"Embrace The Suck" Is A Philosophy For Writers To Live By

If you've been part of the American armed forces, know someone who has been, or if you're a sucker for iconic phrases, you've likely heard, "Embrace The Suck." Popularized in the early 2000s during America's activities in Iraq, the phrase has a rather simple meaning that can alter one's mental battlefield. In short, this phrase tells you, "You are going to have to do things that are hard. Things you don't want to do. Things that suck. But rather than fleeing back from it, or trying to lean away from this necessity, embrace the nature of the suck. This thing will be hard, it will be awful, and it might be traumatizing... but you have to fucking do it to get the job done."

This attitude is why you see people tackling the hardest, least-forgiving parts of a gym routine with energy and gusto. It's why you see people putting in long hours on a job site with a smile on their face and a cup of coffee in-hand. And if you're a writer, embracing the suck can be life-changing for how you engage with your work.

Editing... hell yeah!

Before we get into the nitty gritty this week, don't forget to sign up for my weekly newsletter to get all my updates right in your inbox. Lastly, to be sure you're following all of my followables, check out my LinkTree!

Lastly, don't forget to check out my Vocal archive for additional fiction, articles, explorations of weird history, and more!

The Craft Is Often A Slog... Don't Shy Away From That!

The title of my recent blog, A Majority of Making Art is Boring and Tedious (And You Need To Get Used To That) really says it all. However, if you find yourself losing enthusiasm, getting frustrated, or worst of all attempting to start a new manuscript because it feels like the old one is getting bogged down, consider stepping back and embracing the suck. Acknowledge to yourself that no, writing this scene won't be fun because it's just a piece of connective tissue in your story. No, you aren't going to have a blast conducting the third editorial pass of this book, but it has to be done.

And so on, and so forth.

All right... only way out is through.

Embracing the suck is, at its core, about acknowledging the hard things that have to be done. It's that moment when the rubber hits the road, and everything seems way more difficult than training or experience led you to believe it would be. And it is the attitude that cringing away, putting it off, or trying to avoid it won't help... so you embrace it! You drive yourself forward, jump with both feet, and do the job with all the enthusiasm you can muster.

Because at the end of the day, it's better to fully commit to what you're doing than to mince about with it. Your results will be better, you'll make more progress, and overall the job will get done faster than if you'd tried to just skip the parts of it you don't like.

Embracing the suck is not about not being thoughtful or methodical in your plotting. It's not about just slapping words down on the page until you hit a goal. It's not about just doing something instead of doing nothing. It's about acknowledging that the way you think about writing a story or a book often bears no resemblence to how it actually happens. That process is long, difficult, frustrating, and filled with tedious double-checking and annoying revisions to make sure all the facts of your plot line up properly.

Even if it's long, annoying, and dumb, though, you have to do it. And it's a lot easier to do it if you commit to doing it, and you shove forward no matter how much it sucks.

Support The Literary Mercenary

If you want to see me produce more work, consider some of the following options!

- My Facebook

- My Blue Sky

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- My Weekly Newsletter

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- My Rumble Channel (longer videos that won't show up on YouTube)

And if you happen to have some spare dosh lying around, and you want to be sure my supply doesn't run low, consider become a Patreon patron, or leaving a tip by Buying Me a Ko-Fi!

Also, if you're curious about how to write for tabletop RPGs, don't forget to check out my show Tabletop Mercenary, which you can find on both the Azukail Games channel, as well as my Rumble channel listed above!

Like, Follow, and Come Back Again!

That's all for this week's Craft of Writing! For more of my work, check out my Vocal archive, or at My Amazon Author Page where you can find books like my sci-fi dystopian thriller Old Soldiers, the Hardboiled Cat series about a mystery solving Maine Coon in Marked Territory and Painted Cats, my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife, or my most recent short story collection The Rejects!

 

And to stay on top of all my latest news and releases, collected once a week, make sure you subscribe to The Literary Mercenary's mailing list. 

If you'd like to help support my work, then consider Buying Me A Ko-Fi, or heading over to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page! Lastly, to keep up with my latest, follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and now on Pinterest as well!

"Just Write Another Book" Is Not A Marketing Strategy

 If you spend any amount of time on writing forums, social media pages dedicated to helping writers, or if you go to writing and fiction conventions, you are bound to see an old head out there who is giving the same advice to every, single marketing-related question out there. And like so many pieces of advice, it might look good on the surface, until you stop and think about it. That advice

"The best advertisement for your current book is your next book!"

This might sound good. It might feel motivating to you. If you just keep writing, then success will eventually come your way! However, in the modern day where we're trying to write and sell books, it's pure horseshit... worse, it can make you dig yourself into a hole that you can't dig out of.

Take an entire spoonful of salt whenever you hear this.

Before we get into the nitty gritty this week, don't forget to sign up for my weekly newsletter to get all my updates right in your inbox. Lastly, to be sure you're following all of my followables, check out my LinkTree!

Lastly, don't forget to check out my Vocal archive for additional fiction, articles, explorations of weird history, and more! And, of course, check me out on Blue Sky, since that's what we're talking about today!

Some Reasons They Say This

The reason this advice always seems to come from older folks is that this advice was sort of viable when many of them started their writing careers. If you were a novelist several decades ago, for example, it wasn't uncommon for you to receive an advance on your book if you had a mid-sized or larger publisher. So even if you never sold a copy, or you only sold enough copies to cover your advance, you still got paid. Not only that, but you got paid when you handed in the manuscript and it was approved for going into production. So if you were a good writer with a fast turnaround, you could (at least in theory) earn yourself a pretty fat check at least once a year for a new book, even if your last book was sagging in sales. And if you did that often enough, usually royalties would start stacking up sooner or later.

Additionally, a lot of them come from an era where the marketing landscape was very different than today. Some of the really old writers (or those who worked with major publishers), actually had companies that marketed their books on their behalf. They would set authors up with interviews in magazines, or on radio and TV shows. They would run ads for new books, and ensure that periodicals talking about new releases mentioned their books. And even writers who only go back a few decades into the 90s remember a time when you could have a newsletter with a few thousand people on it, or a mildly active social media presence, and that ensured you had a vibrant, growing fan base. It wasn't a full time job that got in the way of you actually working on your next manuscript.

And in those worlds, yeah, adding a new title into the mix might just be what you needed to stir up the waters, and get people coming back to you. But not only do those worlds not exist anymore, writing another book was never a viable plan for selling something you already have on the market.

Why It's Full of Shit

Firstly, we need to talk about the gambler's fallacy. For those who aren't familiar with it, the idea is that if an event has happened less frequently in the past than average, then surely it will occur more frequently in the future to balance out the odds. Put another way, if your current book should have sold well according to projections, but didn't, then surely your next book will overperform, and that will be a net positive for you!

Unfortunately, it's a fallacy. If your odds of a book being successful are 1 in 10,000, and your first book didn't come up a winner, the odds for your second book aren't any better. More to the point, though, even if your second book does sell better, there's no guarantee that anyone who reads your second book will go back and buy your first book. So you could follow this advice, write a really successful second book, and then the needle doesn't budge at all for titles you already have in your archive.

More to the point, though, you already have a book you're trying to sell!

I need sales NOW, not in 1-3 years!

At the end of the day, this whole idea of writing another book to get attention on your first book is just hope. That's all it is. There's no data to back it up, there's no numbers to it, it's just a piece of homespun wisdom that worked out for a handful of people, so they decided to keep touting it. And even if it didn't work for them, they know it worked for other people, so clearly it's a, "60% of the time it works every time," kind of situation.

A real marketing strategy is a plan. It has steps, it has verifiable things you can do, and most importantly it is focused on selling the book you already wrote and have available on the market!

Some aspects of an actual marketing strategy might include things like:

- Run a digital giveaway to get attention on the title.

- Buying limited Amazon ads the first month of release.

- Getting your book into the hands of reviewers who will tell their audiences about it.

- Plugging it on social media, in blogs, or in videos that you make.

- Bringing the book to conventions, particularly if you are going to be on panels as an author.

Now, there is no guarantee that these steps will make your book a bestseller either. Perhaps the convention you go to is a bust, and the audience just isn't into your genre. Maybe your Amazon ads target the wrong keywords, or your book came out at a time when there was a boycott on. Maybe the reviewers you picked didn't like your book, or their audiences had a lukewarm response. Maybe the social media algorithm suppressed your signal so only a handful of your friends and family actually saw you post about your new book.

Nothing is guaranteed. However, think of your marketing plan as the cheese cloth method. While there are gaps in every individual layer, the more layers you have, the more likely you are to have some kind of success. Because each thing you do is likely ro reach someone, and if you reach enough someones, then your book will find an audience who will buy it, review it, and talk about it with their friends.

None of this is to say that you shouldn't get to work on writing your next book, or working on your next project, as soon as possible. But acknowledge that if you didn't do the marketing for your first book, writing a second book that you aren't going to do the marketing for just looks like you're doubling down on a losing proposal.

Support The Literary Mercenary

If you want to see me produce more work, consider some of the following options!

- My Facebook

- My Blue Sky

- My LinkTree

- My Weekly Newsletter

- The Azukail Games YouTube Channel (where I contribute video content)

- My Rumble Channel (longer videos that won't show up on YouTube)

And if you happen to have some spare dosh lying around, and you want to be sure my supply doesn't run low, consider become a Patreon patron, or leaving a tip by Buying Me a Ko-Fi!

Also, if you're curious about how to write for tabletop RPGs, don't forget to check out my show Tabletop Mercenary, which you can find on both the Azukail Games channel, as well as my Rumble channel listed above!

Like, Follow, and Come Back Again!

That's all for this week's Business of Writing! For more of my work, check out my Vocal archive, or at My Amazon Author Page where you can find books like my sci-fi dystopian thriller Old Soldiers, the Hardboiled Cat series about a mystery solving Maine Coon in Marked Territory and Painted Cats, my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife, or my most recent short story collection The Rejects!

 

And to stay on top of all my latest news and releases, collected once a week, make sure you subscribe to The Literary Mercenary's mailing list. 

A Majority of Making Art Is Boring and Tedious (And You Need To Get Used To That)

We've all experience that New Relationship Energy. You know, when everything is fresh, and new, and every day is full of discovery and excitement? Sometimes that energy lasts for a couple of weeks. Sometimes it sticks around for a few months, or in some cases for a year or so. However, that heady sensation eventually passes. When it does we face a choice; seek out that same high somewhere else, or commit to where we are right now, and work on actively building the relationship we're already part of.

A lot of people talk about how it feels like the spark died. About how the color went out of things. They pine for the days when everything was new, and exciting... but they overlook an important truth. A majority of what makes relationships work isn't extreme chemical reactions, and potent attraction; it's commitment. It's adjusting your life to one another's eccentricities, it's doing chores when they need done, it's finding solutions to problems so you can both live easier lives. It isn't sexy, and it often isn't fun, but it's the thing you need to do in order to build a life.

Now use this as a metaphor for art, and how it's made.

Most of it is blood, sweat, and tears, instead of glitter and rainbows.

Before we get into the nitty gritty this week, don't forget to sign up for my weekly newsletter to get all my updates right in your inbox. Lastly, to be sure you're following all of my followables, check out my LinkTree!

Lastly, don't forget to check out my Vocal archive for additional fiction, articles, explorations of weird history, and more!

The Results Are Sexy (The Process Isn't)

Making art in all its forms, whether it's plotting a story, conceptualizing a podcast, painting a painting, getting ready to animate something, and so on, and so forth, often have a New Relationship Energy phase as well. After all, when the idea or concept is fresh it's got a power and pull that can be compelling and exciting. You're going through the early stages building a world, or sketching out a rough idea, figuring out how you're going to turn it into a reality, all of that.

But the longer the process goes on, the less of that initial excitement there's going to be. Oh you'll still have moments where you come up with a really great turn of phrase that you're proud of, or you figure out a solution to a sound effect that was giving you problems, but between that whirlwind of Initial Excitement and Project Completion you just have a long stretch of Execution.

And Execution isn't fun. It isn't sexy. It isn't glamorous. It's the artistic equivalent of doing the dishes, throwing in the laundry, putting the baby down for a nap, walking the dog, and all the other necessary chores you have to do. It's boring... but if you don't do it, the art doesn't get made.

Consider this video essay I made for the Azukail Games YouTube channel (which you should go subscribe to if you haven't yet). Now, when I first had the idea of how to fix the evil corporate antagonist that is Pentex, it really set my brain on fire. It merged with all the knowledge I had of history, and I immediately thought of several really fun things that could be done with it. Even writing the script for the video essay was pretty fun, since it was only about 4,000 words and change, and I got to dive down several historical rabbit holes throughout the process.

You know the part that wasn't fun, though? Sitting in front of my screen for something like 16 hours to assemble all the disparate parts of this video essay. Because I had to find all the video clips, make all the title screens, assemble everything to transition at just the right times, and add in all the effects I wanted, while trying to make it all look seamless.

And that is the part where so many people give up.

Whether it's picking up the brush and making the thousands of strokes to bring a painting to completion, or taking a certain space of time to add a few hundred (or a few thousand) words to a document every day, or editing a little more of a big video on your days off, so many people give up when they reach the actual art stage of making art. Some of them do it for a while, but then they miss the spark when it was new. They miss that excitement, and the rush they had when they were playing in a sandbox, or handling a steaming hot, completely fresh idea that captivated them.

Too many people out there think that making art is all frenetic energy and manic excitement, with furious typing or being seized in the grip of the muse for hours or days on-end. And that really isn't how a majority of the process happens for most people who make art. There's some of that in the beginning, absolutely, and little fits of it here and there as we hit different snags or challenges, or we get to pieces of the project we were really looking forward to. But most of the time, making art is just a boring ass grind where we put one word, one brush stroke, or one more sound effect in front of the other until the job's done.

To return to my favorite metaphor, it's like following an exercise routine. Nobody gets absolutely shredded, completely built, or able to lift hundreds of pounds overnight. But no matter how impressive the results are (whether in terms of power, endurance, or just aesthetic), everyone who achieves their fitness goals had to put in the hours to get them there. And some of those days might have been fun. Some of those workouts might have given them an endorphin rush. Most of it, though? It's just putting the fuel into the machine, and getting in the reps and steps until you're that much closer to the goal.

The end result is amazing! But getting there? It's just grind.

And I'm saying this because so many people think art is supposed to be this inspired thing that just flows through you, just like how so many people think that love (or at least relationships) are supposed to be effortless, that things should just come naturally, and if you have to work at it that's a sign that your relationship is dying. In truth, that's just the way all of these things happen.

Being able to work through that grind, and to find meaning and purpose in it, and to find the discipline to watch the end result take shape... that's what separates artists in any field from people who are just pissing about. So remember that when you start getting bored, and wondering why this feels like work.

Because the simple reason is art is work. No matter how skilled you are, no matter how hot your creativity burns, forcing something to transition from an electrical impulse in your mind into a completed, finished thing is work. Period.

Support The Literary Mercenary

If you want to see me produce more work, consider some of the following options!

- My Facebook

- My Blue Sky

- My LinkTree

- My Weekly Newsletter

- The Azukail Games YouTube Channel (where I contribute video content)

- My Rumble Channel (longer videos that won't show up on YouTube)

And if you happen to have some spare dosh lying around, and you want to be sure my supply doesn't run low, consider become a Patreon patron, or leaving a tip by Buying Me a Ko-Fi!

Also, if you're curious about how to write for tabletop RPGs, don't forget to check out my show Tabletop Mercenary, which you can find on both the Azukail Games channel, as well as my Rumble channel listed above!

Like, Follow, and Come Back Again!

That's all for this week's Craft of Writing! For more of my work, check out my Vocal archive, or at My Amazon Author Page where you can find books like my sci-fi dystopian thriller Old Soldiers, the Hardboiled Cat series about a mystery solving Maine Coon in Marked Territory and Painted Cats, my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife, or my most recent short story collection The Rejects!

 

And to stay on top of all my latest news and releases, collected once a week, make sure you subscribe to The Literary Mercenary's mailing list. 

If you'd like to help support my work, then consider Buying Me A Ko-Fi, or heading over to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page! Lastly, to keep up with my latest, follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and now on Pinterest as well!

It Is Exhausting To Always Be Hustling

"I respect the hustle, but why are you posting in so many places? I swear all I can see in my timeline is the stuff you're sharing."

This is a question I have been asked dozens of times over the years on nearly every social media platform I utilize. I've been messaged it on Facebook, Reddit, and once or twice I've even had people call me out on MeWe, and every time they start it with the same sentiment. They respect the amount of work I'm putting in, but why am I promoting my work in so many places?

I should think the answer is obvious, but just in case folks don't know, it's because I want people to see it, read/watch it, buy copies, and perhaps follow me to get more updates.

That's it. That's the whole reason. And let me tell you right now that it... is... exhausting that not only do creators have to be constantly on the grind like this, but that people will look at what we're doing and then deadass ask us why we're grinding so hard.

Because we have bills to pay, and not enough fans. We are poor. It's not that deep.

I don't know why this is so confusing to so many people.

Before we get into the nitty gritty this week, don't forget to sign up for my weekly newsletter to get all my updates right in your inbox. Lastly, to be sure you're following all of my followables, check out my LinkTree!

Lastly, don't forget to check out my Vocal archive for additional fiction, articles, explorations of weird history, and more! And, of course, check me out on Blue Sky, since that's what we're talking about today!

If I Didn't Have To Do This, I Wouldn't Be!

Again, to answer the obvious, the only reason creators post so much about their work is because we need to. No one, and I mean no one, is making self-promotion posts for the fun of it. For a majority of us, if we could just hole up in our studios and work on our projects, collect a check, and never have to engage with the public except for occasional interviews and cryptic forum posts once a year, that's what we would do.

While I can't give details for other creators, I can tell folks that I spend hours every day making promotional posts. Every day I go through Reddit, Facebook, MeWe, Bluesky, and I try to go through the comment section on YouTube, attempting to share, boost engagement, and get opinions from my audience. I make probably between 50 and 100+ posts a day, and that's just enough to get noticed by a handful of people. And while that eats up a lot of time, it also devours a lot of my energy for the day, because even a relatively mindless activity still takes time and effort to get through.

But "the hustle" as so many folks refer to trying to blast my signal across social media loudly enough to overcome the algorithm, is the backbone of my earnings. I could write dozens of books and hundreds of TTRPG guides, but if I don't tell anyone, no one is going to find them and buy them.

For example, did you see this one drop last weekend?

On those days where either a particular social media site is down, or when my Internet connection isn't working, I get so much more work done because it gives me back 3-4 hours a day I can use to write short stories, expand adventure modules, work on scripts for my podcast, record and edit videos and audio dramas, or any of the dozen other things I have deadlines for.

This is where the reality of being a professional creative, and the perception people have of the profession, deviate. Because it does not matter at the end of the day how much stuff I (or anyone else) creates. It matters what we sell. So if no one is watching, reading, or buying, we don't get paid, and that can very quickly turn into a death spiral for our careers.

I talked about this very thing a while back on Tabletop Mercenary over on the Azukail Games YouTube channel, and it was a truth that a lot of people didn't want to hear.

Active Audience Members Reduce The Need For The Hustle

As I said back in You Can't Make A Living Doing That? Says Who!?, an active audience makes a world of difference to any creator. Because even a relatively small number of active supports can be what makes or breaks a creator's career. And just so we're all on the same page, an active supporter is someone who interacts with a creator's content, and who does their best to deliberately support said creator. That might mean they leave them a tip every now and again, it might mean they support them on Patreon, or it could mean they buy that creator's merch whether it be tee shirts and hoodies, or books and TTRPG supplements. Alternatively, it could be people who read free articles which still pay the creator, who watch YouTube videos, and who follow on social media, share posts around, and leave comments of at least 7 words (since the algorithm has decided that's the big number).

Just to throw some numbers at you, let's say I had 500 people who wanted to actively support me. What kind of benefit would that be?

- $500 a month in Patreon/Ko-Fi earnings ($1 per supporter) would mean I could easily and reliably pay my portion of the rent with no sweating (and it would be an increase of nearly $300 in what I pull in every month). And if those supporters wanted to do $2 a month? Holy damn would I have a massive weight off my shoulders!

- 500 novel sales per month would be roughly $1,000 in royalties. And given that I have 4 novels and 2 short story collections on the market, those 500 supporters could easily earn me $6,000 or more over the course of half a year just buying 1 book a month... something that, for a lot of folks, isn't that big of a cost.

- 500 people reading 1 article per day on my Vocal.media archive would net me 15,000 additional reads... and at $6 per 1K reads, would net me a bonus $90 a month. Not as life-changing, but it would be a nice little bonus, and it would take most of a year for those supporters to read my entire archive only going through 1 article a day!

- 500 people watching 1 YouTube video a day over at the Azukail Games YouTube channel would be a bonus 15,000 additional views at the end of the month. While numbers vary for ad revenue, that would earn somewhere between $30 and $50 on average. Not a huge impact, but sharing those videos, and leaving comments on them, would massively help, and it would likely give the channel the huge visibility boost it would need to grow large enough to become semi-self sustaining. And if we just grew 500 additional subscribers, that would both put us over 2,000 subs, while also sending a message to the algorithm to pay more attention to us.

Now, 500 people sounds like a lot of folks... but there are FB groups and subreddits with tens of thousands of members. Getting 500 people is a fraction of the people who populate those places. The problem is that most people take a very passive role when it comes to how they consume art. They look casually, and then they move on, rather than interacting and supporting, which is what creators need in order to survive. It is, after all, the reason we spend so much damn time making posts and promoting our work.

So if you want to see the creators you love make fewer social media posts about their books, videos, supplements, etc.? Become an active supporter, and try to recruit some of your circle into doing the same. Because every, single one of you is making a real difference in the lives of an artist... whether you feel like it, or not!

Also, if you think an artist has so much support that they don't need you to help, I'd like to remind you that audience size is a reverse iceberg... however big it looks, it's likely not even 10% the size of what you're seeing.

Support The Literary Mercenary

If you want to see me produce more work, consider some of the following options!

- My Facebook

- My Blue Sky

- My LinkTree

- My Weekly Newsletter

- The Azukail Games YouTube Channel (where I contribute video content)

- My Rumble Channel (longer videos that won't show up on YouTube)

And if you happen to have some spare dosh lying around, and you want to be sure my supply doesn't run low, consider become a Patreon patron, or leaving a tip by Buying Me a Ko-Fi!

Also, if you're curious about how to write for tabletop RPGs, don't forget to check out my show Tabletop Mercenary, which you can find on both the Azukail Games channel, as well as my Rumble channel listed above!

Like, Follow, and Come Back Again!

That's all for this week's Business of Writing! For more of my work, check out my Vocal archive, or at My Amazon Author Page where you can find books like my sci-fi dystopian thriller Old Soldiers, the Hardboiled Cat series about a mystery solving Maine Coon in Marked Territory and Painted Cats, my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife, or my most recent short story collection The Rejects!

 

And to stay on top of all my latest news and releases, collected once a week, make sure you subscribe to The Literary Mercenary's mailing list.