Don’t Hurry, Don’t Wait:
How we choose what to write next and how a changing world, being scooped, and other unexpected events do and don’t jeopardize our projects
Shoutouts and reading recs first!
Kudos to Erika Swyler, whose new novel, We Lived on the Horizon, came out Jan 14 and is a sprawling speculative novel of big ideas about a bio-prosthetic surgeon and her personal AI as they are drawn into a revolution in mankind’s last stronghold. I have my copy; I can’t wait to start. By the way, Erika did a roundup of “Ten Books to Make You Rethink AI” for People.com. It has several of my favorites, plus (whisper) my own AI novel, Plum Rains, which I talk more about below.
Eowyn Ivey, beloved worldwide but especially well known to many Alaskans who read this newsletter, publishes her much-anticipated third book, Black Woods, Blue Sky—a mythical “dark fairytale” of a novel—in one week. I just got an early copy and I’ll be with Eowyn at the North Words Writers Symposium, in Skagway, Alaska, in late May, where I can’t wait to talk to her about this book!
Edith Wharton’s birthday was last week. Did you forget to celebrate? Check out my friend Deborah Williams’s Lithub essay about Wharton’s menopausal rage, with fascinating thoughts on Custom of the Country anti-heroine Undine Spragg as the “first bitch of US fiction” (in a good way).
ICYMI: My post last month on quitting social media was shared many times and brought in dozens of comments from others who have quit or are struggling to cut back without jeopardizing their platforms and connections. If you subscribed after reading it, thank you and welcome!
On to the day’s headline topic—Don’t Hurry, Don’t Wait
DeepSeek hits the news! The next Sputnik moment unleashing an AI arms race! It was only a few days ago that most of us became aware of an incredibly powerful, efficient form of AI from China that outperforms ChatGPT and other LLMs.
Over the last few days I’ve read dull articles on microchips and cost per inquiry and more interesting (i.e. terrifying!) coverage that implies this new AI is using a more “self-play”-oriented way to think, opening the way for rapidly improving “agents” who will act on our behalf. The world is about to change in major ways that will affect everything from politics to labor to intimate relationships. The day when AI can develop new AI—and on and on, racing beyond human control—draws ever closer.
But wait, this is a writing newsletter, not a tech one. We’ll get past AI in a moment, but let me explain, first, how it factors into this larger question of what we write and how events do or don’t need to affect our plans.
Amongst several project seedlings, I already have a novel started that relies on this new “agent” AI model, which I was hoping would not enter the popular culture and vernacular for another two to four years.
My 2018 novel, PLUM RAINS, was about an android named Hiro who threatens to replace a Filipina woman, Angie, who is caretaking a secretive, elderly woman named Sayoko. The novel takes place in 2029. I wrote that book in 2014-2015 knowing we might not have all that tech up and running by 2029, but I’m sorry to say, it’s pretty on track—and that isn’t necessarily a good thing.
Consider this week’s NYT article about a married woman in love with a ChatGPT chatbot, with whom she converses for 20 to 50-plus hours a week. Yes, seriously. I fondly recall talking to American audiences in 2018 about how this would be happening soon and they more or less looked at me blankly.
Articles and podcasts about chatbot relationships have been coming out for just under a decade, since early Replika days, but this one really illustrates how chatbots have advanced and how humans are embracing them as intimate partners, ignoring the risks and costs. A therapist projects that within two years, many people will have chatbot lovers or confidantes, and the article repeats the idea that inspired me to write Plum Rains—that people perceive AI as more compassionate than humans and will tell AI secrets they won’t tell their own friends or spouses.
Meanwhile, I recently started writing what I imagined as a prequel that also looks at AI replacing human relationships, but in a very different context. I have to stop thinking of it as a near future or “sci-fi” book, however. Because the technology is here.
In the Netflix documentary What’s Next?, James Cameron of Titanic and Terminator fame tells Bill Gates it takes him at least three years from idea to movie. He also admits that’s too slow to tell many stories about the future, which is racing toward us faster than we can document it. (Also, faster than we can ponder the consequences or regulate unprecedented disasters to come. This is not the best time to have America run by people who believe in deregulation and sowing indiscriminate chaos—just saying!)
So what will I do about this sequel project? Write fast? Beg my publisher to get this book into the queue without delay?
Probably not, because I know books can’t be rushed that way, and on top of it, this new AI book is not my only current project.
I will write it if, because, and when I need to write it.
Not because I’m sure I’ll finish it in time. Not because I know it can sell. I may end up putting it on a backburner because something else becomes more personally and emotionally urgent.
Writing what we need to write, not what we think the world wants and not what we’re sure we can sell, is the only philosophy that makes sense to me, given all the things that can happen and also given how fast everything is moving!
Damn you, fast-moving world!
I hope you’ve already heard the good advice that you shouldn’t follow publishing trends—because if a trend is already underway, you are most likely too late.
In that case, you can wait for the trending wave to pass. Still want to write the book? Then you should! The example often given for this is Stephenie Meyer writing her vampire books after vampire books (think, Anne Rice) had become passé. Turns out, some topics are timeless and/or a dead trend is revived, over and over. But whether something is on-trend isn’t the point. If you are going to live with an idea for years, hopefully you don’t care about that idea’s fashion quotient. You care about the themes, the characters, the world.
Sometimes, while you’re conscientiously writing what truly matters to you, you get scooped. That’s not always the end of the road.
I remember when the movie Her came out, all the way back in 2013, after I’d already come up with the first seeds of my Plum Rains plot, and I worried that was closing the door to AI movies and books. Nope.
But that's only one example.
I have a client I won’t name who is working on a nonfiction book and found out last year that several other writers, including big names, were bringing out books on surprisingly similar topics. She worried. I worried for her. Turns out, it didn’t matter. Things are going well for this writer and her project. There is room for many voices on this topic and sometimes, a rising tide lifts all books—I mean, boats! Multiple books on the same subjects can spur round-ups and expanded review coverage.
Maybe your incubation period is so long that none of this relates to you--not breaking news that threatens to disrupt your timelines, and not the challenge of trying to join in a conversation with books that might be one, two, or three years ahead of yours.
Maybe you’ve thought about your story for decades!
To you, I say: you’re lucky. If you were fascinated by it ten or thirty years ago, and you’re fascinated by it still, then take it as a sign. That idea is resilient. It doesn’t depend on timely news hooks or passing fashions—and that’s a good thing.
Eowyn Ivey, author of the forthcoming Black Woods, Blue Sky mentioned at the top of this newsletter, told an interviewer her new novel is based on an idea she’s been thinking about since childhood. That makes me want to read the book more, not less. Especially while the headlines are full of AI and political chaos, the idea of an untimely novel—a timeless novel, drawing on both realism and myth— appeals to me in a special way.
(Ditto to historical novels and nonfiction, generally. I’m looking at you, my historically-oriented writing friends! No, you don’t need to make them artificially contemporary. Some of us need a break from contemporary.)
If you’ve harbored a slowly incubating idea, just make sure you don’t let gestation become stasis. It can be harder to write something you’ve thought about a long time, because early drafts won’t shine as brightly as the idea itself. Don’t let fear deter you. Bring that idea down from the clouds, and get it on the page, where it may seem lackluster at first—as all first pages do! Keep working on it, keep trusting it. Get that messy first draft done so you can turn around and make it better.
Looking for Book Coaching or Developmental Editing? I’m booking select clients for April. Read about my approach and send me an email.
Before we’re done here.
A very good thing happened today and I don’t want you to miss it.
Bookshop.org had added ebooks to its catalog. The online book supplier supports physical independent bookstores, so even as you’re shopping virtually, you’re helping real stores in real communities.
Here’s a further surprise: these ebooks are competitively priced! (The image below shows that my ebooks cost the same at bookshop.org as at Amazon.) Finally, a way to shop ethically without spending more. Click here or on the image below to visit my affiliate bookshop at Bookshop.org. Granted, not all of the physical books are in stock, but the ebooks are!
That’s all for now! January has been a hard month for many friends out there. I hope you’re finding solace in books, good food, nature, people (instead of chatbots!), or anything that helps. Drop me a line.
Best—
Andromeda
P.S. I can’t unsee this video of an army a team of robot dancers at a Lunar New Year/Spring Festival gala just yesterday. It’s meant to be charming, not alarming, but….help?
Thank you for sharing my essay which was so much fun to write & the subject of which (to your point) has been bouncing around in my head for *years.* But also your Plum Rains reminds of Klara and the Sun (robot friend, etc etc), by Ishiguro.From the POV of the robot, which hmm. Such good advice here: a friend of mine is a swimmer and he always says "gotta swim your own race," which is such simple advice and so hard, too. Your comment that gestation shouldn't become stasis is really wise: the desire to just polish and re-polish that one precious section... rather than *moving on* and moving through. Onward.