You Are Not What You Used To Be

How to be Inspired as F**k in the new year

Despite Sean’s and my best efforts, Dave was able to hold onto his baby.

Ah, January: the calendar’s mandatory clean slate. It’s a time of reassessment and reinvention. A time for dropping what’s not working and embracing what’s next. A time, I think, for stopping to ask ourselves a very important question:

Am I, as a writer and creator, truly doing work I want to do? Or have I instead fallen into the trap of becoming something I don’t actually want to be — an easy thing, since there’s no guidebook for any of this?

Momentum gets us. Comfort zones get us. Worse, momentum gets us into situations that are comfortable even if they’re not ideal. We end up saying, “Well, this isn’t quite right for me, but making a change sounds really uncomfortable, so I’ll just stay where I am and hope it all works out.”

For some, “staying where I am and hoping it all works out” means writing the same tired cliches over and over. For others, it means leaning into a series they’ve grown tired of but have to keep writing because it generates all their income. For still others, it means the long, slow death of their creative business: hanging onto tactics that used to work, but now work less and less as the industry changes. Writers face dwindling income, trends that flip-flop overnight, and their own dogged ritualism — the kind that makes “stop everything and re-assess” almost unthinkable.

We don’t like change. We don’t like the idea of no longer being what we used to be, even if “what we used to be” doesn’t fit anymore. And so, to avoid that change, we stay where we are, figuring that at least the Devil we know is better than the Devil we don’t.

Personally, I hate change … and yet, my best efforts to keep the world steady and predictable have always failed. Somehow, despite my most sincere and practiced attempts to command the universe, the universe doesn’t seem to care.

As 2024 dawns, I’ve decided to try something new.

I’ve decided to see what happens if, instead of resisting that inevitable change, I embrace it instead.

Let me tell you a story.

One year ago, in a galaxy that wasn’t far away at all, everything was different. While the world was saying, “Maybe three times will be the charm” after two post-Covid years that weren’t actually any better, I was settling in as what I’d told myself all along I wanted to be: Just a writer. Just a guy who pens books … and that’s pretty much it.

That was the dream, and I was there. It had all been made possible by Sterling & Stone: the collaborative story studio founded by my constant writing partner Sean Platt and exemplified in the early days of 2012 by the original Self Publishing Podcast. (I can’t find SPP online anymore, but no, it’s not The Self Publishing Show, and no, it’s not a newer Self Publishing Podcast that appears to be in Dutch.)

At first, it was just the podcast for our literary threesome: me, Sean, and our reclusive Bigfoot of a third, Dave Wright. Then, to capitalize on a joke from said podcast, Sean and I wrote Unicorn Western. Then we wrote The Beam … and then Sean, encouraged by my enthusiasm, came up with not one more but instead SIX more projects for us to co-author: Namaste, Robot Proletariat, Cursed, Everyone Gets Divorced, Greens, and Adult Video.

Here’s the following decade in one paragraph: We wrote a cornerstone self-publishing guide (Write. Publish. Repeat), held an annual indie conference (The Smarter Artist Summit), hosted a mastermind group, launched and then folded a massive podcast network, ran what used to be the highest-grossing fiction Kickstarter before folks like Brandon Sanderson came along to make us look like punks, created writing software that never really got far off the ground (StoryShop), and generally built a groundbreaking company focused on collaboration … a company that, today, functions as an IP factory with a specialty in selling to TV and Film.

For a while, since Sean was CEO and visionary, it made sense for me to be COO and run the day-to-day. Turned out, however, that it didn’t actually make sense. I was no COO. I didn’t, honestly, play well with others. And so it didn’t actually make sense for me to be involved in most of what Sterling & Stone did, seeing as it was all about collaborating and I wasn’t about collaboration at all. (Except for writing with Sean. That did work, so no wonder we were confused.)

For years, S&S had been evolving into a masterwork of collaboration: a Holy Land for people who worked with other creatives one hell of a lot better (and a hell of a lot more joyously) than me. It wasn’t always a straight path; we’d both tell you that S&S had an awkward adolescence and, like a baby giraffe on its oversized legs, had to wobble for a long time before it truly found its balance. But by the start of 2023, it was mostly there. It’d gone through its awkward phase, and was on the way to assuming its ultimate form.

An ultimate form, by the way, that was perfect for a lot of writers … but not right for me at all. I worked best alone in matters of business and branding, but I didn’t know it at the time. I’ve only truly remembered that (from my pre-S&S days) over the last six months.

At the start of 2023, I would have told you two things:

1. I was doing my dream job. The place Sean found for me in “the grand scheme of S&S” was a tidy little corner where I could operate almost alone, never forced to interact with, collaborate with, or even attend meetings with others. It meant that I could do whatever I wanted (write what I wished on my own schedule), but it also made me the company’s appendix. I was something left from earlier generations of the organization: an evolutionary holdover that remained only because it’d been there from the start. Like an appendix, I wasn’t functional at all in the new way the company worked. But I was cool with it. I made my own rules, and Sean let me make them.
   BUT ALSO:

2. I was miserable. I’d say Sean was miserable too, but Sean was only really miserable about the dumb, broken thing our part of the equation had become. The company was large by then — dozens of writers, all but me working in harmony — and the non-me parts of it thrilled him. He tried to remain thrilled about our collaboration, but I didn’t make it easy. Maybe because of the misery I mentioned: misery I felt full-on despite the theoretical fact that I was living the time of my life.

It didn't make sense. I had no idea why I was all messed up: why, despite the ability to wake up and spend my day writing, I still felt like shit about it. So I just dug deeper. Created more distance from the rest of the company. I sequestered myself and worked alone — less and less with Sean, even though we were supposedly “co-authoring” books that I increasingly slogged through alone, refusing help.

My subconscious had figured out this was no good, though, so it made plans.

In November of 2023, I did something I hadn’t done in forever: I flew to Vegas and attended a writers’ conference. We’d held our Summit through 2018, but I only attended one outside conference during the S&S years (NINC, and only then because we were keynoting) and hadn’t been anywhere in half a decade.

It felt like coming out of a cave. It felt like stepping into the sunshine.

Now, let me clarify: I’d been in a cave because I’d put myself there. I’d been in a cave because the world I’d been part of (the S&S world) had changed around me, becoming something that was wonderful — a dream, really — for a lot of writers, but not for a writer like me. Nobody had been holding me down. Nobody had shoved me into a deep, dark place … nobody but me, thanks to my aversion to change.

At that conference, people I hadn’t seen in forever (people who’d stayed out in the world, proving it went on without me) greeted me warmly. I said to them, “I feel like I’m coming out of my dungeon for the first time in forever.” It was true. The question was: Why had I dug that dungeon in the first place? Why, if I was so miserable, had I not climbed out of it sooner?

I’ll spare you the story of what came after that conference (of what the conference brought to a head that’d been simmering since I felt the malaise and started finding ways to be “out there” again, starting with this Substack), but the short version is that Sean and I should have seen the foreshadowing. I mean, we’re storytellers, and we’d written a book called Everyone Gets Divorced.

You hear me? EVERYONE.

So yeah. We got a “business divorce.” When I say I’ll spare you the story of that divorce, it’s mostly because Sean already told the story, in full, in this email he sent to authors on the Sterling & Stone mailing list. Give it a read if you’re curious.

If you don’t read it, here’s the upshot: We’d finally found the guts to end the comfortable but ill-fitting situation called “Johnny works with Sterling & Stone.” I’m proud of us for having the courage. For a long time, we didn’t. I didn’t, anyway. I knew something was wrong. I knew it didn’t fit … but dammit, changing it would require so much change. I hate change! Better to keep living with the Devil we both knew than to face the Devil we didn’t.

But here’s the truth: There was no Devil. Change was good. Change was amazing.

If you’ve been following us for a long time, please don’t say you’re sorry to hear this. I’m not. Sean’s not. We parted ways in business (I have publishing rights for most of my/our books now, and am no longer part of Sterling & Stone), but we remain friends. We’ll still write together, once the dust clears and the time is right. Unicorn Apocalypse — the grand finale of our very first project together — still has to be written, among many others. But we’re out of business. We’re disentangled. We’re independent now: Sterling & Stone doing its big, collaborative thing ... and Johnny B. Truant, solo artist, doing his own thing as well.

We’re not divorced. Not really. Well, except for Dave. Dave, in the middle, probably divorced Sean and I a long time ago, moved to an undisclosed location, and has been punking us for years using a hologram of himself driven by Skynet-style AI. You just watch. I’m sure of it.

Still, I don’t like the term “divorce” for this. What actually happened was too amicable. I keep pushing the idea of an “unmarriage” instead: a mechanism by which we roll back time so Sean and I can stay writing partners but never become partners in anything else. Divorce is too acrimonious. Annulment implies negating the past, but I don’t want to negate the past.

That imperfect past, remember, got us to the beautiful place we are now.

Non sum qualis eram

About fifteen years ago, I had a very popular blog. I wrote on that blog that I wanted to get a tattoo. I didn’t have any tattoos at the time. I still don’t have any today, because I never got one.

At first, it felt like I was being lazy and noncommittal. I hate it when people say they’ll do something and then don’t, and here I was doing the same thing: I just couldn’t pull the trigger. Years later, however, it dawned on me that it would have been a bad idea to get my first tattoo in 2008. What I had in mind would mark a transition … and in 2008, I hadn’t completed my transition yet.

I still don’t know exactly what tattoo I want, but I know it will incorporate a line from the book House of Leaves, and that line is: Non sum qualis eram.

It’s Latin. It means: I am not what I used to be.

In 2000, I left graduate school. I’d been pursuing a PhD in molecular genetics, but I hated it. “A scientist” was not what I wanted to be, so I held my breath and made a change.

In 2008, after failing spectacularly in rental real estate and then watching my web design and freelance magazine jobs dry up (thanks to the recession for all of that), I started blogging. I was no longer “what I used to be” that time either, as a writer-for-hire. It took a lot of changing, but I’d become a blogger and online educator instead.

In 2012, as blogging was dying, I found Sean and Dave and became a fiction writer. I let my blog expire, started The Self Publishing Podcast, and began writing books. I was definitely not what I used to be by then. I reconsidered the tattoo, but again never pulled the trigger.

In 2019, Sterling & Stone closed its author-education wing and for the most part I stopped being its COO. Sean and I had a chat about it. I was the weirdo writer (the one who wrote books that were good but couldn’t be explained to Amazon algorithms), so I might as well not even try to play the algorithm game … or, for that matter, to shoehorn myself into S&S’s growing, increasingly-a-writer’s-dreamland world. I’d just go into my cave. The Smarter Artist Summit was over. There was no need to venture out into public pretty much at all anymore.

Again I considered getting the tattoo I’d been planning. My entire creative world had changed a few times already, but this had to be the definitive ending … right? I mean, I was a snooty writer who only had to sit alone and write. Surely that must be the pinnacle of my transformation, right? Surely now more than ever, I was “not what I used to be” … right?

I see now that it’s always been a waiting game. It’s always been about letting this final domino fall. Now, more than ever, non sum qualis eram.

I still haven’t gotten that tattoo. But now, finally, I think I’m ready to.

None of us are what we used to be.

Okay, fine. I’ll embrace the cliche. I suppose I get it now:

Change is about evolution. It’s about ushering in a whole new generation of yourself: a next step wherein you’re no longer what you used to be, but are instead something more and better.

And yeah. Sometimes change feels like total and complete shit. Sometimes, I walk through one of these phase-changes and immediately look back, wanting what I used to have (and be) and eager to return because the changed result is so much worse.

I had panic attacks when I left college and started grad school. The change from “a world I loved” to “a world I hated” was seriously uncool.

I declared bankruptcy when my real estate experiment collapsed under its own weight. Changing from “financial solvency” to “financial ruin” wasn’t exactly a picnic.

There were some serious nudges from the universe before this last big change. I won’t go into it, but some of them were absolutely terrifying. There were days I’d’ve given anything to cancel the “change” and go back to the comfortable (if ill-fitting) world I’d been in before.

All of those changes felt awful, and they were always accented with smaller, more personal changes that also didn’t always feel great: the near-death of someone I love, my kids starting to go off to college, the retiring of some of my favorite family rituals, the world sometimes seeming to get more and more turbulent, more and more changed for the worse.

But do you know what? Every single one of those “terrible changes” turned out to be the best thing that could have happened.

Panic attacks drove me out of grad school. THANK GOD I didn’t stay a scientist. I can only imagine how much I’d hate my life now if I had.

Bankruptcy forced me to consider options I wouldn’t have otherwise. Blogging, for instance, which was how I met Sean … who introduced me to the self-publishing world.

And all the stuff that forced my hand this last time? Again, thank God. Where I’m headed in 2024 and beyond is amazing … and it’s amazing for Sterling & Stone, without me, as well.

Nothing is static. Everything changes, always. The question isn’t if it’ll happen. The question is whether we’ll roll with the changes, or hold stubbornly still and be run over by them.

I’m so, so happy for this change. I was wrong for what Sterling & Stone became.

Sean and Sterling & Stone are so, so happy for this change. Because again: I was wrong for what Sterling & Stone became.

Now, S&S will be free to assume its ideal form. They still work with all sorts of allies, friends, and outside partners, and now I’m one of them. With the WGA and SAG strikes finally over, they’re pitching more and more projects to Hollywood — and because we’re friend and arm’s-length partners, my projects will be among them.

And as for me? I have publishing rights now to nearly 100 books that I didn’t have before. That means I can do anything with them that I want. Something I’m already dreaming of? I want to do a Kickstarter for a beautiful special edition of my Fat Vampire series — the one that became a SyFy/Hulu TV show.

I have so many plans. So many. And it’s lit me up: All this change that I’d’ve sworn up and down that I never wanted before.

Last year, I was a writer working within a system, but what it’s taken me this long to recognize is that I’m not just a writer. My art isn’t only words. “What I want to create” is THE WHOLE THING. I want to write the books. And sell the books. And create journeys for readers of those books: a labyrinthine Choose Your Own Adventure that happens in email, leading readers from Easter Egg to Easter Egg. I want to find and then spoil the shit out of my 1000 True Fans.

THAT is what “the change I didn’t want” will bring me this year.

(And if you’re a reader who’s interested in seeing what I’m planning, including those Easter Eggs, four yet-unreleased books, that maybe-Kickstarter and more, you can sign up for my list here.)

So if you’re like me, I get it. Most people hate change, but sensitive types like writers hate it even more. I suppose that’s why so many of us stay firmly in our comfort zones, be they zones of story (sticking with one style, genre, or set of tropes), zones of career (like me, refusing to assess “comfortable” situations that might not fit), or zones of life as a whole.

There’s a whole big world out there, and right now, any one of us can only see a tiny corner of it.

I hate change, too. But change has a way of opening your eyes … and every time I’ve had my eyes forcibly opened, my friends, I’ve learned to love what I see.