April 2025

WHAT ONLY YOU CAN WRITE

For a brief period in young adulthood, my desire to write stories hit a slump.

“It’s all been done before,” I whined, trying to sound tragically melancholy and wise.

“But it’s never been done the way you would do it,” a wiser friend pointed out.

What could I say to that?

Last week, I came across a bit of news that brought this trajectory-changing encouragement to mind: at least one online genre-fiction publishing platform is now pumping out fiction fast by asking its authors for a few story prompts and parameters—then letting AI do the rest. The authors have little control over the finished products.

Yikes. This is happening.

Can AI replace your creativity? Author and former publisher Allen Arnold tackled this question in his April 3 blog post. The short answer is yes—AI could replace your efforts, if you’re chasing trends. But if you’re aiming higher, you have nothing to fear: “Artificial intelligence can’t give birth to works that contain an eternal spark,” Allen writes, “because, for starters, it isn’t eternal.”

Your creative spark is uniquely yours. Nobody can create what you create in the unique way that you do it.

There’s no question that AI is revolutionizing publishing—but don’t let it stop you from gifting the world with what only you can offer.

PERSPECTIVE

“Books were only one type of receptacle where we stored a lot of things we were afraid we might forget. There is nothing magical in them, at all. The magic is only in what books say, how they stitched the patches of the universe together into one garment for us.” —Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

THE NOVELISTS’ BOOK CLUB IS APRIL 21

Romantasy has been graining momentum over the past twenty years, now more than ever as it serves up “new adult” fiction for Millennials and Gen Z. Fourth Wing is the first book in a planned five-novel series. Book three, released in January, has broken print run and sales records. All three occupy spaces on the New York Times Best Sellers list. Why do you think this novel (and others in the series) is resonating with its readership? What emotional experiences do its readers long for that the series provides? Come find out next week.

Click here for more details and a list of upcoming books and topics. All who register will receive discussion questions in advance, plus a unique link to our meetings on the third Monday of every month at noon Mountain Time.

BETTER WRITING NOW

Do you unintentionally make your readers work harder than they need to? Learn a simple hack to make their experience more pleasant in this video (8 minutes): “In Order Some Things Must Be Done.”

QUESTION FROM A CLIENT

Should I write my novel under a pseudonym?

Novelists have been taking pen names since the form was invented. Most of us are familiar with female novelists who, back int he day, took male pen names so their work might be taken more seriously (George Eliot, the Bronte sisters, Louisa May Alcott, for starters). More recently, some men, especially romance writers, have taken female names for the same reason (Deanna Dwyer, Edith Van Dyne, Madeleine Brent). Novelists typically have different considerations from nonfiction writers about when and why they might be the best choice. Here are some considerations.

You might want to use a pseudonym to:

• Help readers distinguish between your genres. Romance writer Nora Roberts writes police procedurals as J. D. Robb.
• Protect your privacy or true identity. See Elena Ferrante.
• Honor a co-authorship. Nicci French is the married duo Nicci Gerard and Sean French.
• Emphasize a connection with your story content. Lemony Snicket (Daniel Handler) just sounds irreverent and whimsical, doesn’t it?
• Make a name easier to pronounce or remember, such as Jhumpa Lahiri, born Nilanjana Sudeshna Lahiri.
• Distinguish yourself from someone with a similar name. Robert Jordan, born James Oliver Rigney, was writing at a time when other James Olivers and James Rigneys were publishing.
• Reinvent yourself after a failure or success, as J. K. Rowling did as Robert Galbraith.

Writing under a pseudonym isn’t always the best choice for everyone. Consider how it could:

• Complicate practical matters such as branding, marketing, banking, publicizing, and so on.
• Create the potential additional workload of building and managing separate brand identities.
• Backfire if discovery of your true identity might make readers feel betrayed, as when white male author Michael Derrick Hudson sold his work as Chinese female Yi-Fen Chou. (Adding insult to injury: she was a former classmate and he did not seek her permission.)

Today it’s harder than ever to hide a true identity, so ensure your answer to “Why did you choose that pen name?” is one you can comfortably offer up to the masses.

RIP NANOWRIMO

The organization that has been challenging novelists to write a complete story every November has folded after a long series of missteps and unfortunate events. (Speaking of Lemony Snicket . . .) This video offers some insight into the closure.

TERTULIA WEBSITE BUILDER

If the technical know-how required by platforms such as Squarespace and Wix are more than you want can handle or want to manage, this uber-easy author site can simplify the process for you for about $10 per month.

WHAT I’M READING

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury (1951). Sci-fi/dystopian. Somehow this one never made it onto my school syllabi. Bradbury’s world, in which it is illegal to read or possess books, and where firefighters ignite rather than extinguish fires, feels timely.

The God of the Woods by Liz Moore (2024). Historical family-saga murder mystery set in the 60s and 70s with a bittersweet ending. The title god is Pan, from whom our word panic derives.

Sunrise on the Reaping by Suzanne Collins (2025), YA/dystopian. The latest Hunger Games novel tells Haymitch Abernathy’s tragic backstory. A tough read but fantastic example for those of you who want to write novels about secondary series characters.