Re: Consuming Media Is Not Activism, Part Two

Another thing I appreciate about Amazon is that they have literal tons of remaindered books in stock.

By "remaindered" books, I mean out-of-print titles that are brand new except for having a black line drawn in Sharpie across the bottom edge. I think that, back in the day, publishers used to tear the covers off of unsold books and ship them in giant crates to the author (ouch), but I guess these days they just send them to Amazon.

The really depressing thing about the fiction market is just how quickly current titles are remaindered. Like, you can have 50k followers on Twitter, and your book can appear on all the "best of" lists on the year it comes out, and it might have been longlisted for the National Book Award or whatever, but in less than five years all the unsold paperback copies will still be remaindered.

Because professional books reviews written by professional book reviewers tend to make me angry for an entire shitty rainbow of reasons, I always end up finding out about interesting books a few years after they come out in paperback. If I wanted to go through traditional channels, getting my hands on these books would be almost impossible, but Amazon has me covered.

Small Steps Forward

Man. This depression sure isn’t going away.

I’m trying to think about what would make me happy, and I just don’t know. The little things (like exercising, eating well, sleeping, and taking time to relax) aren’t making much of a difference, while the big things (like having a supportive family and close friends who live nearby) are completely out of my control. I’d also like to go to the ocean for two or three days, but… Animal Crossing is probably as close as I can get to that right now.

I think that, more than anything, I would still very much sell my soul to have talent. I understand that most of “talent” is nothing more than putting in the time, but I want to have enough talent that I enjoy putting in the time instead of hating myself every time I sit down to write or draw. I also want to have enough talent that I reach a minimum threshold of positive feedback so that I can feel motivated to start, polish, and finish projects instead of dreading the moment when I post or submit my work.

I guess what I want is to feel seen and heard and included, and to have the platform and energy to help other people feel seen and heard and included. And I’m just not sure how to make that happen.

Before anything, I’d like to wrap up a few remaining loose ends. For me right now, this means finishing Malice and commissioning someone to draw the one last comic I wrote for the Zelda fandom.