On Authorship, Performance, and the Trashfire of 2025

It’s that time of the year again: the wrap-up post, the season finale, the point at which I grasp my hair, tug with all my might, and scream.

What a YEAR.

I am just about ready to throw it in the trash and move on (after a really long nap). 2025 was a year of many firsts for me: first time getting general anesthesia, first time getting stitches, first time looking up whether I should remove my own stitches, first time ignoring medical advice, and removing my own stitches anyway, you get the picture…

But it was also the year where my frustrations of many years came to a head. My body was bodying extra hard, people were peopling extra hard, and social media became the bane of my existence. See, I use social media as a social platform. I post pictures of my dogs, sometimes myself, my runs, for my friends. That’s how I’ve always used social media, ever since I opened my first Facebook account in 2006. Except that this year, I had to switch to using social media as a marketing tool for my debut book and… I’m not great at it. Out of everything I had to do during the run-up to my debut release in February 2026, it was social media that burned me out the most. Let me explain using sport as an example:

In publishing, as in sport, there are two kinds of performance. One is the skill-based performance that is associated with the career. In sport, it’s the technique, endurance, and performance under stress in competition. For me, this was the actual fencing. In writing, this is the craft, the ability to put words on page and construct engaging narratives.

However, there is a second kind of performance that both athletes and authors must do! This is what I want to call theatrical performance or social performance. In sport, these are all the photoshoots, the interviews, media, volunteering, etc.. that athletes have to participate in. In today’s world, this is also social media engagement. This kind of performance has nothing to do with the sport performance itself, but must be done “in character” that aligns with whatever personality the athlete has cultivated. In writing, the performance is no different. Authors are expected to engage on social media, do interviews, attend events, etc… to maintain their author “persona”.

Now, I’m not here to say that all kinds of social performance are bad or feel bad. Some people genuinely enjoy doing these things (and are good at them). I remember the first couple of interviews I did as a fencer and how excited I was. I remember the first few podcasts I did as a newly published author—a dream come true! It’s just the making of aesthetic posts that I am awful at, and why wouldn’t I be? I wasn’t trained for it, nor was it in my publishing contract.

The thing I want to highlight is that it is a kind of performance that is now expected, and it is not the kind of performance we get directly paid for (as athletes or authors, although it’s a bit different for athletes since they can secure sponsorships). See, I get paid my advance for a book I wrote, and then, I get paid in increments for meeting milestones like developmental edits, submitting the book for production, book publication, etc… We can argue that if I had more social media followers, I would have sold for more and could take longer on my milestones, but the jury on that is still out.

If I want to get paid faster, I need to meet these deadlines faster. Simple math.

As an athlete, I was judged based on how I fenced in World Cups.

As an author, I am judged based on how well I work on a deadline, and my sales figures.

Now, I can’t influence sales, not to a degree that will matter, through an Instagram reel. The data on whether social media moves sales is still scattered at best, but it’s not looking good. I can, however, influence how well I work on deadline. I don’t mean to brag, but it’s pretty great. Every day, when I am faced with the choice between doing one hour of social media promotion or one hour of writing, I have to decide whether I want to use that hour for a maybe meaningful change in my socials or tangible progress on my edits. I choose my edits nearly every time.

Like everyone else, I have only so many hours in the day. I have to eat (allegedly), walk the dogs (the dogs don’t care about deadlines), and see the sun sometimes (damn you, winter). Since I’m getting paid for giving my publisher a book-shaped thing, I prefer to spend most of my time creating that book-shaped thing.

On top of all of this, there’s AI (because it’s as if 2025 wasn’t annoying enough) and the constant questions of “is someone going to use my face to make some terrible image that they will post on reddit or some other site?” or “is someone going to deepfake me saying something atrocious?” But A.D., you’re not nearly big enough to worry about that yet! Alas, the way forward cannot be to wait to get that big and then address the problem.

I don’t have a solution here, only an observation that the performance that has nothing to do with our craft as athletes and writers is taking up more and more of our time. We make ourselves available, we present ourselves as funny and approachable, we plaster our faces, our dwellings, our thoughts online for everyone to see in hopes that maybe there’s a jump in popularity and sales.

And it is a big maybe.

I came to writing as a career because I love to tell stories. I love to write books. I love words and their power. This is the reason why I keep writing. Books literally saved my life, and by writing them, I feel like I am giving back to the literary ecosystem. But lately, the social performance is taking up more and more of my time for further diminishing results. I am tired. I am so very tired.

“It’s all just part of the gig,” you can say, and I wouldn’t argue with you.

The question remains—why does it have to be?

2025 Writing Wrapped

Novel manuscripts finished: 2

Novella manuscripts finished: 1

Novel manuscripts in progress: 1

Novel manuscripts edited: 3

Short stories published: 4

Short story subs: I want to say 5??, but I didn’t even track this year.

Brain: Cooked

Hands: Claws

Head: Shoulders

Knees: Toes

So far, The Iron Garden Sutra has been received super well by both trade publications and readers. It warms my heart so much when I read a review that gets it, the darkness and the hope of it all. I can’t wait for the book to come out and for folks to get their hands on it. It was my grief book, and I came out on the other end of writing it feeling not completely hopeless. I really want that for my readers.

Pre-orders are ongoing! If you’d like to pre-order the book, you can do so from anywhere that books are sold. If you’re Canadian and you pre-order from Bakka-Phoenix or Queen Books in Toronto, you’ll also get some pre-order goodies!

I’m hoping that in early 2026 I will get to say more about The Iron Garden Sutra additional rights that sold! Fingers crossed!

….and that’s it!

Thank you for making it to the end of 2025 with me!

Cheers!