There are many things in real life, including in the author space, that disturb me, but the foremost issue is that everyone seems to be so AFRAID. Of everything.
There are many things that we rightfully need to fear (like environmental destruction and war), but the things below are not amongst them.
I’M NOT AFRAID
… of AI coming for authors. I’ve played with AI and if anyone thinks you can just press a button and out comes a great novel, then, well, they’re going to be sorely disappointed. Using it well to produce something people will actually want to read is *work*. A lot of hard work. In fact, it’s so much work that one wonders whether it might be easier to just write the damn thing yourself. Except if you can’t, because of illness or other life circumstances. For those people it could be liberating. For the rest of us, it’s overhyped, oversold and everyone is over-panicking.
I’M NOT AFRAID
… of people “stealing” my books. People who pirate books rarely do so because they want to make money selling the books. They want “content” for a site that does other things, like scam your credit card or plant viruses on your computer. They have done this for years and will continue to do this until the end of humanity.
I’M NOT AFRAID
… of Amazon “banning my account”. I have plenty of other income. For those who don’t have a lot of other income, I do not know of a single incident where the Amazon-bots have terminated an account, where the account owner genuinely didn’t do anything shady, where the account owner has kicked up the appropriate stink, where Amazon haven’t reinstated the account. (Yes, it happened to me. I’m still not afraid of the big A)
While we’re at it…
I’M NOT AFRAID
… of obscurity. Most of us are pretty obscure. I don’t need anyone’s approval to be an author or just to be what I am.
I’M NOT AFRAID
… of people from varied groups asking to share the limelight in the fiction world or out. The world is a big place. We can all be in it.
I’M NOT AFRAID
… for disadvantaged people to get paid real survival money through my taxes, even if they “don’t want to” (read: can’t) work and are supposedly “undeserving”. I think as society we should be deeply ashamed of ourselves that we let people live on the streets. For most, it will be temporary, but some people have too many issues to be employable. I want them housed and fed because to see them beg on the streets is a fucking disgrace. We should be better than that. We should also not leave this to charities, because they often superimpose their own (usually religious) agenda over their work and will cherrypick who “deserves” their help (hint: mentally ill old women are probably at the very bottom of this list)
I’M NOT AFRAID
… of people who do things I would never do or don’t understand. It’s not up to me to prescribe how other people can or cannot live, or worse, to be a moral judge on something that essentially doesn’t affect me. There are many things about which my opinion is likely uninformed or maybe even offensive to some. But you know what? That’s *my* opinion, and no one needs to know about it. I am also likely to change it if I learn more. But still, what I think about stuff doesn’t matter squat. People have a right to dignified lives. That’s all. I’m not afraid of people different from me.
If we’d all be a tiny bit less afraid, the world would be a much better place. Yeah, wishful thinking, but still, we should try to do our bit.
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Post image of photobombing dragon by Midjourney. I was trying to get it to produce something else. This one was too hilarious not to use.
