Am I tortured? I’m starting to feel a bit tortured.

Cross-posted from Substack.

This newsletter is over a day late. I know. See the headline.

Haha, just kidding. Kind of. In all seriousness, my edits were due back to my editor yesterday, and I was making sweeping changes late into the night on Thursday. I was home sick Tuesday before that, and still didn’t feel great on Wednesday, which set me behind. So the choice was write this newsletter or turn my edits in on time. I chose the latter.

I’ve also done some research for this one! So it took some time to compose. But first…

My hazelnut syrup never arrived. The ’Zon kept saying it was coming, but it started to feel like it never was. So, I cancelled that order and ordered a different brand. I shall report back.

I now have nine flavors of coffee or water flavoring, with a tenth on the way, and I can’t even say I’m sorry about it. For coffee, I have mocha, vanilla, and cinnamon dolce. Seasonal flavors include pumpkin spice (duh), gingerbread, and peppermint. (Pro tip: the sugar-free peppermint was underwhelming.) For my water, I have coconut, lemon raspberry, and just raspberry. I truly am going to try to work my way through some of these before buying more. I swear.

Is it the constant mainlining of caffeine that makes writers tortured? Maybe. When I picture a tortured writer, I envision someone bent over a typewriter grabbing at their hair, a cigarette dangling between the first two fingers on their right hand and three or four half-finished and now-cold cups of coffee littered around their desk. Notes are, of course, strewn everywhere. The room is probably dark, too. It’s hard to be tortured in broad daylight.

Is this what I look like when I’m writing? Absolutely not. My enneagram type 3 would never. And it wouldn’t make for very many cute, on-brand, work-in-progress Instagram pictures. My notes are all carefully organized and written using pen colors that match the cover of whatever book I’m working on. Most of them are digital on my iPad, though I do love a good collection of Post-Its. I’m never grabbing my hair since it’s usually in a messy bun. And I never have a cigarette.

It is almost always night, though. And the coffee thing is probably accurate.

I majored in English lit in undergrad, and I have a specialization in creative writing. Suffice it to say, I’ve surrounded myself with a lot of tortured artists for a while, but I do think some of that was just being tortured college students in general, some of us trying to go the extra mile and fit the tortured writer stereotype more than others. Most of us grew older and less tortured, which was nice to see.

But when I picture the Tortured Writer (TM), the first image that always comes to mind is F. Scott Fitzgerald. Why is that? Does anyone else picture him as the most tortured of the bunch, or is that just me? A quick internet search for “F. Scott Fitzgerald + tortured writer” brings up a plethora of articles saying exactly that, though that could be a case of confirmation bias. But it would seem, based on even just a cursory reading of a few of these, that he was, indeed, tortured with a capital T.

I want to pause here and say that Fitzgerald was a garbage human being. I said what I said. He was a misogynist (if that link isn’t convincing enough, just go ahead and read any one of his works) and womanizer, having several affairs throughout his marriage. He stole some of his wife, Zelda’s, stories and writings from her diaries and included whole swaths of them in his own work without crediting her. He was also a raging and destructive alcoholic, which in and of itself is not indicative of being a garbage human being, but the stories of the people he hurt are numerous. And if that weren’t bad enough, he almost certainly had a hand in Zelda’s ultimate commitment to an asylum where she met her untimely death. If you read none of the other articles linked here, read that last one. He essentially gaslighted her into being institutionalized, and had an affair while she was there.

Zelda isn’t squeaky clean, either, but she’s not held up as a master of English literature. Her works aren’t praised and studied throughout literature classes the world over. They haven’t sold over 35 million copies worldwide and an additional 500,000 per year still—and that’s just Gatsby. (Well, actually, I guess you could argue they have, since Scott ripped off her work, but her name isn’t on it, so it doesn’t count.) She’s largely a product of a society that hated women, and a husband who not only didn’t help her, but actively hurt her. So if it seems I have a double standard here, I do, and I’m comfortable with that.

As such, I no longer teach Gatsby if I can help it. And, yes, certain people can argue that we should separate the art from the artist; whether or not it’s more beneficial to teach it with a lens that dissects its more problematic points; putting the book into historical context; yada yada yada. The fact of the matter remains that it’s my job to help students study interesting and important literature, and there are plenty of other books out there that are more interesting and more important, in my opinion.

But, we aren’t here to discuss his books today, or even his garbage ways. We’re here to talk about being a tortured writer. To be sure, all of the things outlined above contribute to his state of mind. They either define it, have directly caused it, or are a result of it (which is why I spent so much time writing about all of that).

Allie. Get to the point, will you? What does this have to do with you feeling tortured?

It’s a great question, and I promise I’m getting there. The entire point is that writing is not for the faint of heart. It’s reported that Fitzgerald received 122 rejection letters for his first novel—what would eventually become This Side of Paradise—and his eventual publisher, Scribner’s, rejected it three times before eventually publishing it, even despite extensive rewrites as a result of the specific suggestions of his editor, Maxwell Perkins. Gatsby (published in 1925), which was to be his crowning achievement, sold fewer that 25,000 copies before Fitzgerald died in 1940. This is despite the fact that Scribner’s thought it would sell closer to 75,000 on its first run, and ended up boxing up the unsold copies in a warehouse. Fitzgerald likely died thinking the book was a complete and utter failure against the expectations set out for it.

And, let’s be clear, fear or perception of failure as a writer does not make someone devolve the way Fitzgerald did, but I want to be fair. It’s a tough industry, and setbacks like that can and do take their toll. We see this now, publicly with authors behaving badly on review sites, and more privately with authors sharing their personal stories of success and perceived failure.

The weight of expectations on writers is a very real thing. We—be it authors ourselves or an agent or publishing house—think, This is it. This is my big break. This could be something huge. Sometimes (a lot of times), the book doesn’t pan out the way we expect. It’s not as popular as we were hoping. That’s a major bummer, and it can suck the life out of a writer. Pair that with reviews that—over 100 years after Fitzgerald published Gatsby—are constantly shoved at authors on social media platforms, the advice of numerous editors and agents whose job it is to sell and not to subvert expectations or bend rules, and the constant war of whether to follow that advice and write to market or write what we want for ourselves in the name of art. It’s a veritable minefield of mental health crises waiting to happen.

So, late into Thursday night, as I was finishing making sweeping changes to one singular scene in Common Grounds that resulted in changes that needed to be made to several subsequent scenes, I was feeling pretty tortured. Why was I making this change? Was it because of the constant soundtrack of readers and reviewers in the back of my mind? Was it because I wanted to try to write this one more to market than my last two, just to see if I could function well within more rigid expectations of the genre? Was it because I, personally, have always hated the way that scene played out and needed to make it into something I wanted? It certainly wasn’t because of editor or beta reader feedback; they all thought it was fine the way it was. But it was nagging at me incessantly, and I couldn’t rest until it was done. My desk was littered with half-finished beverages and Post-It notes, it was late at night and dark, and the only thing in the world I wanted was to finish the damn thing and send it back to my editor.

That was about when it occurred to me that the tortured artist vibe we were all emulating in college wasn’t it; this was. The constant drive to marry what’s best in the industry with what your feedback partners think is best with what will make your readers happy with what will sell more books. Oh, and still doing what will make me proud of the art I put into the world. And, because we’re romance writers, taking the cute-and-smiley, Instagram-worthy pictures on top of it all.

I’m happy to report that I’m very happy with Common Grounds. I thought it was my best work when I finished the first draft, and I think it’s even better now. But it might not sell the way I want it to, and we might be back here in a few months. If that’s the case, I can see how easy it would be to get pulled under by the weight of the industry. The expectations. The comparisons. The late nights. The disappointment. Feeling like a failure when Instagram shows your cute-and-smiley post to .1% of your followers.

Was it all worth it? Taking time away from family and friends, losing sleep, taking years off your life with copious coffee consumption, spending countless hours obsessing over minor plot points and character development?

While I wouldn’t consider myself a Tortured Artist (TM), and that isn’t the vibe we get from our romance writer friends, there are aspects of the process that are, indeed, tortured. I think the more books you write, the more it happens. Even though I’m not grabbing at my hair and loosely avoiding a major fire hazard with a typewriter and a cigarette, these feelings are real and probably universal. And I think the more we talk about it in broad daylight, the more it helps.

The Write Time audiobook is in the world, and I hope you’re loving it! If you haven’t grabbed your copy, you can get it on Audible or iTunes. Please leave a review if you love it!

Common Grounds is getting itself all dolled up with a fresh new coat of polish from my editor as we speak. She just messaged me asking if I also want unhinged comments along with her edits, so I think it’s safe to say things are going well. Right now, we’re scheduled for a cover reveal on April 9 over on Instagram, and that will kick off pre-orders opening, ARC sign-ups, and about two months of me being absolutely insufferable about it, so get ready for that. Mark your calendars: June 4, Common Grounds will be in your hands.

I also have some very exciting news about Common Grounds that I can’t share yet. I know, I’m such a tease.

I would like to report that I have officially started House of Flame and Shadow. I have mixed feelings so far, about 20% in. That said, I’m a sucker for SJM and her worlds, and I know the third book in a series is typically valley before a big, freaking mountain, so I’m invested. I shall report back.

Thanks for sticking with me for this longer coffee break! I hope you enjoyed my deep-dive into the wormhole of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s life and work. If you have any other writer-friends who are drafting or editing, give them a little “great job!” Share some of their social posts. Buy them a coffee.

Actually, maybe don’t do that last one. They probably have enough coffee littered around their desks.