Be Yourself, Because Everyone Else Sucks

Except for you. You're cool.

Somewhere around 2018 I was writing my first book which to this day remains unwritten, sitting there frozen at 30K words, and firmly on the back burner. I was really getting into writing and having a great time, but that’s when a particular writing prompt popped into my life that was (I didn’t know it at the time) the start of The Caretaker.

Before I worked on The Caretaker in earnest, I was just enjoying the creation process and the words. A friend of mine (lived about an hour away) is an author, and we hung out from time to time.

Now when I say an author, I mean a really REALLY successful authors. Agented. Multiple series. Books out the wazoo. I think that’s a body part. Multiple languages, contracts, and earning a very handsome living doing so. Netflix adaptations, etc. etc.

Basically, he had what I wanted - success in a writing career.

So I copied what he did. I studied the same material, I tried the same writing methods, I submitted to the same workshops, and all of it was a grand and miserable failure.

My writing suffered. It felt like work. I was getting declined and denied to anything I tried to find my way into.

Why?

Because I wasn’t being myself. I was attempting to be someone else. I was attempting to copy a writing journey instead of finding my own path. I was attempting to write, edit, live, and work just like someone else. The realization hit hard and fast that I simply cannot do it.

But it wasn’t writing I couldn’t do, it was copying someone else’s path.

Which brings us to the title. Be yourself, because everyone else sucks.

It became very clear that in order to find my way, that particular way had to be totally my own. I could no longer afford to waste time looking at other’s successes and attempting to duplicate them. I had to take that first step, and all subsequent steps, in a new path, a new adventure, and a new journey with all of the unexpected twists and turns of a great story.

If there’s any piece of advice I can give you - as an author, or just as a human - it’s that there are crucial lessons to be learned by going your own way and holding your chin high. Stop looking to the left and to the right, because the one thing you’re raising the chance of is not success …

… it’s walking straight into a pole and looking like an idiot.

Be you, my friend. That’s all anyone who ever matters wants to see, anyway.

More from me soon, 2025 is going to be bonkers …