It's a Love-Hate Thing, by Lori Roberts Herbst

I’ll admit it—I’ve been crotchety as a writer lately. Filled with doom and gloom. Ebeneezer Lori, you could say.

Book sales are declining. AI production can outpace anything I could accomplish (in terms of quantity, anyway). Facebook ad algorithms have transformed (again) and are not achieving what they used to (as if I even comprehend algorithms anyway). I never particularly enjoyed the marketing end of publishing, and these days, what little I even understood about it has changed. 

And now I’m not even supposed to use em dashes? (Well, too bad. I love me a well-placed em dash and used them before AI was a glint in Sam Altman’s eye.)

The grim part of me has even considered throwing in the towel on this crazy pursuit of writing books.

But before I do…just let me take a moment to revisit what made me fall in love with it in the first place. What do I love about being a writer?

1. Creativity. I get to dream up worlds and people and plots that didn’t exist before my brain made them up. 
2. Justice is served. In my cozy mysteries, I am the master of fairness, the maker of happy endings. 
3. Control. In a world that often feels discordant, I can impose order on my imaginary worlds.
4. The joy of language. Occasionally, a witty turn of phrase or beautiful description originates in my mind. What a pleasure that is!
5. Cheap therapy. I right perceived wrongs through my fictional characters and plots.
6. Connection with real people. Interacting with readers and other authors has been one huge highlight of this pursuit.
7. Sense of accomplishment. It’s rewarding to guide a book or story from the smallest spark of an idea to a completed manuscript to the physical page to the readers themselves. 

And for today, anyway, that feels like enough. I’ll work on muzzling the Ebeneezer side of my personality and keep plugging away.

What keeps you moving forward in whatever you do? 

The Callie Cassidy Mystery series is available on Amazon Kindle, Kindle Unlimited (now Kindle+), and in paperback.

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Lori Roberts Herbst writes the Callie Cassidy Mysteries, a cozy mystery series set in Rock Creek Village, Colorado, and the soon-to-be-released Seahorse Bay Mysteries, set in a Texas cruise port town. To find out more and to sign up for her newsletter, go to www.lorirobertsherbst.com