I’ve been in the SCA officially since about 2013. It wasn’t until last year that I got my first good quality garb because some very kind friends bought me linen to make it. I now have some comfortable, good-looking clothing that fits me well. Tomorrow I am picking up a pavilion tent (medieval tent). I’ve only ever camped in modern tents. I recently purchased a trailer to store my gear in and to drive to events, and with it came a bunch of cookware and useful items.

What does this have to do with anything you’re interested in? I promise I’m getting there. This isn’t actually about my camping setup, though I am very excited about the new setup.

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I have been there. And a lot of folks just say the advice is just put your butt in the chair and write. And while that’s useful and good advice, it’s not the whole picture, and it’s more complicated than that because writers, despite the myth, actually do need help.

The Myth of the Solitary Writer

There is this image of a writer alone in a room, hunched over a typewriter, probably, and looking tormented and producing the most beautiful art imaginable. If your brain just conjured up Edgar Allan Poe, that’s exactly where my mind went, right? Where we’re just sitting alone. And this is a romantic idea.

It sounds awfully story-driven. It was kinda driven by the Romantic era in history, but it’s entirely inaccurate. And it was inaccurate then, and it’s inaccurate now ‘cause it doesn’t work in a healthy environment. That’s just not what we do in real terms. Humans are not, generally speaking, solo creatures.

We aren’t. We are creatures of community. And while writers tend to be introverts, and I like my alone time, I need my alone time, we don’t do everything without help. It isn’t healthy. But we can’t do everything on our own.

It’s not healthy. It’s not good for us, and it’s not sustainable. The idea, this image that we have of the solo artist, like people see that for artists too, like the idea of the artist alone in their studio painting, like the idea that suffering creates art and is the only way to true art. That’s a really common and prevalent notion, and it’s not something that is healthy.

It’s not good for us. It’s been harming people ever since it was invented in the 1800s and 1900s, like this romantic notion. It’s awful, and I really wanna turn it, on its head, because it’s not how we work, and I really wanna talk to you about how community factors into the writing process. There is no significant creative work in history that was created in a vacuum.

Editors, patrons, collaborators, we humans have always had other people as part of this. Our readers, correspondents, creatives have always had other people in our orbit helping us with these, whether it’s directly helping or indirectly helping, but they’re still with us in this journey. The infrastructure has always been there, and we frequently don’t talk about it.

We just create this idea in our heads that we are these lone wolf individuals doing things off in the wilderness by ourselves and coming up with magic. And I wish that was true, kinda, ‘cause if I didn’t have to rely on other people, life would be simpler and probably less expensive, but at the same time, I do need other people.

And treating that as anything but fact is not honesty.

How the Myth Harms Real Writers

So how does this affect writing culture specifically? Because this is a writing-focused podcast. While I do other things, I am a watercolor artist. I do maps. I am a musician. I sing, I play violin. I do all kinds of arts, but this is a writing podcast, so let’s talk about this specifically in the lens of writing, because that’s what you’re here for.

Writers often absorb this myth of the solo individual writing, tortured alone in their chambers, really early on because it’s how we’re portrayed in media a lot, and they... We get this into our heads, and we’ve never even written a draft, but we have this idea that we are in that space, and that is what we should be doing, should being a really bad word.

I will probably rant about that at some point, but not today. It shows up in a lot of different ways. It shows up in the way that people tend to be really territorial about their writing, thinking that other people are going to steal their baby and, get in the way of their genius, or that they are the only people capable of doing all of this, that they are the only ones qualified to edit their book, to make their cover, to do all these things themselves, because they have this idea that they’re siloed and alone.

And it’s wrong. It really is, particularly when you start getting down to things like editing and cover design, because those are not things that should be done solo in a vacuum. The idea that this real writer myth in our head works solo and knows what they’re doing and doesn’t need anybody’s input to tell them how to do anything, and that they just know, it does so much damage to real writers.

This fake creation hurts real writers. It’s probably hurting you if you’re thinking about it and feeling like it’s a you thing, right? ‘Cause we have this thing in our culture, it’s a kind of shame that people experience when we ask for help. So somebody asking for a beta reader or a coach or admitting that maybe they don’t know exactly how to fix their book because it’s broken and they can’t figure out why, there’s a shame that comes with that.

And that shame, it isn’t helpful, it isn’t necessary. It just feels like you’re admitting that you’re not good enough yet, and, real writers are supposed to know something that they don’t, and that they’re not real as a result because they don’t know the thing. That is, in fact, the myth.

That’s not the reality. The reality is that maybe you’re afraid of being seen as not good enough by somebody whose opinion matters to you. We’ve all been told, “Don’t quit your day job,” right? We hear that all the time, and we are consistently treated like our creative endeavors are not good enough.

We feel that, and the idea of asking for help and not being good enough, it really just eats away at your psyche. It chews holes in your brain, and it hurts. It’s a human experience, though. We experience that in a lot of different ways and spaces that aren’t just writing, but we experience it in writing, too.

It’s not evidence that you don’t deserve or need the help. It’s evidence that society has broken you to the idea that community is, in fact, a good thing. I can rant a lot about the way modern society has treated community and tried to make us isolate ourselves because there’s profit in that. Because there is profit.

When people feel isolated and lonely and stressed out, they spend more money. That is a scientific fact. I covered that in a Substack article a couple weeks ago, and it’s an, not just a writing problem, that’s an everything problem. that’s an everybody issue that we need to work on as a society. So if we’re gonna do this...

What Asking for Help Actually Looks Like

What could asking for help look like for you? Let me start by saying that every traditionally published book, every single traditionally published book has been through multiple rounds of editing. They’ve done developmental editing, possibly several rounds of line editing and copy editing and proofreading and all of that at minimum, and that’s not even to start talking about agent feedback before they get pitched to a traditional publisher.

Or, beta readers and sensitivity readers who might have looked at the book also. It takes an entire village for a lot of people, in the, particularly in the traditional space, it takes a village to publish a book. You don’t just do it by yourself. Self-published authors who are avoiding traditional publishing For valid reasons, I’m not here to judge anybody doing it.

I self-publish. But a lot of them who skip all of that infrastructure aren’t proving the myth of the lonely author who does everything themselves being superior. They’re hiring editors and other people, and if they aren’t hiring those folks, there are two potential avenues for this. One is they’re releasing a sub-par product that is not well-polished, and that’s an unfortunately common one.

The other one is that they might be an experienced enough author that they don’t need all of those layers and can actually do it themselves. I am one of those people. I’ve been an editor for 18 years. I have an editor look at my book mostly because there will be typos and things that I meant to say or intended to say differently and missed, and my editor catches those things.

And shout out to you, Mel, you’re fantastic. I appreciate you very much. That is one of the things that I hire out. I also have a cover designer, because while I am capable of designing a cover, she is going to do a better job than I could do. She has the stock photos. She is phenomenal at it, and I would much rather have somebody who’s really good at it than limp through with something that I could create myself and make okay.

The covers for How to Write the Damn Book and How to Publish the Damn Book, I did those covers. Those are mine. The covers for my urban fantasy series are done by my cover designer, who is fantastic. So I can do it, but I don’t necessarily have to do all of it myself. I have hired people to help me with my marketing keywords and that sort of work.

I don’t have an issue hiring an expert to supplement what I know, and I’ve been doing this for eighteen years. So if I need help sometimes with some elements of my business, most people do. There are people, and I could name them, and I know them personally, who don’t need that kind of help. But they are outliers, and they are people who are absolutely experts in the field and prefer to do everything themselves entirely.

And they are right to do that. But they have been doing this long enough that they have the expertise. They aren’t just writing their first book, doing everything themselves, and assuming that they’re going to be as good as an entire studio.

It’s not a bad thing to ask for help. Writers often have writing groups. We’ll have critique partners. We have mastermind groups, editors, people we trust, and that includes the people that I just mentioned.

None of us really are. The help isn’t a crutch. It’s not an indication that they don’t know what they’re doing. It’s because that’s what we do. It’s a good thing. It is a necessary part of our process. Asking for help at the right stage and knowing what kind of help you need, it’s a skill that takes time to develop.

It’s not shameful that you need help. It’s just real. It’s just honest. It’s just factual. And there’s nothing wrong with needing help. And I say that in multiple ways, like I see a therapist for my mental health. I see a doctor for my physical health. Help is something that I need. I am disabled. I need extra help sometimes.

It’s okay to need it. It doesn’t make you lesser. This interdependence between elements is actually a craft skill. Needing help and knowing when to ask for help is actually a writing craft skill. Knowing how to take feedback from somebody who’s being critical, not mean, but critical, without destroying yourself or ignoring it and getting all huffy, that is part of writing craft, ‘cause you need to know how to receive criticism, ‘ cause you’re going to receive a lot of it.

Taking Critique is a Craft Skill

One of the things that I have learned is we need to have thick skins ‘cause we are going to encounter people who don’t like what we’re doing, don’t like the cut of our jib, don’t like our face, don’t like the fact that it’s Tuesday, and they’re going to take it out on us.

Sometimes they’ll have valid critiques. Sometimes it’s just really off the wall. And it’s okay that we have those things, but we need to understand that we can accept that critique without destroying ourselves or ignoring it entirely. And knowing what critique we receive to use, knowing what we actually should be using. Somebody came to me and said, recently and said, “You know, you use the word really an awful lot.”

And I was like, “Well, crap.” Knowing that I have a crutch word means that I need to start working on being aware of that. That isn’t saying that I’m atrocious and a bad writer, because categorically I’m not. I’m a very good writer. And yet I still have crutch words, and people can still point things out like, “Hey, you missed a thing.

Should probably fix that.” I can accept those critiques, and also knowing when a critique is not for me, when a critique is not going to be helpful to me or useful to me in any way. Sometimes I can just say, “Well, thank you so much for your feedback. I will keep that in mind,” and then promptly ignore it, because it isn’t at all useful to me, and it isn’t for me, but I can receive it and set it down and say, “Thank you very much.”

Being able to articulate something in my book that isn’t working, that I need to figure out, to somebody else in order to get the help that I need, that’s craft. Being able to tell a cover designer, “Here’s all the things I really need on my book cover. Here’s how I think this needs to go,” is craft. It’s not writing craft, but it’s part of the crafting of books.

The people who get really good really fast are the people who learn how to use other people’s skills and feedback and incorporate that. I have an author that I have worked with who went from night and day between books. the writing just went from ... their entire style changed in ways that I was like, “Is this the same person?”

I almost didn’t believe it at the beginning, because the change was so dramatic, and in a good way. They had gone from one type of writing to another, and had really embraced and studied a lot of deep craft stuff and incorporated it, and had taken a lot of my recommendations and suggestions working with them in the past, and really drilled down into those suggestions to create something pretty amazing, to be honest with you.

The people who improve like that are people who are taking those criticisms, those critiques, and learning from other human beings and moving forward. They’re not operating in a vacuum. They’re not trying to do this by themselves. They’re not trying to wander off into the desert alone.

Knowing How and When to Ask is a Skill

There are different kinds of help we need at different stages of writing, and knowing what kind of help you need when is an entire skill in and of itself. It really is. The first draft, when you were first working on your ideas and coming up with the concepts, you mostly need encouragement more than you need criticism, because an idea isn’t something that is really good or bad per se. You need somebody who’s gonna help you see your vision and create what is your vision, help you come up with your story and your structure, and you can bounce ideas off them and let them hype you up.

Someone who is sure that you’re going to finish this book and will push you to it without getting too deep in your own head. That might be a book coach or a developmental editor. I do both of those things. I’ve worked with people at that first stage where they’re writing their book and they need someone to just say, “This doesn’t suck.

I promise. Just keep going.” Or someone to say, “You know, this outline doesn’t really look like it’s gonna work for the story you’re coming up with. Let’s take a look at this outline a little bit and reorganize this a touch.” Then you have the second draft, or whatever draft you’re on when you start being ready to show it to most of anybody else.

That’s when you’re ready for structural feedback about plot development and characters and narrative and someone who’s read the whole book as it’s written and can then give you feedback. That’s a developmental editor’s realm, too. They can help you beforehand by helping you structure the thing and then helping you after you have that draft with the next piece of this puzzle That can also be a beta reader too, who can read that too.

You can have beta readers who are like, “I love your idea, but this story doesn’t make sense,” and then you have to go back and fix it. So you need maybe help at that point. Then the next steps are revisions. That’s when you start looking at line editing and copy editing and proofreading, which are all different skills and oftentimes deployed by different people.

I can do line and copy edit together usually most of the time, and ... But I still advise almost anybody, have at least two sets of eyes on your book, because after I’ve read something once or twice, I’m gonna start glazing over certain kinds of errors, and another set of eyes really needs to look at it. And that’s just human reality.

That’s just fact. So I always advise at least two sets of eyes on any project. That’s one of the reasons why when I was running a publishing company, there were two editors for every project. You had the one who was doing the bulk of the main work and intake, and then you had one doing the final polish, who hadn’t read the book about 12 times, looking for errant commas and quotation marks facing the wrong way, and the last little tiny pieces, while the rest of the bulk of the work had been done by somebody else.

Then once you hit publication, you’ve got folks who can help with that too. You’re gonna need industry knowledge and maybe legal advice in copyright issues, or help building your platform and learning how to build your platform. Because also, let me tell you, asking for help can also look like buying books written by other people on the subject.

That is asking for help. It just looks a little different, ‘cause it’s not a one-to-one thing. Or watching YouTube videos.

That’s what this conversation is me helping you. And there’s no shame in it. I needed help when I started. I still need help regularly. And I love that I get to spend time helping others, because I’m passionate about it, which I’m pretty sure you can probably tell if you’ve listened to my podcast or read my articles.

It’s also something that you should understand is the help that you need in your first year, in the first time that you’re publishing a book, is not gonna be the help that you need at year ten.

The help I needed year one, just understanding how to publish my book, is not the assistance I need now. I don’t really need somebody to help me catch my, I don’t know, my adverbs. I don’t really have too many adverbs, and I’m not using too many to-be verbs. I’m not really flattening a lot of it. So I don’t need that kind of help at this point in my career. But the help I do need is my cover design, or I need help figuring out some of my marketing stuff. Those are all things that I need help for, and I ask for help for, and I receive help for.

Closing Thoughts

The idea of the solitary genius in their writing cave with nobody else around, not helping them, not giving them any kind of feedback, is a myth. And this is the start of a series that I’m doing on myths in writing and the the, the myth of whatever it is in writing. I’m gonna be doing a series of, I don’t know, five, six videos, something like that, covering some of these myths, because there are so many, and they are so damaging to us, and we really need to let them go.

People who need help and build robust networks, that market each other’s books, that talk to each other, that work together, those are the people who are professionals. Those are the people who go on to be really good at this. It’s more than just you and your typewriter in some turret room on a cloudy day talking to a raven and going slowly mad.

Though, I mean, I suppose that could be part of your writing process. I’m not gonna argue. I kind of talk to my... Eh, you know what? I kind of do that. I have a weird room in an old farmhouse and talk to my parrot, so I guess I’m not too far off. But really, there are other humans involved in this process, and the ability to know what kind of help you need and when to look for it and involving it, that’s being a professional.

Because a professional knows that it’s bigger than just them and themselves and what they’re creating. It requires a range of other skills, and anybody who’s published a book will tell you that the act of publishing a book and the act of writing a book are completely disparate. The skills you need to write the book are not the skills you need to market the book.

It’s very different, and it’s unpleasant to learn that, but it is true.

Humbling yourself to learn from other people is one of the most powerful and important things we can do as a species. And asking for help is scary, it’s stressful, it’s vulnerable, which I know most of us don’t like being. I hate being vulnerable. I’m bad at it, categorically. At the same time, I know how important it is, and I’m going to keep doing it, and I hope that you will also keep doing it, because asking for help doesn’t mean you’re not a real writer.

Thank you for joining me on AUTHORiTEA today. If you know anybody who would benefit from this, please send it to them, and subscribe, all the things. If you are really enjoying my content and consider that this is beneficial to you, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. It helps support What I’m doing here, it allows me to take the time to make these videos, and it shows me that it’s worth continuing. I have a lot of people who don’t have the money to pay for my videos, and I’m actually considering releasing some of my articles for free after a certain amount of time so that people get the knowledge.

I wanna find a way that both honors the fact that people are paying for what I’m providing as well as folks who might not be there yet because I wanna make sure people get the help they need. That’s just how I am. So, please send this to other people and share it widely, and let me know in the comments what you think of this.

What other myths are there that you have encountered that you really feel like need to be addressed? And I’ll catch you in the next episode.

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While there’s a gray area for AI text that’s been deeply edited by the person who generated it, AI-generated text is very difficult and exhausting to work on for several reasons that I want to lay out.

The Writing Is So Flat

You may have heard this from people before, but I want to dig a little into this in a way that maybe will make more sense to people who don’t feel it. When we talk about flat, we mean that it lacks the human element. While that human element isn’t exactly quantifiable, there’s a certain rhythm to the way people write. Tension pulled and released in ways that are related to more than just plot points. It has to do with emotions.

Contrary to what many people believe, AI text has a voice. I’ve covered that previously, and I am pretty damn good at identifying it. Yes, I’ve gotten people claiming I can’t possibly be that good at it, but when you’ve spent your entire life reading different authors, different voices, and have spent almost 20 years as a professional editor, you develop an understanding of voice. I am also autistic, and autistic pattern recognition is a very real thing. We see patterns where many people don’t which is one of the reasons we are so good at jobs where pattern recognition is necessary.

The problem with AI’s voice? It’s too consistent in tone. It’s always the same. Computers are not good at unpredictability because that’s pretty much their whole job. LLMs are programmed to know what comes next. They parse massive amounts of data and then predict what comes after that based on previous patterns. This is incredibly useful in some ways, but when it comes to creative writing, that flattening effect is anything but enjoyable.

It carries this flattening trend through all of the things it does to try and emulate human art. AI-generated images or AI-generated music have the same issues. While it can create something that is superficially interesting, it just does not have the capacity to truly emulate a human.

As editors, we are deeply sensitive to human voice. That’s a massive part of our jobs and of what we do. It’s something most of us have put a large amount of time, energy, and training into. Respecting author voice and polishing it to bring out the luster and beauty of it is something that any editor worth their commas strives for. With AI, it’s intensely boring and feels like trying to drink dollar store knockoff soda. Sure, some of the ingredients are the same, and it’s technically similar, but it’s lacking everything one enjoys about the product other than the bubbles and sugar.

The Inconsistencies Are Exhausting

When I’ve worked on AI-generated text, there are a few things that stand out to me that just make every part of my soul wither. Past the flat, empty voice, the problems it has are consistent and incredibly difficult to fix without heading into outright ghostwriting territory.

What I mean is the constant continuity errors, the surrealistic, dreamlike quality of the prose, and the constant misunderstanding of fundamental human things. I was looking at some text recently that I knew was AI-generated, and some of the first things I noticed were that things kind of appear and disappear. Characters suddenly have something they didn’t have a second ago. They are suddenly places they have no right to be, and everything seems realistic until you start tracking it.

It feels like the literary version of the original tells for AI-generated images: count the fingers, look for strange, visual distortions, count the teeth… You know, like the AI is a faerie tying to pretend it’s human.

Which it kind of is.

Fixing these inconsistencies takes an incredible amount of work because it requires either going back through the manuscript to add the thing in or removing it and writing around that. And we are talking sometimes several times per paragraph. That’s why I said it heads toward ghostwriting—we aren’t fixing grammatical inconsistencies or punctuation; we’re rewriting whole swaths of text to make them make sense. Because they don’t and won’t without that.

AI cannot keep track of that much context at once in order to maintain any kind of consistency in that way. You’ll be lucky if it remembers character and place names consistently. It will mess up backstory information, setting information, and world building, and just about everything else.

It Just Doesn’t Understand Humans

There are fewer places this becomes clearer than when it starts writing about injuries. AI likes to write these horrible, graphic, catastrophic injuries and then have characters bounce about like nothing happened. Sure, it’ll pay lip service to pain, but it doesn’t understand how limiting things are.

I read a scene where someone got shot in the trauma plate by a 7.62mm bullet, and it apparently shattered their sternum and all their ribs and was pushing the ribs into their heart. That’s not how bulletproof vests work with trauma plates, as a rule. While the character would’ve probably broken a few ribs, maybe, and had terrible bruising, it wouldn’t be that kind of trauma.

However, regardless of the fact that this character’s ribs were apparently made of glass, the character continued to move around and act and talk with a “shattered sternum.” Now, I’ve had cracked ribs before from coughing, and let me tell you, I wasn’t doing much. A “shattered sternum” would be a mostly fatal wound because it would cause something called “flail chest” and probably result in a collapsed lung if not worse. It’s a catastrophic injury to say the least.

Would a human author make these mistakes? Sure, they might, but this character went from having a broken rib to a shattered rib to having a shattered sternum to having a bruised chest and back to having shattered ribs again. All in the space of two pages.

A human author might underestimate the degree of impact an injury might have, but they’d be consistent about it, and it would be an easy fix where you just change it to some cracked ribs and adjust things a little. With the AI-generated text, it would need wholesale rewriting because of the number of times and ways it was integrated into the scene in ways that make it impossible to fix without rewriting (or re-generating) the text.

With emotions, it also falls down because while it kind of knows how characters might act and has consumed vast quantities of psychological study information, so it kind of understands humans, sort of, it also has a bad time trying to portray things like love and complexity. AI has never stubbed its toe let alone fallen in love, so its expression of those experiences is, at best, clumsy. Fixing that is almost impossible and, again, veers into ghostwriting territory. Which is usually not what we are being paid for.

AI also often handles emotions by making characters simper to the main character and not push back. Characters aren’t complete characters with emotions and depth; they’re just foils for the main character to act against. Again, authors can do this, but usually those kinds of mistakes are easily enough fixed with some adding character depth. With AI, the side characters always and immediately defer to whatever the main character wants or needs without really having any agency of their own. Their emotions are purely performative and surface because, again, it has no experience with emotion. It’s a computer.

Its Attempts To Create Emotions Leads To Weirdness

AI-generated text has this habit of making these constant, heavy, overwhelming emotional beats. Everything is given this aura of “gravitas” that it doesn’t need to have. The end of every scene has this intense sense of finality to it. The AI will try to constantly add “weight” to the writing which either leads it to make things seem intensely meaningful in ways that make no sense. It oftentimes uses metaphors that have no logic behind them but sound important, and it likes to make every single scene land like a blow to the (shattered) sternum.

This is exhausting.

While human writers definitely do bungle emotions from time to time, they don’t try and make every single scene that heavy. It’s like trying to eat a cake that’s got about five inches of frosting on it. And not the good kind of frosting. We’re talking the thick, greasy, overly sweet cheap kind that’s made with just shortening, powdered sugar, and food coloring.

Trying to fix that? Again, it heads straight into ghostwriting because it’s not a small thing you can just tidy up; it requires wholesale rewriting. Whether the author does it or we do, it can’t just be fixed like tidying up excess adverbs or helping someone with their commas. This is one of those foundational problems.

It Hurts Our Trust

Working on this text feels like we are being gaslighted the whole time. Particularly because there are so many people these days who come to us with AI-generated novels and lying about it. I’ve had it happen to me twice now, and I’m seeing other editors talking about it left and right.

AI-generated text has this weird uncanny valley feeling associated with it. It triggers that same feeling of “human but not” in me, and facing that discomfort and uncertainty for the entire amount of time I’m working on a project is mentally and emotionally exhausting. There’s a low-level discomfort that surfaces whenever I am expected to edit AI-generated works because it just doesn’t feel right.

If I know what I’m getting into, I know to expect that sensation, but people attempting to deceive me left and right by claiming something isn’t AI that clearly is is a lot. I’m not here to throw shade on people who use AI honestly, but the dishonest ones make it exhausting.

As an AFAB, I can say with certainty that it’s making me feel very much like the editorial equivalent of “choosing the bear.” The desire to work with clients who aren’t people I have a long history with and can trust is being damaged by this lack of trust. There are amazing writers out there who write their own books without AI. I know there are. I also know it’s probably the majority. But at the same time, I have to be on the lookout for ones that aren’t in every interaction.

Do I choose the author or the bear?

Conclusion

I feel like I’m speaking aloud the feelings of a lot of my colleagues as we deal with this shifting world. I’m not just a fuddy duddy, to be clear. I don’t hate “the next new thing” and just want to rain on people’s parades. I really don’t. I use AI for a variety of agentic and backend tasks. As an editor, however, I got into this business because I am deeply and intensely passionate about writing and about authors and voice and the whole literary world.

I know that the aggressively AI-forward folks will say one of two things: I’m going to fade into obscurity because I won’t “adapt,” or that they were never going to come to me for editing anyway because I’m an expense they don’t need to make.

The first comment will get the eye roll it deserves. The camera did not erase the existence of the painter, so I’m not worried. I will continue to work on books written by humans because those will always exist. The creative soul of our species will not stop dancing just because a machine can clumsily follow the choreography.

The second comment gets a shrug. You were never going to hire me anyway, which is fine. However, there are enough people who keep trying to hire us to work on AI-generated text that I thought it was worth explaining why so many of us don’t want to work on it. Again, for reasons beyond the ethical implications of AI-generated text as a whole, the environmental factors, and the myriad other reasons folks might object to AI on its face.

The feelings that working on AI text evoke in me are feelings they evoke in other editors. I know. We’ve been talking. It’s tearing away the joy we have in our work for many of us. Editing is an artisanal craft (as is writing). Having us work on AI-generated text feels like asking a Michelin star chef to work behind the counter at McDonald’s. Sure, yeah, we’re technically working on food either way, but one of those activities feeds our souls and is why we got into the industry to begin with. The other is soulless corporate awfulness with the lowest common denominator ingredients.

And that’s not the job I want to do. It’s not the job that makes my heart sing. It’s not the thing that fills my spirit when I sit down to get to work.

This is going to probably sound a little like…

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While, ye…

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We fought melees…

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A friend of mine posted today about how a book that is about how immigration will destroy the Western world was removed from Amazon. I do not agree with the content of that work any more than I agree with the content of Mein Kampf, to be clear. I’m not arguing in favor of the book. However, it’s where this conversation started.

The person asked where folks draw the line of censorship and where it becomes good and bad, and I wanted to talk a bit about that today since it’s something I think that is not frequently enough discussed without a great deal of emotional appeals. While most of you know me as an author and editor and sometimes as a Christian, I am also a historian and took coursework on political science and cults and conspiracy theories. It’s an area of interest for me, so… let’s talk about it.

I’m going to start this discussion by stating that the story itself that sparked this conversation is exclusively being reported on by very right-wing sources that Ground News (my preferred aggregator) has marked as “low” and “mixed” factuality. The outrage machine is in action, but it offered me a starting point into the conversation.

There is an incredible attempt in the small number of media pieces about this event to frame it as some kind of “gotcha” for left-leaning people and an example of how the left only will react to something if it benefits them somehow or fits their narrative. So… I’m going to talk about it since it was brought to my attention.

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First of all, Amazon is a private retailer. They are not a retailer I like by any measure, and they have a deeply disproportionate ability to affect whether or not a book is seen by anyone or is on the market. I believe Amazon’s supremacy needs to be challenged very, very hard, and they need to have some antitrust laws thrown at them because dayum. However, they are a private company.

Private companies are, under the law, allowed to make decisions about what they do and do not carry in their stores. I do not need to like those decisions or agree with them. I may also find them horrifying. However, a store that carried exclusively historical Nazi propaganda, books, and clothing would be legal. Legality, of course, does not mean free of consequences, but it would be legal. As such, I can’t say that I am going to get out my torches and pitchforks over Amazon choosing not to carry something in their store. They decline or delist books all the time that they consider offensive for a variety of reasons, and it is within their right to do so.

Again, whether I like it or not, they are a private entity.

Do I think certain books should be quietly removed from retailers because nobody really needs to own them, and they’re just not that good to begin with? Sure. I think retailers should probably eschew carrying copies of certain materials, but that isn’t about censorship. If a pedophile wrote a book with a bunch of graphic, horrible, detailed sex scenes involving children… no company should be obligated to carry it, and I think it’s in the public good if the companies refuse to carry, print, or otherwise distribute such a piece. Even if it is legal to write it under free speech laws (horrifying as that sentence is to write).

Obviously, private and public sector are different creatures, but this individual brought up both of them as if they are intertwined. They aren’t. What is legal for companies to do and what is legal for the government to do are different creatures. Free speech laws cover governmental actions not private ones. Hence why Facebook can say what speech is allowed or not on their platform versus the government dictating what you can be allowed to share places. They are very different, and too many people seem to equate the first amendment with their right to be able to say what they want, wherever they want, entirely free of any consequences whatsoever. Obviously it does not work that way.

Which brings us to the second part of this conversation: public schools and libraries.

Knowing what I know of these conversations and where they were likely to go, I stepped in to talk about queer books because those are the only ones really looking at getting banned recently that I’m aware of, and as a queer person I can speak with some authority about that.

Most of us have heard the conversations circling around about whether books that have queer representation are “appropriate” for children. Those who tend to be on the conservative, religious right say of course it’s not because children shouldn’t be reading about sex, and it’s inappropriate for their age to do so. They want those books removed from libraries and schools, and not talked about.

Obviously, that’s a load of nonsense.

If queer relationships are inappropriate, so are straight ones. Most kids grow up seeing their parents having romantic relationships, straight or otherwise. Parents being in a loving, stable, healthy romantic relationship is considered one of the bedrock principles of a good upbringing. It’s only when we talk about queerness that there’s an immediate assumption that it’s about sexual intimacy and that they’d have to “explain that” to their kids. Kids don’t care and aren’t asking. They just know that Billy’s dads love each other like their own mom and dad do. That’s all they need to be told, and it’s no more about sex than a straight relationship is. Obviously.

Transgenderism is also brought into the conversation, again equating it with genitalia and sex, which is clearly what the adults are thinking, not the kids. Billy would just know that Tommy didn’t like being a boy and feels happier as Theresa. You can explain it in ways that kids understand, too. My go-to is that living as a woman felt like wearing an itchy shirt all the time that I couldn’t take off, so I like living as a man better, and it feels more comfortable. No more itching! That explanation has absolutely nothing to do with my genitalia, medical procedures, medication, or sex life.

I then went into the common middle school books that kids are taught that are far, far more challenging than just having queer people in them. (Night, anybody?) Heck, even The Secret Garden is about ableism, colonialism, parent loss, grief, neglect, and abuse. I love the book down to my bones, but if you really look at it, it’s a mess. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory also has some incredibly dark themes in it. It’s a product of its time. And yet we consider those to be media appropriate for children.

Finally, we get to the Bible itself. I am a Christian, so please understand that my commentary on this is not hatred on the source material, but it is absolutely not kid friendly. There’s sexual violence, incest, genocide, torture, and graphic sexual content throughout it. Sure, most parents aren’t giving their kids the Song of Songs to read, but it is pretty damn graphic. To say nothing about other parts of the Bible (Lot trying to prevent Sodomites from raping the angels, for example). It is a violent, brutal, challenging book that requires cultural context to understand. And yet many parents encourage Bible reading in their children. Sure, children’s versions often wipe away the more difficult pieces, but many parents don’t go that route, and anybody suggesting that the Bible is not age appropriate as-is would be, well… crucified.

The knee-jerk reaction we have to “protecting kids” comes out of a place of wanting to make sure children are only exposed to things we agree with because we want to shape society in our own image. This is not a singular “sides” issue, to be clear. It is a fact of humanity. Every group, tribe, or culture wants to continue itself, generally speaking, and feels threatened when they perceive that they cannot. That’s evolutionary fact.

Everyone does it; it’s not exclusive to one side or the other. People on the left won’t probably expose their kids to materials we consider to be radical right any more than people on the right won’t expose their kids to the literature they consider radical left. That’s not a left/right divide—it’s a purely human reaction and method of raising our young. It’s largely anthropology.

I say that because we too often make these things about politics alone and try and point fingers at the “other side.” I put that in quotes not because I am unclear about where I stand (I firmly believe in bodily autonomy for women, queer rights, healthcare, etc.) but because we have to step back from viewing this as purely an issue of politics and view it as an issue of anthropology and psychology.

Evaluating the content of books with clear-eyed logic about appropriateness and safety for children and public consumption is different than evaluating what we would share with our own offspring. Choosing what we would do with our own bodies and lives is one thing; deciding for all of society is different. In order to make broad judgments about what should or shouldn’t be allowed to exist at all in a way that doesn’t just create a society that lacks any sort of diversity to it, we need to consider all angles. I know stripping diversity is the actual goal of some people, but I don’t believe it is the goal of anything approaching a majority. As such, we need to let go of the idea of whether or not we personally like the thing.

I, obviously, vehemently, disagree with Mein Kampf and all of its conclusions. It is a repugnant piece of literature written by a detestable human being. I recognize its importance from a historical perspective since understanding Hitler and what he did and why is of genuine value to humanity in the world. I also would question myself if I decided it should be entirely deleted from human access. Are there books that I believe should never be published? Yes, of course. Personally, I think we should probably let Lolita die. But whether there should be some mechanism by the government to decide that? Eh… I don’t know. I don’t think I’m the person to have that answer in a vacuum.

When we get into matters of legislating morality of thought and ideas rather than actions, we quickly run into big problems. Books are, by their nature, thought. Sure, writing them down is an action, but they still represent thought. Words can be violent and inciting; I’m not suggesting that they are powerless to do those things. Obviously. They are incredibly powerful. However, they still represent thought, and censoring that is a dangerous direction.

Where are the lines? It’s hard to know. If we just say things that harm other people, we have to then start digging into harm and what it is versus challenge versus… You get my point. It’s hard if not impossible. After all, when it comes to words, we also need to consider whether those words are actionable, what the intent of them is… it’s a lot more complex than whether someone punched another person in the mouth. With words, it’s all about mens rea more than it is about physical harm. And getting into another person’s head and intentions is a very difficult thing to do. That’s why we have courts, juries, lawyers, psychology, sociology, anthropology, and philosophy. I know this could be its own article, but I’m not going to get too deep into it here; I’ve dumped a lot on you at once.

In the end, I think the best thing we can do around these things is take a deep breath and step back, trying to remain emotionally neutral while considering things from a logical perspective rather than an emotional one. That isn’t to say we can’t and shouldn’t have feelings, but laws and statues and those kinds of decisions should be written from a factual, unemotional place rather than a reactive one.

That advice isn’t wrong. But the question—or at least one of them—is: what does that cost us as people?

This is the final piece in our unpaid labor arc, where I’ve been talking about the work that goes on behind the scenes—work that is not the writing, that oftentimes doesn’t come with a paycheck, and that can be exhausting and a major source of burnout if we aren’t careful.

So that’s where we are today.

Visibility Is Not Just Exposure

Visibility is work. It’s not just exposure. Exposure is part of it, but there is genuine labor involved in being visible, and it’s constant. We tend to equate visibility with opportunity, because we view it as doors opening rather than acknowledging the hard work required behind the scenes to make those doors available to us at all.

But you and I both know there’s a whole lot that happens behind the scenes. There’s creating content, like this piece. There’s responding to emails. Deciding what to post or not post online. Worrying about whether something we want to say is going to get us into trouble, because cancel culture is a real thing, and it can be deeply problematic. I have witnessed authors get canceled who absolutely didn’t deserve it, and the fear that we experience—one wrong move, and we get slammed—is real.

Then there’s the planning. Recording, scripting, editing, uploading. Putting together social posts so people know the content exists. All of these things take time and focus and energy. A lot of it. Because it is a lot of work.

The Emotional Labor of Being Seen

There’s also an emotional side to this. Being in the public eye invites people to react to us. That’s kind of our job as public figures: for people to see us and respond. Sometimes those responses are thoughtful and kind and wonderful, and sometimes they are truly horrific. We’ve all seen comment sections.

Staying engaged, checking notifications, responding to comments… all of those things take energy. And it’s part of appearing like I’m genuinely engaged with my community. Because if I post something and never respond to a single comment, if I don’t answer people on my Substack and engage with them, they don’t feel like I’m paying attention to them individually. I’m a small enough creator that at this point in my career, I can respond individually. I am not a Markiplier or a Brandon Sanderson. I respond to almost everybody if I feel like it warrants a response.

That engagement means I need to consistently consider my tone, think about how I’m responding, because I could run afoul of something if I phrase something wrong— even if I don’t phrase something wrong, somebody could take what I say in a way I didn’t intend. Because that’s how communication works. We can’t control the message the other person receives from what we say.

The Disproportionate Weight on Marginalized Creators

This has a heavier weight on marginalized creators. I’m trans. I’m queer. I’m disabled. I’m neurodivergent. That marginalization means we are disproportionately exposed to some of the nastier elements of the world.

I get anti-trans commentary on my posts with unpleasant frequency. It doesn’t happen all the time—mostly I fly under the radar, and since I’m not a trans woman, a lot of people don’t notice me, or they clock me as female and refer to me as “she.” Which is, I guess, safer, but it certainly doesn’t feel great.

With the neurodivergence, I often have to deeply consider what I’m saying and how I’m saying it because I’m autistic. Being autistic means I’m prone to not being as clear on certain social conventions as other people, and that can push me into masking really hard. I recently had a conversation with my therapist about my CAT-Q—the test that measures how much we’re masking — and mine has actually gone up quite a bit since we started. The only thing that’s changed is being more visible and more out there. Trying to balance that with authenticity, with engagement, is extremely difficult.

I want to be clear: this isn’t a complaint. I don’t regret having made the decision to be a public figure. But it does have a cost. It does create difficulties.

In addition to all of that, I’m a Christian, and I don’t talk about it a ton, but my faith is a deep part of who I am. When I do mention it, there’s a cavalcade of people who either are atheist and angry at Christians, or—and this is the group that bothers me more—other Christians telling me that I’m doing Christianity wrong and I’m going to be condemned. I’m actually preparing to go to seminary because I plan to be a minister. So people coming at me about my faith from within the faith offends me a great deal more than the thoughtful atheists who disagree.

I’ve had to put a lot of thought into how much of my faith I want to share with my audience. Will they connect to that or will they reject me? I have to make all these decisions about what I share and what I don’t, because exposure doesn’t guarantee that people will be kind when I am being vulnerable on the internet—which is, as we all know, a risk.

The Pressure to Be Consistently Personable

There’s an intense pressure for creators to always appear warm, always seem like we’re in community with people, always ready to sit down and have coffee at any point in time. I often am those things.

This warmth and affect you see from me is not an act. I am who I am all the time. This is genuinely me. But everybody has days where they would much rather run screaming into the hinterlands than interact with another human being.

When you’re in the public eye, you can’t really have those moments in any public space. You can’t be grumpy that day. You can’t be extra sensitive. You have to be pretty consistent in how you show up, and that’s exhausting. And when every post you make or every article you write can draw you into multiple conversations, when people tag you wanting your opinion on things—which I’m happy to give, I’m genuinely not complaining—those things take energy, thought, and effort. Work, essentially. Work we often gloss over and ignore instead of pulling it out and discussing it openly.

And with neurodivergence, that constant need to be “on” in public is incredibly anxiety-inducing. I can do it. Before I got into writing and publishing, I did customer service, and I can flip that switch. Anybody who’s worked customer service usually can. But it’s exhausting. It’s a push-me-pull-you situation.

I had a post on LinkedIn go absolutely bonkers a couple weeks ago—ended up with a couple hundred replies. I went through and responded to almost everybody. I spent an entire day doing it, and it felt like I’d accomplished absolutely nothing, even though what I was doing was connecting with people, building my brand, developing relationships, having meaningful conversations related to our industry. The day just vanished, and I’d spent all of it on LinkedIn.

More Eyes Doesn’t Always Mean More Opportunity

We tend to equate exposure with opportunity. But more eyes doesn’t always mean more opportunity.

My platform isn’t tiny. It’s not gigantic either. It’s a reasonably mid-sized platform. That exposure means people have expectations of me. They expect a podcast every couple weeks, articles in between—many of them are paying for my Substack, so I have to make sure I’m meeting those expectations and giving them what they’re paying to receive. I also have TikTok videos to record, Instagram reels to create, photos to take, updates to give readers about where I am in the manuscript, obligations to clients.

My top video currently has around 2 million views on TikTok, and it has absolutely nothing to do with writing. I was just excited about an AI tool called Goblin Tools and made a video showing off what it does, and that video went bananas. Everything else on my channel sits between 200 and 400 views for the most part. Those millions of views, that enormous follower count—I didn’t make significant book sales off of it. People follow me on social media, but they don’t necessarily buy my books. So we’re not getting paid for that exposure. Those eyeballs on us don’t automatically do anything, and yet we feel the pressure of performing for them and meeting their expectations.

I’m not upset that I have a reasonably sized audience. I’m not upset that people have expectations of me—they should, because I built those expectations. This isn’t a creator whining about being famous; I’m not famous enough to whine about that by any stretch. But we do have to acknowledge the work, and we have to name it. Leaving it in the shadows to fester means we aren’t really discussing it.

And being an author, putting your work out there, means you are becoming a public figure. Most books about writing and publishing just talk about the nuts and bolts—how to get your book onto KDP, how to write the thing, how to format and market. They don’t talk about what being a public figure actually means. They don’t talk about creating the boundary between the public and private self, and how you navigate what you share versus what you keep close to your chest. That is genuine work.

What Do We Do With All of This?

I’m running this podcast. I have social media. I write (or I try to anyway). I have editing clients and deadlines. I have church work that is multifaceted. I’m getting ready to go to grad school. I am one person. And we are coming close to the point where I’m at capacity, and I have to figure out what’s going to give.

One of the things that gave was switching to every other week for this podcast instead of every week because I was running into issues of time and energy and focus. I didn’t want to set expectations and then fail them consistently. Recording this podcast takes an entire day of my week. Not a complaint—I love doing this, I do it because I enjoy it—but I have to acknowledge that it takes real time, real work, and real effort. That has to be balanced.

I would love to be the kind of person who can hire a PR team and marketing professionals. I don’t have that money right now. So what do we do? We start asking ourselves what happens when we post a little less. Go every other week instead of every week—will that upset people? So far, nobody’s been upset. Nobody’s been unsubscribing en masse. The people who are here have stayed even when I didn’t post for months because I was dealing with mental health problems.

What would it look like to concentrate on fewer platforms? To think about where we want to spend most of our energy? I’m still discerning that myself—whether TikTok, where most of my audience and activity is, or whether to pivot to Instagram or LinkedIn. What I usually end up doing is creating a batch of marketing posts and scheduling them through a tool called Paddy Post (no sponsorship—nobody pays me to say anything, no promo codes, I just use it). It’s lightweight, less expensive than some alternatives, and it does its job without requiring a great deal of effort. I can also repost older TikTok videos, because I have a deep enough back catalog now to draw from.

The Liberating Reality of Letting Go

What would it feel like to be less afraid of being canceled? At this point in my career, I’m not particularly afraid of that. I’m more afraid of anti-trans comments than I am of being canceled, because I’m not really saying anything that could get me canceled. And even if I were, anybody who really hates what I have to say isn’t someone who wants to hang out with me anyway because not everybody is for every person.

Some people very successfully decide they’re not going to touch anything that could be potentially controversial and say absolutely nothing about anything because they just don’t have the bandwidth for the blowback. I’m not casting shade on those people. I know a lot of them.

On the other hand, I’ve made comments about the war in Palestine, about what’s happening in Venezuela, about what’s going on in Iran. I’m okay making those comments because anybody who finds my commentary deeply offensive also won’t enjoy my books. But not everybody needs to take that route. It’s okay if you want to stick to writing children’s books about fluffy bunnies and don’t want the weight of the world sitting on your professional shoulders every single day. That is an okay decision to make.

It’s Been Boundaries All Along

The goal here is to create a resilient author career—a resilient relationship with your readers, a resilient practice, whatever form that takes. How much of your public face are you willing to put on? How much do you need to share? How much do you need to reserve? Because if we don’t examine the weight of this visibility, if we don’t look at what we’re having to carry and labor under and juggle, we’re going to be crushed by it.

So we need to make intentional decisions about boundaries. Which, if I’m entirely honest, is what this whole invisible labor series has been about. Surprise! It’s been boundaries all along.

That is the takeaway I want you to walk away with: what boundaries can you set? Both as a public figure, and regarding what you do and don’t share. Depending on your work, what marketing things you engage with, how much backend work you’re willing to do—set those boundaries. Identify your limits. Find ways to minimize that constant pressure, and do it with intentionality and purpose.

The more you do that, the more you’ll find it helps settle everything else. There’s less ambiguity. If you know exactly what your limits are, you know exactly how far you can engage, how deep you’re going to get into any given thing, and you can let go of everything that doesn’t match that. You can let go of the fear of missing a trend. I’m aware of trends in this industry, but I don’t chase them. I don’t try to find the newest trending audio on TikTok to do a dance to unless I’m truly bored and feeling goofy.

I’m not willing to answer work emails outside of work hours, with very few exceptions. I don’t have my work email on my phone. When I’m not at home, when I’m not here, I’m not working. Certain clients, if they’re in a genuine emergency, have my phone number. But I’m not going to spend every minute of every day working. When I’m not working, I’m not working. That’s a healthy thing.

Find your boundaries. Use them. Whether they’re around being a public figure, around how much you’re willing to do for free, around how much you’re willing to engage with certain people and topics because you simply don’t have the energy—finding those limits and creating them is what this whole conversation has been about.

Protecting your mental health is a necessary thing for the longevity of your career, your life, and yourself. You only get one you. So you might as well protect that.

To nobody’s surprise, I’m subscribed to a lot of author newsletters! That choice is a mix of both personal and work relate…

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While I don’t talk a lot about my faith in public spaces at this point in my career (not that I hide it), I am a Christian. Specifically, I’m a member of the Presbyterian Church, USA (PCUSA). We are one of the more liberal denominations out there and have been doing a lot of standing up against ICE and other such abuses in the world.

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I want to be clear here. This is not a 100% guarantee all the time because LLMs were created by studying human writing. However, there are a lot of markers I have noticed as I’ve been spending time talking to LLMs (specifically to learn their voice so I can identify it in other places). It’s more than just people using em dashes, too—I use them all the time. And no, I’m not an AI.

This list is not probably exhaustive. There are markers that I won’t have here, and I am sure there are models whose voices I don’t yet know (Deepseek, Grok, etc.). I’ve spent most of my time with ChatGPT and Claude. However, these markers tend to be somewhat more universal than not in some ways. Also, there is there fact that models do change as they continue developing them, so this list may not be accurate forever.

I’m sharing this because I see people sharing AI-generated text all over the place, and so many people claim you cannot tell. I certainly can tell. It’s literally my job to identify author voice and be sensitive to it. AI-generated text has its own voice, and each one of them has a unique one. I know Claude from ChatGPT now, for example. And I’d like to share that with you because, frankly, I want you able to identify them, too. Knowing when to credit an LLM with authorship of something versus a person can help us identify what sources are human and what ones aren’t. This is an unfortunately necessary skill into today’s world where many people attempt to pass machine writing off as human.

I also want to be very clear that this list doesn’t mean you can assume something is AI-written based on a single marker on this list. For example, well-edited text (particularly in short form) may not have typos or grammar mistakes. However, when you put all these pieces together, you’ll start to see a picture emerge. It’s the whole, not the individual parts that tells me if something is AI-generated.

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Without further ado, here’s the list:

• Complete absence of human writing errors (typos, inconsistent grammar, natural mistakes) with the exception of Claude liking run-on sentences.

• Frequent overuse of “it’s not x it’s y” patterns and phrasing

• Overreliance on specific descriptors: “quiet” an adjective or adverb, “throat,” “sharp/sharpened,” “colder,” “particular,” “genuine,” “navigate,” “resonate,” “grounded,” “that matters”

• Heavy emotional beats that feel out of place or like every single thing has to have some kind of massive emotional weight to it

• Character names AI defaults to: Calder, Holloway, Voss, Ash, Marcus, Chen

• The prose lacks the natural rhythm, idiosyncratic choices, and human imperfection that characterize authentic writing.

• ChatGPT likes to do one sentence paragraphs like it’s writing a poem.

• It has a set number of character and archetypes it can really draw on without more intense guidance (most middle-aged woman will be intensely motherly, for example)

• “Like it was made for this” or similar things

• Excessive focus on numbers of things

• Plot holes and inability to remember things that happened more than a few paragraphs ago in the same narrative

• Lots of interiority and hedging: “he found himself wondering” or “something about it caught him”

• A lot of small, ephemeral moments that make the prose seem a little dreamlike without adding much to the narrative

• An unusual number of sensory details and specific ones

• Three-part lists everywhere (everywhere)

• Excessive contrasting of statements “while x is true, y is also the case”

• Identifying something as “mattering”

• A liminal feeling to the prose where characters often appear and disappear into the fog and sometimes take actions as if in several physical locations at once or as if physical space doesn’t matter

• Lots of generic fillers with ambiguous names (like calling things “The Council”)

• Over-explanation of things to try and give context unnecessarily

• There’s a lot of passivity as if the characters are being acted upon or receiving rather than acting

• Tends to try and resolve tension quickly rather than allowing readers to sit with the discomfort

• Overuse of “the kind of x that…”

• Everything is arm’s length in a weird way

• Metaphors that sound weighty but don’t actually mean anything

• “You’ve done more in a ‘x’ than most people do in a ‘y.’” It really likes that statement and uses it in different ways all the time. Particularly in dialogue if someone is complaining about a difficulty and another character is responding.

Different LLM’s Styles

Next let’s talk about the LLMs and their styles. Below I have given several LLMs an identical prompt: Please write a scene of a person walking down the street. Describe what they see, hear, and feel. I gave no further prompting than this.

Sample of Claude’s Prose

Marcus stepped out of the coffee shop and into the surprising chill of the morning. He’d forgotten how October could turn on you like this—yesterday had been warm enough for shirtsleeves, and now he was pulling his jacket tighter, wishing he’d grabbed the heavier one from the back of his closet.

The sidewalk was busy with the usual morning crowd, everyone moving with that particular urban purposefulness that always made him feel slightly out of step. A woman in running gear jogged past, her breath visible in small clouds, and he found himself wondering idly whether she was one of those people who actually enjoyed exercise or if she was just grimly determined. He’d been grimly determined once, for about three weeks in January.

Ahead of him, a father was crouched down tying his daughter’s shoe while she stood perfectly still, one hand resting on his shoulder for balance. The girl couldn’t have been more than five, and she was staring intently at a pigeon that was pecking at something near the curb. Marcus had to step around them, and as he did, he heard her say, very seriously, “That bird is having breakfast too.”

It was the kind of small moment that would disappear from his memory before he even reached the office, and yet something about it caught him. Maybe it was the matter-of-fact way she’d said it, as if the pigeon’s breakfast was just as important as her own. Or maybe it was just that he was tired and a little lonely, and the casual intimacy of the father’s hand on his daughter’s ankle as he tied her shoe reminded him of something he couldn’t quite name.

He turned the corner onto Seventh and checked his phone—eight twenty-three, which meant he was either perfectly on time or seven minutes late, depending on whether you counted the actual start of the meeting or the fifteen-minute buffer everyone pretended was the real start time. The wind picked up, carrying the smell of bread from the bakery on the corner, and Marcus walked a little faster.

Claude’s prose is pretty robust. There’s a little characterization about Marcus, but the whole scene feels a little distant. Marcus isn’t a fully fleshed character with a story or a purpose. He’s just kind of the camera we are experiencing the scene through. The scene is rather generic, also. The city has no real shape to it, no form. The humor is chuckle-worthy, but all of the humor Claude writes is more or less this exact style.

The interaction with the father and kid feels like one of those weird, heavy emotional beats. Unless the narrative has something to do with that scene, it’s kind of weird, like it’s trying to make meaning in a space where there doesn’t have to be any. That scene doesn’t tell us much of anything about Marcus. It also introduces this phantom meeting at the very end of the scene that isn’t brought in at the beginning. There’s no real sense of the scene going anywhere.

Because the scene isn’t going anywhere, to be clear. I asked it to write a short scene, and it wrote one. This isn’t part of a bigger story.

Sample of ChatGPT’s Prose

The sidewalk stretched ahead in a long, uneven ribbon, its cracks filled with last night’s rain that still clung in shallow, reflective pools. Each step carried a faint echo, shoes brushing grit and gravel, a soft rhythm against the low hum of the city. A breeze slipped between the buildings, cool and persistent, tugging lightly at clothing and carrying with it the mingled scents of roasted coffee, damp concrete, and something faintly sweet from a bakery just out of sight.

Traffic rolled by in irregular waves—engines idling, tires hissing over wet pavement, the occasional impatient horn slicing through the air. Somewhere above, a window creaked open and a voice drifted down, indistinct but animated, followed by a burst of laughter. Closer at hand, a cyclist sped past, the whir of spinning spokes and the quick click of gears fading almost as soon as it appeared. The world felt layered, each sound weaving into another without ever quite settling.

Passing storefronts offered brief glimpses into other lives: a barista wiping down a counter, a couple leaning close over shared conversation, a flicker of television light in the dim interior of a waiting room. Reflections in the glass shifted with every step, blending the street behind with the spaces inside, so that for a moment it was hard to tell where one ended and the other began.

There was a subtle weight in the air, not quite heavy, but enough to be felt—a reminder of the weather turning or the day slowly leaning toward evening. Shoulders instinctively drew in against the breeze, hands tucked deeper into pockets. And yet there was a quiet steadiness to it all, a sense that the street would keep unfolding, step after step, offering new fragments of sound, light, and motion to anyone willing to keep walking.

ChatGPT’s prose here tells us nothing about the character. It describes the sensory experience of walking in a generic city at night, but there’s no character here. If you look, you can see the threes in this, too. “engines idling, tires hissing over wet pavement, the occasional impatient horn...” and in the next sentence where it also describes three things.

GPT’s has a lot of that liminal element to it. Everything is dreamlike and flickers of something, maybe, but nothing really resolves. You can also see the word “quiet” in here down at the bottom. Also, that ending is a little weird. It sounds poetic, but who would struggle to believe that a road would stay still under their feet unless this was some kind of strange dream a character was having? It doesn’t really go anywhere.

Sample of Grok’s Prose

The late afternoon sun hung low in the sky, casting a warm golden light over the bustling city street as Alex stepped out from the cool shade of the office building. The air was alive with the gentle hum of the evening rush—tires whispering against the asphalt, distant horns blaring in a rhythmic complaint, and the chatter of pedestrians weaving through the crowd like threads in a living tapestry. A light breeze brushed against Alex’s skin, carrying the faint scent of fresh bread from a nearby bakery mixed with the earthy aroma of rain-dampened pavement from an earlier shower. Each step on the uneven sidewalk sent a subtle vibration up through their shoes, a reminder of the city’s constant, unyielding pulse beneath their feet.

As they walked, the world unfolded in layers of sensory detail. Storefronts glowed with inviting neon signs that flickered to life one by one, their soft buzz joining the symphony of urban life. A street musician strummed an acoustic guitar on the corner, his melody weaving through the laughter of a group of friends spilling out from a café, their voices rising and falling in animated conversation. Overhead, the rustle of leaves from a row of young trees danced in the wind, while a flock of pigeons erupted into flight from a park bench, their wings clapping sharply against the air. Alex felt the warmth of the sun on their shoulders, tempered by occasional shadows from passing cyclists who zipped by with a whoosh, leaving behind the faint metallic tang of chain oil.

Deeper into the stroll, the sensations grew more intimate. The rough texture of a brick wall grazed their fingertips as they brushed past a narrow alley, where the echo of dripping water from a fire escape created a steady, almost meditative drip-drip. Children’s playful shouts echoed from a small playground tucked between buildings, mingling with the sizzle of street food vendors flipping skewers on a grill, the savory smoke curling upward and teasing the senses. A sudden gust of wind tugged at Alex’s jacket, cool and invigorating, carrying with it the distant wail of a siren that faded as quickly as it came. In that moment, surrounded by the vibrant chaos, Alex felt both small and connected—a solitary figure moving through the endless flow of the city, alive with every sight, sound, and fleeting touch.

This is my first time intentionally or knowingly reading Grok’s prose, so its voice is a little foreign to me. However, almost immediately we see a triplet (tires whispering, distant horns, chatter of pedestrians). Again, this city is generic and doesn’t really seem like it’s anywhere specific. Grok seems like it uses a lot of the triplets everywhere. It really loves its threes.

The description of the cyclists interests me because Grok is saying that the shadows are contrasting with the warmth. Now, the shadow of a cyclist passing over someone would be faster than most anyone would register it, and chain oil isn’t something most people would notice (even if you are on one). So it’s adding sensory details that sound poetical and lovely but don’t make any actual sense in a human way.

It then describes the sensation as “intimate.” How? What’s intimate about the wall or the sound of the water dripping? This description of the type of sensory information again, sounds meaningful but doesn’t make any sense at all when you dig into it for a moment. It also wraps up the scene much like the other two did, trying to make it a bite that has some kind of impact without context to anything.

Sample of Gemini’s Prose

The morning air was crisp, carrying the sharp, metallic scent of a recent rainfall that still clung to the asphalt. Elias stepped onto the sidewalk, his boots clicking rhythmically against the damp pavement—a steady, grounding beat against the waking city. A sudden gust of wind tugged at his collar, forcing him to hunch his shoulders as a stray chill seeped through his jacket, reminding him that the seasons were officially shifting.

Glancing around, he watched the neighborhood come to life in a blur of motion. A neon sign in a coffee shop window flickered with a persistent, buzzing hum, casting a faint electric-blue glow over the puddles. Across the street, a delivery truck hissed as its air brakes engaged, the sound cutting through the distant low roar of highway traffic. He passed a flower stall where the fragrance of crushed mint and damp soil momentarily overwhelmed the faint smell of exhaust, a small pocket of freshness in the urban sprawl.

As he reached the corner, the sun finally broke through the gray overcast, hitting the glass of the high-rises ahead. The sudden warmth on his face felt like a quiet greeting. He shoved his hands deep into his pockets, feeling the smooth texture of a forgotten receipt and the cold weight of his keys. For a moment, the chaotic symphony of car horns and shouting pedestrians faded into the background, leaving him with the simple, tactile reality of the pavement beneath his feet and the wind against his skin.

Gemini’s prose is interesting and also strange. It describes the scent of rain as “sharp and metallic” which... no? Rain doesn’t smell like that in any context I’ve ever heard. The idea of his shoes being a “grounding beat” also doesn’t make much sense. Was there some other rhythm at work here?

Now, the world wakes up around our POV character, Elias, and we get a flood of sensory information. Most neon signs don’t hum loudly enough to notice unless you’re very close to them, and an “open” sign would definitely be on the inside of the coffee shop, so he’s hearing something inside that isn’t usually audible? This boy is either Spider Man or autistic (which is similar to being Spider Man with fewer webs... but we have spidey senses, let me tell you).

The flower stall again presents sensory information that has no sense. Crushed mint and soil? Usually flower stalls, if they are out in a city, have cut flowers, not potting soil and injured mint. They’re typically trying to sell bouquets of roses or daisies or something. Carnations, maybe. Not dirt and mint.

As with the others (other than Claude) the character has no role in the story here. Elias is just a vehicle to experience sensory information in and not part of this narrative at all until the very end where it again wraps up the scene in a way it’s trying to make into something meaningful.

Sample of Copilot’s Prose

They walk down the street at an unremarkable pace, hands tucked into their pockets as if to anchor themselves to the moment. The pavement is still warm beneath their shoes, holding the day’s heat, and each step sends a faint vibration up their legs. Storefront windows slide past in fragments—reflections of sky, a flash of color from a dress on display, their own face briefly layered over someone else’s life inside.

The air hums with sound. A car passes, tires whispering on asphalt, followed by the quick staccato of a crosswalk signal. Somewhere nearby, a radio plays through an open window, the melody muffled and bent by distance. Snatches of conversation drift by—laughter, a complaint, a name spoken with urgency—never complete, never meant for them, yet momentarily shared.

They catch the smell of coffee and something fried, rich and salty, and their stomach responds before their mind does. A breeze moves down the street and brushes their skin, cool enough to raise a faint shiver along their arms. They feel both present and slightly removed, aware of their own breathing, the steady rhythm of walking, the quiet, comforting fact that for this stretch of sidewalk, there is nowhere else they need to be.

Copilot is the most bare bones (which makes sense since it’s mostly a business-facing LLM). We have some unusual sensory details like steps on the ground making vibrations go up the legs which tells me this person is walking very hard or thinking too much about their feet. Again we see the “whispering on the asphalt” description. I think it might be one of those lines that AI liked and hung onto. Liked of course being relative because it’s a computer.

All four of the AIs also talked about a breeze, too. An interesting note. And it again tries to wrap this up into something it feels like is meaningful, landing on an emotional beat.

Human-Written Prose (me)

For contrast to the above samples, which kind of melt into one another (a feature of AI writing), I wanted to give you a short snipped of a character of mine walking down a street to show you the difference.

Snow limped down the street, leaning on her cane as she made her way from the V.A. to the bus station. Spring was in that weird spot where you needed a coat in the morning and evening, but afternoon could go either way. Or you’d be poured on. There was no in between. New England was fun like that.

As she walked, she scanned the crowd, casually identifying threats or not-threats, making people into categories. It was a habit she probably should get rid of but hadn’t really worked on. She’d spent so long overseas that she did it without thinking. Most people were placed firmly in the “harmless but annoying” category, but one caught her attention. A man was tucked into an alleyway and definitely watching for something. She guessed a drug deal.

Her hip ached, and Snow paused, stretching the bad leg. Someone behind her made an annoyed noise. The large, angry bastard in a coat that proudly identified him as a fan of the Patriots stomped around her, muttering under his breath. Like she’d personally wronged him somehow by stopping. Yeah, how dare the cripple be slow, she thought. Miss the cane, somehow? Sure, the word was a slur, but she was only applying it to herself, so she didn’t censor it. She was bitter enough about the results of her latest MRI to feel like it fit. They’d found more damage, an increasing amount of arthritis, and warned her that if she didn’t slow down, she was going to end up in a wheel chair.

How the fuck was she supposed to slow down? She didn’t know. Her life was boring as hell anyway. Slow down. Please. Any slower, and she’d be standing still.

In contrast to the AI, I don’t give as much sensory information here other than mentioning the time of year and how that plays into clothing choices. I mostly focus on the people and interactions with them and have something happen to interact with. There’s also far more character to the POV character since, well… she’s a person, and her experience of the world is what we’re reading here, not just descriptions of the setting. The details given are ones that Snow is paying attention to (the people, mostly) rather than just generic ideas of the world.

Now that you’ve seen all of this side-by-side…

In Closing

I’m not going to try and hoist anyone up and play Vlad the Impaler with people who use AI. That’s not what the point of this article is. It can be difficult to distinguish AI from human writing because it was trained on human writing. Making accusations of AI usage is a dicey thing and might well result in witch hunts against innocent people.

All that said, I think it’s important for us to start to distinguish between them because AI writing is coming more and more to the forefront. I’m subscribed to a lot of newsletters, and many of them went from hearing my friends’ voices to hearing AI-generated versions of them. The content might be the same, but the voice is definitely not theirs. That fact saddens me because it’s taken their rich, real selves and flattened them down into cardboard cutouts that look like them but aren’t. It feels like going from having a real conversation over coffee to trying to talk to one of those automated phone tree messages. It’s voiced by a person, maybe, but it sure as hell isn’t something you want to spend time hanging out with.

Recognizing what is human writing and what is AI writing can also help us identify what outlets are worth listening to. More and more of social media is being deluged in AI-generated opinion pieces based on dubious (if any) facts and posed as authoritative. They often sound very much like they know what they’re saying, too. They can mimic the certainty of a real expert if not the actual expertise.

What that means is we need to be more vigilant than ever when reading content or considering what we see in the world. While AI can be a useful tool, it often comes to the wrong conclusions or hallucinates information, so it cannot be relied upon in those ways. If something is generated by AI and sounds like AI, we need to examine it more closely for factual reality or dismiss it entirely.

We need to be discerning in today’s age, and it is my hope that this article has started the process of helping you learn how to identify human and machine writing. Like I said, my goal here isn’t to hunt anybody down or catch people in “gotcha” moments. That doesn’t help anyone and can hurt a lot of innocent authors who aren’t, in fact, using AI. Call-out culture can be really toxic like that. Instead, I am hoping that you will use these tools to do some digging into the media you consume and know who—or what—wrote it so you can make decisions about what you believe and engage with.

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This coming week I’m finishing up a heavy edit and have a bunch of meetings this week and last. In addition, there have been several excitements at my church. We had a pipe burst in our fire suppression system which has caused a great deal of water damage to the building that houses our childcare facility. As a result, we’ve had a bunch of emails and such flying around to navigate. The childcare facility is a public kindergarten and childcare center, so obviously that is causing us some headaches (and the community some headaches).

I’ll be back to posting this week, but that and a few other emergencies took up all my bandwidth last week, so I didn’t get anything written.

Unpaid labor takes up a lot of our energy, our time, and our focus. We’ve talked about how the unpaid labor associated with being a public figure can draw a lot out of us — how emails and engagements and not having good boundaries can create an environment where we don’t have any energy left at all for ourselves. Those are real. And at the same time, we cannot just delete unpaid labor. Our job isn’t to get rid of it entirely. We’re never going to — and expecting ourselves to is an unfair and unrealistic expectation. Instead, we need to be making conscious choices about it.

The Labor That’s Unavoidable

There is a fair amount of labor that’s not paid that is really just structural to our jobs. I’m not going to get paid for responding to emails, but if I don’t respond to my emails, I’m not going to have clients anymore. I have to respond to those emails. I have to market my books. I have to market my editing services. I can’t just not. It’s built into our jobs as authors and editors and other creatives.

What we can control are things like our habits, our defaults, whether or not we identify things in ourselves, whether or not we listen to ourselves when we’re saying, “hey, we need a break.” That’s the kind of stuff we can change. We can’t change the reality of whether or not we need to do a thing necessarily, but we can change our relationship to it.

That means identifying what unpaid labor we have to keep—like answering emails—and what we can let go of.

Marketing, for instance, is unfortunately part of the framework of your author house. You can’t just stop marketing because then nobody knows you exist and you don’t sell books. We might not get paid for it, but it’s absolutely necessary. But how much? How do we find ways to make it more efficient for ourselves? Are there ways we can automate using Zapier or other methods?

I know AI is a hot button topic, but I will be completely transparent: I use it in an agentic manner. “Agentic” here meaning I use it to help me organize things. I use it to help me look at my schedule. I use it to help me make sense of project scope and organize what I need to do and when I need to do it because I, as an autistic person, struggle really hard with executive function. And that unpaid labor of having to do all that organizational stuff was killing me. I now use Claude for that.

I don’t use it to write my stuff for me. I don’t use it to edit anything for me. Everything you hear me say, all of the words that come out—those are all me. But it allows me to organize things, to say, “hey, go post these videos using Zapier.” I can use it to schedule a meeting with XYZ—just copy-paste the details out of an email, and it’ll go do it for me. That kind of thing is incredibly helpful for my brain. I have also begun using it to transcribe my videos which means I can do the article and video combo without as much exhaustion. And that’s what you’re reading here. The words ARE mine, and I have reviewed it, but I used the transcription to create the article.

Chosen Labor vs. Assumed Labor

We often assume things are necessary when we do them. I know realistically that I don’t need to respond to every email I get within an hour of getting it. I can absolutely close my work email and things can wait until the next business day. (Most of the time.)

That means I can push unpaid labor out of my relaxing space. I’ve recently been playing video games again—that unwind time is showing real benefits in my ability to do my work.

Chosen labor, on the other hand, is different than assumed labor. I do a lot of unpaid but chosen labor. For example, I do a lot of mentorship. I love doing it. It is incredibly rewarding for me. I don’t make money off of it, typically, but it really aligns with my values and it gives something back to me: getting to watch the people I’m mentoring grow and develop and become more skilled. It feels good.

I also help run the Neurodivergent Writers’ Lounge over on Facebook. There’s a Neurodivergent Editors’ Lounge too. None of the admin team gets paid for that. And yet we do it because we love it and it gives something back to us. It’s valuable unpaid work—not something that takes from us because we’re assuming we have to do it, but something I’m choosing to do because I love it, and it fits with things that matter to me.

For example, you’ll notice that this podcast is now every other week, and I’m focusing more on my written articles for my paid folks on Substack. Not because I don’t care about everybody—because I do. But I also need to focus on things that have the best return on investment. I can hammer out an article much faster than I can write, script, film, and edit one of these. As much as I enjoy this podcast, it doesn’t earn me money technically. It’s unpaid labor—but it’s unpaid labor I’m choosing to do, and that I think is important. I’m putting boundaries around it that make sense for me and don’t ask more than I can deliver.

This podcast for me is largely a labor of love. I love talking to you. I love sharing all of this information. I love connecting with people in the comments. I do this because I think it can genuinely help people. It matches my values. AUTHORiTEA started out as Thirteen Cents Short, a blog that I had for many, many years, back when I first started publishing in 2008. About a year ago I decided to become AUTHORiTEA, because Thirteen Cents Short was a fun name, but nobody understood it except me, and I kind of grew out of it. AUTHORiTEA is the kind of silly, unhinged pun that I’m known for—and it works because I am something of an authority figure in publishing and I like literal tea and “spilling the tea.”

I am choosing to do this. I’ve been doing some version of this for almost 20 years under various names. It is work, but it’s work I find rewarding and that is part of my values.

That’s the kind of thing I want you to assess. If you have something you’re doing, something that means something to you, something you find valuable and meaningful—keep that thing. Talking about unpaid labor and identifying the ways it can eat up our energy doesn’t mean we have to delete all of it. It just means we need to be honest in our accounting with ourselves and with each other.

The Three Filters: Values, Capacity, and Season

All of this comes down to deciding what we want to carry. There are three filters that will help you decide whether or not to take on an unpaid thing.

The first filter: Values. Does this support my values—the things I hold dear in the core of me?

I call myself, not so jokingly, the “3am friend.” For a lot of people, I am the person they have on speed dial for when something has really gone off the rails at a ridiculous hour of the night, because I will answer them. Being the 3am friend supports my values because I believe that nobody should be alone in those time periods if I can help it. Because I’ve been alone in those time periods. I’ve been the person who had nobody at 3am many times in my life. I choose to be the person they can call because I know what it’s like to not have someone. Unpaid labor, but that’s part of my values.

The second filter: Capacity. Do I have the ability to do this right now?

I’ve had people come to me with projects that I thought were valuable and important and meaningful that I just couldn’t do because I did not have the ability to do that right then. There were a million reasons why I wasn’t be able to do the thing no matter how important or valuable or necessary I saw it as. It wasn’t a referendum on the quality of the project—I just couldn’t.

The third filter: Season. Am I at a point in life where I can do this thing?

Am I in a season where I can take on a project for somebody that I know is really important—not just in terms of having space on my schedule, but in terms of whether this project or job is going to be more rewarding than destructive?

Those three filters will help you determine whether or not an unpaid thing is really something you want to choose to do.

My mentorship is a perfect example. My values: Mentoring people absolutely is in my values. I believe wholeheartedly in teaching people and pulling them up with me and helping folks grow and develop and be the best possible author, editor, person, fencer, whatever it is they can be. My capacity: sometimes I do or don’t have it, depending on the individual and what they need. And my season: I have been editing for almost 20 years. I am now the wise old man on the mountain for a lot of people, particularly those just starting out. I’m absolutely in the season of my career where mentorship makes sense. So mentorship fits all of those filters.

“No” Is a Complete Sentence

If those filters don’t line up, we have to consider what “no” might look like. No can be: “I’m not answering that email right now.” No can be: “I’m sorry, I can’t take on this project right now. I’m at capacity.” No can be: “I can’t do this, but I know somebody who might be able to help you.”

Saying no is important. I’m still learning how to say it, so I understand that it is uncomfortable and it can be frightening and it can be stressful. It is also entirely necessary. No is a complete sentence.

None of this process has to be done immediately. It will take time and practice and effort. Do it in pieces. Start with the low-cost items — like not responding to emails after hours. One part of your life, one part of your work, piece by piece.

I am competent. I know that sounds like a humble brag, but when you are highly competent, it becomes in many ways a burden. People tend to lean on you because you know what you’re doing, so they can hand you things. And then they pile more and more and more on your plate. I’ve had to say “I’m not doing that just because I’m probably the best person to.” It’s been hard. But you don’t have to volunteer for a thing. And if you get voluntold, you can say “I really appreciate you thinking of me. However…”

Good Enough Is Enough

Perfectionism is something I struggle with. I have major issues around being perceived as not having done something perfectly—a problem I am working on in therapy.

There is a lot of assumed labor that lives in the gap between something being sufficiently done and something being perfect. The difference between “I have made dinner, it is on plates, my family is eating it” and “I have made dinner, it is plated perfectly like a restaurant, and I have garnished it”. The one where people have food on their plates and are eating it is enough. The garnishing? Not necessary. Not really.

Embracing “good enough” protects your energy for the next project, or even just the next thing you have to do today. As a disabled person, I have many times spent all of my energy trying to make something perfect that didn’t need to be perfect, and then I couldn’t even do “good enough” on anything else that needed to get done that day.

Good enough also means you’re not overworking the project, not trying to gild the lily. If I’m building a bookshelf, it holding my books is plenty. It doesn’t need to be painted like a Renaissance painting. It just needs to hold my books.

And when it comes to writing, perfect is never achievable. You’re never going to have the perfect book. I can pull any book from any Big Five publisher—books by many New York Times bestselling names—off my shelves and find a missing comma, or a word I’d have chosen differently. That does not make it a bad book. The book is phenomenal. It just is phenomenal with a missing comma. It doesn’t matter. Not that much, anyway.

Good enough also protects the reader (or your client). Readers will actually get a book, whereas if we are forever trying to make it perfect, they will never get the book. Clients get the manuscript rather than watching me tinker with it for 500 years. It’s imperfect, but it’s done — and done is more useful than perfect.

Letting Go Without Grand Announcements

When we decide what we’re keeping and what we’re getting rid of, we’re going to have to make some exits. Some of those don’t require an announcement. Some do.

I didn’t announce that I’m going to every other week with this podcast. I probably should have, but I didn’t. However, I didn’t see anybody with pitchforks and torches outside, so I’ll count that as a win.

You can do things in small adjustments—getting people used to you not responding to a work email after 5pm or on weekends. My clients know I generally don’t respond much after 5pm and generally don’t respond much on weekends. Most people don’t really expect me to. And if they do, then they might not be working with the right person.

You can also let the email sit, let the text message wait, let the Instagram message chill out for a bit, let the comments not be answered for a couple of days. Those are all things that don’t require a great deal of adjustment, announcements, or kerfuffle.

Finally, on this subject, not every project has to be finished. Sometimes you can just be done with it. The number of unfinished knitting and crochet projects and sketches I have lying around is ridiculous. Some of them I’m actually going to finish, and some of them I’ve made peace with. I got what I needed to get out of them. Sometimes a sketch study is just throwing ideas down and the thing doesn’t need to be rendered or completed. It did its job. Sometimes my craft project’s job is to be a fidget while I do other things. And that is absolutely a valid job for it.

Boundaries Are Not Failure Points

The boundaries we’re creating around our time and our energy and our unpaid labor—these are not because there’s some kind of failure involved. We don’t need to be defensive of the fact that we need to have boundaries, because we’re humans. People have needs.

And that lack of apology for having reasonable boundaries is something that a lot of folks who are AFAB deal with—and a lot of people in general—because our limits are considered something worthy of apology a lot of the time. The apology piece: we don’t owe anybody an apology for not doing labor we’re not being compensated to do, or haven’t volunteered to do.

You’re not less successful because you are choosing not to answer email on weeknights and want to play D&D with your friends. There are times when we just say no and don’t apologize for it. And that’s important.

We’re also going to need to keep saying no. I really wish you could just set a limit once and never have to do it again. It is exhausting—I’m struggling with it myself. Having to constantly reinforce boundaries and say no consistently when people keep trying to step over them—it’s hard. It’s very hard.

The Question I Want to Leave You With

Is there something that you’ve been carry with you that you didn’t choose to pick up on your own? Is there something you’ve been dragging around that just kind of got shoved onto you—that you’re like, “I didn’t choose this, but I’m carrying it anyway”?

What might it look like if you put it down?

You don’t have to put it down today. But identify the thing and think about: is this something I could put down? What might it look like if I did? What would it feel like?

That’s the evaluation I want you to make on some of these unpaid labor pieces. Being honest in our accounting with ourselves — that’s the distinction. That’s the work.

Also, around 2:30 (as I’m writing this), I’ve developed a migraine. I had horrible b…

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We are currently living in a time when every new issue becomes a “cal…

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Given how I view the work I do, I also consider, deeply the realities of the trust I share with authors. And it shapes the entire way I approach editorial relationships, how I treat my clients, and how I work with them.

This trust is a thing that I have put a lot of thought and emotion into. As I’ve mentioned, I view the act of writing as sacred, and that’s coming from someone who is working on ordination to become a minister.

To be clear here, the way I’m defining sacred is, yes, in a way the religious sense but also as something set apart, valued, and important. However, to me, creativity is the spark of divine in people. That we see something or experience something and have to turn to the arts we have to share that with others? Sacred. That’s one of the reasons I find the use of AI to shortcut the process so offensive. I described it as someone dipping my communion wafer in piss and claiming it’s wine. And why it upsets me so much when someone attempts to lie to me about its use.

Understanding this about me, it’s no wonder that I treat editing as handling someone’s soul gently. While, yes, of course there’s the mechanical reality of commas and dialogue tags and whether or not quotation marks are curly, straight (or sometimes even backwards), when I am working on someone’s words, I feel a responsibility there to treat them with kindness.

Authors deserve to know that their book is handled by someone who genuinely loves it. Even if I don’t always love the story or the characters of every work I am editing, I love the creativity, I love the author, and I love the work. Even when it’s hard or painful. This love doesn’t mean I don’t deserve a fair wage, of course, but I bring that deep passion into what I do because it’s one of the ways I tend the souls and hearts of people around me.

Yes, editing is a business decision. Yes, publishing is work. All of that is accurate and true. It doesn’t lessen the fact that it is still sacred to me.

As an aside, if you’re interested in seeing me preach this coming Sunday for Palm Sunday, it’ll be live on YouTube at 10am Eastern: https://www.youtube.com/@londonderry_presbyterianchurch