contemplate that your decision.
Wield the weapon that’s you.
Get bizarre with it.
Make one thing the machine can solely steal and reproduce shittily.
(And above all else: don’t use the instrument of our enemy. No gen-AI, no LLMs. Not for nothing. Be human. Write for people. Human-authored, human-edited, human-designed, human-marketed work. Editors, narrators, designers, cowl artists, entrepreneurs. Individuals all the best way down. Don’t feed the machine.)
We’ve these books.
We’ve you.
We’re going to win.
All proper.
That’s it for me, I believe —
I wish to say because of all of you who come right here and who learn these things, and moreover, who’re variety sufficient to share it. Storytelling, I’m oft to notice, is a name within the darkness and we hope to listen to somebody, someplace, name again. And this weblog is that, too. It’s me on this darkish place, shouting, hoping somebody is there to listen to, and that somebody is there to shout again. Thanks for being there at the hours of darkness with me. In 2026, let’s shout at the hours of darkness collectively.
Or, put in a different way:
FREE YOUR SPIRIT YAMS
(Oh, and purchase my books or I perish within the abyss, please and thanks.)
(Additionally, final yr’s decision is right here in the event you care to learn it.)
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