Talena Winters's Blog, page 5

Re-Introducing the Books and Tea League

Hello, my friend, and happy August!

I hope your summer (or winter) has been going well, and that you’ve been enjoying plenty of the things that make life worth living.

After a somewhat relaxed July that was filled with guests and some time off, I’ve been hard at work on my reader membership, the Books and Tea League. Doing what, you say? Well, I’ll tell you.

A little background:

When I moved the BATL to Ream in January, it was with the hope and promise that the platform would be a better fit than the system I was using at the time, which involved a third-party app to gate content hosted on my website. A very expensive third-party app.

Ream was a good solution to that problem, and, as a startup, it already offers a lot of amazing features for readers with plenty more on the radar. It’s a platform with a lot of potential.

However, there are things about the platform that haven’t been serving me or my readers well. And, as far as I can tell, those aren’t on the roadmap to be resolved anytime soon.

That’s when the dragons attacked…

In early July, there was some drama at the corporate level of Ream that caused some concerns within the author community. While the drama in itself wasn't enough to make me reconsider my hosting platform, with the change in leadership has come a shift in values that made me take note and think about how I want to structure my business for the long term.

Besides that, not long after moving to Ream, I discovered that my website hosting platform actually has a built-in capacity to host subscriptions. (Or maybe I finally got access to it, I don’t remember.) I wasn’t about to move again so soon, but I have a strong preference to host my content on a platform I control, so I had the idea that I may make that move eventually, anyway.

All of these factors combined in July to move “eventually” up to now.

What this means for you:

If this is the first time you’re reading this, it likely means you’re not already part of the Books and Tea League. And now would be a perfect time to change that. 😉

This move is, in part, a response to the reader survey I did a couple of months ago about what kind of content you want to see. I got some amazing responses that included things like behind-the-scenes posts, character profiles, and more cool content. This is content I would be excited to make for you, and am even happy to do for free to allow you to dive deeper into the worlds I’ve created in my stories… but I don’t necessarily want it to be publicly available content on this blog.

So, instead, I’ll be posting it for free behind a signup gateway. Yep, I’m going to be be doing all that cool stuff, and doing it for free. You just need to join the Books and Tea League to get access to it. Of course, if you want to get access to even more cool content, you can support me at one of the premium tiers, which would mean the world to me.

Earlier today, I posted about what you can expect in the updated version of the BATL in the community blog inside the membership. You can see that here to find out what’s coming. (You’ll be prompted to sign up for a free account after you click on that link.)

You may have already tweaked on to the fact that the BATL has had a rebranding during this process. (See those cool new avatars in my image up top? That’s part of it.)

So, the Books and Tea League has a new space, new art, and awesome new projects coming down the pipeline, and you can expect the cool bonus content you asked for at the free level.

I hope you’ll join me inside the league, my friend. We’ve got plenty of adventures in store, I promise!

With gratitude,

Talena

P. S. If you haven’t already, go here to sign up and keep the awesomeness coming:

I Want In!

See you on the inside!

Love is the answer

A young blond girl walks away along a lake pier at sunset, holding tightly to her father’s hand. Image courtesy of Lightstock.com.

Several days ago, my husband and I watched the 2014 film The Giver on Netflix. It was based on the book by Lois Lowry of the same title, which came out in 1993.

I'd never heard of either before, though one Goodreads reviewer commented it was an optional English class read for them. (Since I graduated in '95, it's no surprise it hadn't made it on to class reading lists during my school years.)

The basic premise of the story is that, in a dystopian future where humanity has been regulated, engineered, and de-emotionalized into sameness for the sake of harmony, one boy (or young man in the movie) is singled out for special training to receive the collective memories of humanity, including all its joys and pains. Ultimately, he makes a choice that changes the future of humanity forever.

(You can watch the trailer here.)

In a real-life, modern world that seems characterized by drama I wish I could escape, this powerful story has given me a lot to think about.

I think it's safe to say that most of us wish for more peace and harmony in the world. We would love to see a world where we felt safe everywhere we went, knowing that we could express our views and opinions and not be crucified or shunned for doing so.

In reality, we live in a world that seems ever more polarized. I don't know if it actually is, but there are certainly polarizing topics that tend to be the focus of most online discussions, and even many in-person ones.

Can we each retain our individuality, uniqueness, emotions, opinions, beliefs, and more, and still somehow find a way to live in peace and harmony with our fellow man?

Honestly, I don't know. There are some belief systems that are inherently at odds. For instance, I'll never support a belief system that thinks women should be subjugated, that one ethnic group is better than any other, or that it's okay to exploit anyone.*

But I also believe that many of the things humans tend to draw lines around don't matter as much as we make them matter. I say this as someone who used to draw lines around very minor sticking points and focus on them with a ferocity I now find embarrassing.

No matter what I may feel about a person's beliefs, I can still show them love.

I've discovered that, in a world of contention and hate, love is one of the most difficult things to practice.

“In a world of contention and hate, love is one of the most difficult things to practice.”

And it is a practice.

As a Christian, it is my highest calling to love. Everyone. Whether I agree with them or not. Whether I think they're trying to offend me or not. Even if they're being openly combative, I am living my faith when I respond in love.

When you love, you don't need to control, because love and control are opposite. Love has room for all the different people in the world. It's what heals us of our past traumas, builds bridges across the differences that divide us, and shows us how to leave behind the false beliefs that are destroying us.

This isn't meant to preach at anyone. It's just something I've been thinking about. It's so easy for me to get caught in my own insecurities and lies and forget: love is the most important thing I can do.

No matter the question, love is the answer.

This was my reminder to myself.

*There is some irony to the fact that the movie The Giver was produced by the Weinstein Company. I absolutely can't support Harvey Weinstein's actions or beliefs. But even though he was probably making the movie for strictly business reasons, the evocative message remains. It is a beautiful piece of art.

Aspirational Paradox

Image by Sebastian Knoll via Unsplash.

I just came across this fantastic quote on Goodreads:

The Paradoxical Commandments

People are illogical, unreasonable, and self-centered.
Love them anyway.

If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish ulterior motives.
Do good anyway.

If you are successful, you will win false friends and true enemies.
Succeed anyway.

The good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow.
Do good anyway.

Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable.
Be honest and frank anyway.

The biggest men and women with the biggest ideas can be shot down by the smallest men and women with the smallest minds.
Think big anyway.

People favor underdogs but follow only top dogs.
Fight for a few underdogs anyway.

What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight.
Build anyway.

People really need help but may attack you if you do help them.
Help people anyway.

Give the world the best you have and you’ll get kicked in the teeth.
Give the world the best you have anyway.
― Kent M. Keith, The Silent Revolution: Dynamic Leadership in the Student Council

My goodness, it’s not easy to live like this.

But it’s the way I try to live every day.

Happy Wednesday, friend. May you be so kind it freaks people out.

You do you, boo.

I got told in no uncertain terms by a stranger on Instagram yesterday who was trying to make me ashamed for playing with AI-generated art that the AI art on my feed “looks bad.”

As though I had been waiting with bated breath for this critique.

As though the intention in creating the art was to please them.

As though what makes “good art” isn’t subjective.

As though they thought by making me feel small and stealing my joy, they could make their own lives better.

I feel sorry for people like this. People who think that because they dislike or disapprove of something, the creator should care. People to whom it doesn’t occur that the creator is getting exactly what they need from their efforts, regardless of the quality of the output.

Don’t worry, they didn’t make me feel small. I couldn’t care less what a hostile stranger thinks of the hobby I do for fun (and in which I’m very much a novice!), especially a stranger who wouldn’t approve of any art touched by AI in any form, no matter how impressive it actually is.

For me, I make and appreciate AI art because of what it gets right, and because what it gets wrong is often just as—or more—entertaining than the ideally rendered versions.

Everyone needs something they do that feeds their soul. For someone like me, who has long been under the weight of self-imposed outrageously high standards and who has laboured for years over a single product before I considered it ready for public consumption, creating and posting things that are fast, fun, and gloriously imperfect is growth.

The world is full of trolls and bullies who think you need the benefit of their criticism. You don’t, but if they give it to you anyway, just remember—they’re the ones who are missing out. They’re living their lives inside narrow walls of what they think is acceptable or perfect or “good enough”, and, chances are, they often don’t meet their own standards.

Keep doing the thing. Keep making the art. Keep playing and being creative and having fun.

You do you, boo.

You don’t want those trolls to stick around anyway. It’s much better to attract people who want to hang out with gloriously messy and perfectly imperfect you, not the version of you they wish you were.

As for those who are still struggling under the burden of perfectionism, well, maybe we can make their eyeballs twitch with this:

An AI-generated brush script graphic in joyful, vibrant colours, superimposed on the image of a cozy deck. The text reads “Perfectiionism is the thief of joy.” 😁 (I got several versions of this concept that were spelled right. This one made me smile the most. I love me some good irony, I do.)

Or maybe they’ll learn to relax and have a little fun, and remember that having fun and enjoying yourself is what art is supposed to be for.

Because art is messy, just like life. And if AI isn’t letting you make art that’s a little messy too, then I’m not sure it’s doing it right. :-)

On Saturday, my hubby and I spent several hours at our local Farmers’ Market connecting with readers and finding new ones. It was a blast, and I’m looking forward to getting out to several more markets this summer. Thanks to everyone who stopped by our table!

Once upon a time not so long ago, a comment about my work from a random stranger would have ripped me up inside. That’s why I wanted to encourage you. I’ve recently started caring a lot less about what other people think and sticking my neck out a little more about what I think and showing my true colours.

And so far, I haven’t died once. 😆 I’m pretty proud of how far I’ve come, even though I know I still have a ways to go.

I would love to hear something you’re proud of yourself for lately. Something you’ve done or said or made or maybe didn’t say or do (even though you wanted to but knew it would end badly) that made you go, “Hey, I did that. Awesome. I’m proud of me.” Let me know in the comments. I’d love to cheer with you!

A Green Room Saga

I’m going to experiment with a Monday morning feature I’m mentally dubbing Mug Chats… basically a catch-up on recent life and / or writing events over my morning cup of coffee before I dive in to the new week. Got your cuppa?

*** Edit: I started this on Monday, but my health quickly declined and I ended up spending most of the day in bed. I’m feeling much better today (Tuesday), so that’s why the timelines on this are a bit off. ***

Blurry selfie, fresh off the camera. I don’t normally start my Mondays in my recliner, but some extremish period pain this morning has me taking it as easy on myself as I can. So the blur is an unintentional metaphor for my brain this morning, lol.

Thank you so much to those who voted on Friday’s post asking about what kind of content you’re most interested in. The results were interesting and definitely made me rethink some things. For instance, I thought Featured Authors would be of more interest than it was, but no one voted on it other than in a general “that would be interesting too” sense. Since that was one of the options that would have been the most work, it’s good to know I can take some of the pressure off myself and focus more on other stuff that would likely be not only less intense but more fun. :-)

(I’m so good at complicating things! Thanks for helping me keep it simple.)

It’s Not Easy Painting Green

For the last couple weekends and in the evenings, I’ve been working on painting my guest room.

It’s a very small room, and normally wouldn’t be a multi-weekend project. Except…

Backstory time:

When we moved into this house in 2021, my oldest, Jude, was away at Bible college, which meant, for the first time in about fifteen years, we had a “guest room” while he was gone.

We painted the room room a lovely grey that we used elsewhere in the house too. After Jude returned from college, this was “his” room until he left for the army. After he left, Noah moved into the grey room, which is much bigger than his old one. (I had originally considered making the room a guest-room-slash-office, which is why we’d arranged things as we had in the first place. By last year, though, I was quite happy with my office space in the corner of our living room, so we reconfigured things.)

Since Noah and Jabin were still in high school when we moved into this house and would be living with us for several more years, we let them each choose the colour of paint that would go on their bedroom walls. Noah’s favourite colour is green. He loves all green, but the brighter, the better. So the colour he chose for his original room (the room that is now our guest room) was bright enough to be seen from space. (Actually, we convinced him to go a shade darker than he originally wanted, because, jeepers.)

The new guest room’s original “Lizard Green” walls before Noah moved into it.

Needless to say, as soon as Noah moved rooms, we knew we would be repainting his old room, which had now graduated to guest room status.

Last snap of the Lizard Green for posterity before repainting to something less neon. (Excuse the messy bed. Tear-down had already begun.)

Two weekends ago, I decided it was time to tackle that project—partially inspired by an upcoming visit in which the room will be occupied for a solid week. While we’ve had guests stay in it already, we figured we should stop inflicting that colour on every soul who wandered through. (Fortunately, most of the time spent in a guest room is spent asleep, lol.)

I borrowed the colour deck from our local Benjamin Moore store, narrowed it down to a few, spread them out on the circa-2000 comforter we’ll be using for a while yet, and started checking the room at various times of day to see how the chips looked in different lights. (As you can probably tell, this is a very well-lit room with plenty of afternoon sun.) I also hauled Jason in there regularly to consult, and he was thrilled. 😋

Anyway, we knew we wanted something bold, which is kind of our thing, and I wanted it to feel very definitely green instead of grey (just not neon!). I’d been inspired by some lovely bold rooms on Pinterest (that were somewhat surreal AI-generated images, I’ll admit, but the colours were fantastic).

We had lots to choose from, as you can see from these fanned-out paint chip cards.

Eventually, we agreed on Juniper Green (on the bottom card). After a trip to the paint store, I got to work.

A fresh, full can of Juniper Green, at your service.

The finished look.

It went well with my shirt!

Within a week, the project was finished. On Friday, I took off the painting tape, trying to ignore my misgivings. I liked the colour, but something was tugging at me. It didn’t fit the vision I had.

My husband and I have had lots of experience choosing paint, and while we’ve had some bad mishaps in the past, we generally nail it on the first try these days. We know our tastes, and we know enough about choosing paint and how it tends to look covering an entire room that we get pretty close.

And this one was close. I kept wandering into the room, and I knew that I could make the colour work if I adjusted my vision. But… it wasn’t what I really wanted to do.

On Saturday morning, I walked out of the room for the -nth time and said to Jason, “I don’t think it’s dark enough.”

He looked up from his video game and said, “I wasn’t going to say anything, but I agree.”

When my husband and I agree on something when it comes to decorating, I better not ignore it. We were surprised—first, that we agreed, and second, that we both wanted something darker!

So, we headed back to the paint store. Looking at the paint chips again, we focused our attention on the darkest options on each card. And we settled on “Garden Cucumber”.

How bold can we go?

“Garden Cucumber” in the can.

So far, I’ve only had time to cut in. But Jason and I both agree (again!) that if there’s a problem with this colour, it won’t be that it’s not dark enough!

This still-wet dark green edge on the Juniper Green wall kind of reminds me of a cut cucumber, actually…

That’s as far as the saga has gone. I’ll share updated images in future posts.

Last night (Monday night), I got the critique of Every Bell that Rings (Peace Country Romance Book 2) back from my editor. It was late by the time I was able to look at it, but I glanced through her overview, and I’m excited to start integrating her ideas later this week.

In the meantime, I’m working on a fun editing project for one of my clients myself. Thanks to my unplanned “day off” yesterday, the rest of my week looks a little squished. But it’s packed full of good things. :-)

Talk to you again soon, friend. (And if you’re waiting with bated breath for Every Bell, remember that you can pre-order it directly through me and several eBook platforms already. All links here.)

P.S. Have you had any painting adventures or misadventures? How picky are you when it comes to choosing colours? Do you love bold colours like we do, or do you prefer subtle and minimalist? I’d love to hear about it in the comments!

P.P.S. Check out this Mermay eBook Giveaway on my Promos page:

Mermay Young Adult Instagram eBook Giveaway, June 11-21. Learn more.

Help Me Pick: 11 Ideas for Upcoming Posts

Last Friday, I put up a post hinting at decisions I was making to my business structure and life.

As soon as I finished posting that, in typical fashion, I started making those changes.

It wasn’t quite as impetuous as that makes it sound. I’d actually made most of these decisions already in January when I was looking at my year. It just took me this long to get through the grieving process enough to implement them.

The biggest change is that, after fourteen years, I’ve decided to shut down My Secret Wish Knitting so I can focus more on my author and editor businesses.

While this did bring up some feelings, most of them were of relief. (And a bit of overwhelm as I work through the process of actually shutting it down. It feels like a lot, especially as the activities are more draining for me than starting something new, spending time writing, or completing a project.)

Then on Tuesday, I wrote a very personal post about some of the ways I struggle with marketing myself as a person brand. (And I can’t tell you the number of times I almost took it down since. That was a scary one for me, for sure.)

In that post, I talked about a refocusing on long-form blogging for marketing. Yes, on this blog.

I’m excited, but I’ve also come to a realization over the last few days—as much as I love long-form blogging, I’m really out of practice. Social media has retrained my brain to sound bytes and sixty-second sketches. I need to train it back.

Yep, I can chatter on like this about what’s sitting at the top of my head, no problem. But, much like Instagram has evolved from a platform where we shared our breakfast to a platform where we entertain each other (for better or worse), I feel like that’s the best way to offer you value here, too. Navel-gazing posts like I put up earlier this week are not only terrifying for me, but, also, who wants to read them on a perpetual basis? I wouldn’t.

So, here are my ideas. I would love to hear what types of posts would interest you most for upcoming blog content, because I am seriously floundering here.

Featured authors. Interviews with and articles about other authors who write books in my genres about their work and stories.

Character takeovers. Posts “written” by my characters about or possibly interviewing other characters in my books.

Character bios and art. These would likely focus on my fantasy series, but if you’re a contemporary romance reader who likes to see this stuff, let me know and I’ll balance it out.

Research factoids and tidbits. If you like hearing about the interesting and weird things I discover that I normally only work into my books in oblique ways, I could share that. (I learned what a “piece of eight” actually was, for instance, and it was almost as interesting as the Pirates of the Caribbean version.)

Author and book blogger collabs. These types of posts might include having guests post about their favourite books or their own books, running group giveaways, doing cover reveals for each other, and generally introducing you to other amazing people in the book space.

Book reviews. While my pace of reading is pretty slow these days, when I do finish a story I feel is worth sharing, I’ll talk about it here.

Reading lists. These would be books I think you might like on a theme or topic. I may not have personally read the books, but I would source them from recommendations by others or by scouring books and their reviews online. The purpose would be to help you find other interesting books similar to mine. (Note that I also always have featured authors and group promos posted on my Promos page.)

I realize that’s a long list, and I don’t see any of these as terrible ideas, so I may try all of them. However, I would definitely love to hear from you what kind of content interests you most. That’s where I would focus most of my efforts.

And here are types of content I will continue to produce (though the frequency may depend on the results of this poll):

Writer’s life and behind-the-scenes. These are not so much about the process of writing (unless you want that!), but about my actual life. The life updates, in other words. Pet and plant pics will be involved.

Personal essays. These inspirational or opinion essays have been a staple of this blog, and whenever I have something to work through in my brain or something important to say, they will continue to show up. (You can see previous examples on this page.)

Writing and business updates. I mean, I assume you’re here because you want to hear about cool stuff I’m making, right?

Random Cool Stuff and other Projects. More than just a “Writer’s Life” post, these posts showcase cool things I find on the Internet or fun things I’m doing on the side, especially with digital art.

Please leave a comment with:

Your top one to three types of favourite content from the lists above.

Anything I missed that you would like to see.

If you like them all and would like to see a mix, that’s great. Please tell me, though!

And, while you’re at it, drop the title of a book you’ve loved recently. I would love to hear what you’re into.

Happy Friday!

Talena

Quick Poll in a graphic: What bookish blog content interests you? 1. Featured authors. 2. Interesting research. 3. Character takeovers. 4. Author & book blogger collabs. 5. Character spotlights. 6. Book reviews & reading lists. Did I miss any? Let me know below. (I cheated a little and combined two from my post for this list because it was better for the design, lol.)

Nurturing the Garden of My Soul

A charming and lovely brick garden path leading to a small gazebo through a garden in full bloom at sunset. This image was imagined by me and rendered by Leonardo.ai.

I stood in the back row of the church balcony, leaning into the harmonies of a song I was somewhat familiar with, but not so familiar that I wasn’t making the occasional mistake. In the row in front of me stood a couple I’ve been friends with for almost twenty years. In the row in front of them stood one of my dearest lifelong friends and her family.

And the familiar internal litany started.

I wonder if they’re enjoying my singing. Is it distracting if I sing the harmony? Oof, that was a wrong note. I haven’t done much singing lately, and it’s obvious. Maybe I should sing quieter. Oh, I don’t really know this next song—I’ll wait until at least the second verse before I start singing so I can learn it well enough not to embarrass myself. Okay, now we’re talking. Oo, that was a tough transition, and I got the note right—will anyone appreciate the harmonies back here? Will they say anything? I hope they don’t make a big deal of it if they do, but it would be nice to know they noticed.

I feel so out of place here. Will everyone who knows me be judging me for how long it’s been since I came? Will any of the new people from the last few years ask me if this is my first time here? Will anyone even notice? If I came more often, I wouldn’t need to worry about people acting weird about me being here. But then I’d have to deal with this discomfort more often, too.

It was somewhere around the third song that I realized what I was doing. I shook my head at myself.

Talena, only a self-preservation Enneagram Three like you would sit in the very back of a church you’ve been attending for eighteen years and worry about what everyone else might be thinking of you. They’re not thinking of you! And you shouldn’t care if they do.

Okay, then, replied the other voice in my head. (Having a conversation with myself like this is normal, right? It is for me.) Well, I hope God’s okay with my mediocre singing today.

…And I hope I can get out the door after the service without anyone noticing so I can avoid those uncomfortable conversations about what value I may or may not have added to the service today. From the back of the church balcony, where I showed up late. Even though it wasn’t much. I used to do so much more at the church, but I just don’t have the energy anymore. But I feel so guilty for not contributing like I used to.

I might have been singing, “There’s joy in the house of the Lord,” but I was feeling anything but joyful. My anxiety was ratcheting up with every new thought, and it took everything in me not to flee to escape the (probably non-existent) judgement of others—but mostly, the judgement of myself for worrying about it.

You may have noticed the glaring omission in my self-talk already. I’m ashamed to say that this is Tuesday of the week this conversation with myself took place, and I only recognized it this morning—not once, in all of that questioning, did I ask myself if I was enjoying my singing. Not once did I say to myself anything resembling, Good job. That was a tough chord, and you nailed it. Not only that, it felt great to hit it right on pitch. Not once did I think, Wow, does it ever feel great to be here with my fellow believers and friends. What an opportunity for self-compassion and joyful celebration with people I care about, and to love on them too!

I did notice that I’d superficially transferred my others-referencing tendency from the people around me to God. And, even though I felt a bit silly about that too—because of course God would be happy I was there singing worship songs in church, even if my melodies were more like a joyful noise instead of angelic melodies (which they weren’t, and who was I even comparing myself to?)—that didn’t remove the shame of the self-talk that wondered if anyone had noticed me and my subsequent self-recriminations for hoping they had. (A hope I didn’t even want to admit to myself, and if anyone had, by the way, I would die of shame knowing about it.)

No wonder the Enneagram labels the passion of the Three as vanity or self-deceit. We’re constantly aware of how others perceive us, which means we’re always vigilant to ensure we’re presenting value to the world so we won’t be found wanting. In so doing, we deceive ourselves in thinking that our worth is tied to what we do or how we look, not who we are.

As the countertype of the Three, I feel like I got a double whammy—not only do I tie my worth to my accomplishments, believing those will give me the attention I seek to feel valuable, but, as a self-preservation Three, I also abhor seeking any attention for those accomplishments, feel embarrassed if I actually receive it, and pretend like it doesn’t matter to me whether or not someone else has noticed the hard work I’ve put into anything I’ve done.

Quote: “We’re constantly aware of how others perceive us, which means we’re always vigilant to ensure we’re presenting value to the world so we won’t be found wanting.” - Talena Winters

In other words, I walk through life extremely self-conscious, and a good chunk of that self-consciousness is in making sure I don’t look self-conscious.

Other self-preservation Threes get it. If this isn’t you, you probably don’t understand how exposing the lie in my core operating system to the light of day makes me want to crawl out of my skin right now. After all, this whole post is self-conscious—the antithesis of the carefully constructed systems I use to protect myself! I want to delete it all and go do something that will make me feel productive and worthy until the bad feelings go away.

But I won’t, because there’s a reason I’m opening the door and letting you peek at the woman behind the curtain.

Multiple reasons, actually, and they are the impetus behind the shift I’m hoping you’ll see in my upcoming blogging frequency.

(And, to be honest, I’m totally going to go self-soothe with work after this. I’m just not going to delete this post first. Small wins.)

Uprooting the Weeds

When my husband and I bought this property fifteen years ago, the very first thing we built on it were raised garden beds.

We didn’t even have a well dug or power run in yet. But I knew I wanted to grow a vegetable garden and gain some food independence, and this property has maybe a half-inch of topsoil covering mostly clay and gravel. So, I got some wood from a friend of ours who had just replaced their deck and repurposed it into six four-by-eight beds. Then, based on my research (I was working on theoretical knowledge, because I hadn’t actually gardened before), I filled them with a mixture of topsoil, peat moss, compost, and sand and, very excitedly, I planted my first crop—peas and carrots.

As the season progressed, I used a friend’s water tank and my husband’s red Ford Ranger pickup to provide moisture for my needy little seedlings. I made a trip to the property every few days to water and keep the soil free of weeds.

Oh, the joy when the first little shoots poked their way through the soil! Soon, they had grown a couple of inches and their first leaves were filling out.

However, the problem with this strategy soon became apparent. Since no one was living here—in what was essentially an open field tucked into the middle of bushy wilderness—the deer had no idea that those succulent shoots weren’t up for grabs. Only a month or so into my first little gardening venture, I was devastated to find that my cute baby plants had been sheared off at the dirt.

Needless to say, our next addition to the property, along with the seen-better-days mobile home we’d just moved onto it, was a dog. And I didn’t get any peas that year.

As the years passed, my gardening experience grew. I got more and better tools. I expanded my garden beds and replaced the rotting-out ones covered in toxic paint from that original free wood. And I grew all kinds of vegetables.

I haven’t lost an entire crop to the deer again. (They give our yard a wide berth now, for two good reasons named Hiro and Daisy.) But I’ve faced a lot of other challenges that any gardener will commiserate with. Mosquitoes, drought, grasshoppers, noxious weeds, infestations of red ants, quackgrass, dogs and cats and chickens digging holes in my beds, the short growing season we have this far north… I’ve dealt with all of these with varying degrees of success. I even made the egregious error of intentionally seeding dew worms into my garden, thinking they were beneficial earthworms, and have fought a constant (and losing) battle to maintain my beautiful hard-earned soil ever since.

But none of these challenges were what made me give up gardening.

No, like so many things I’ve given up in the past nine years, the death of my gardening fervour can be attributed to the loss of motivation and energy brought on by the trauma and grief of losing my son nine years ago (and several traumas since), and the subsequent shift in my focus to growing and developing my writing career.

I haven’t put a crop in those beds for eight years. Last spring, under the influence of a short-lived burst of motivation and energy and a latent sense of guilt, I assessed the condition of my garden beds with the notion of picking up the hobby again. Quackgrass, ants, and rot have taken over. After eight years of neglect, the dew worms have turned my lovely soil into almost unusable clay. The amount of work it would take to get my garden back to productive and healthy is probably more than it took to build it in the first place.

Would it be worth doing? Yes. But, thanks to health issues and where I’ve chosen to spend my limited energy, I haven’t been in a place to tackle it yet.

I’m getting there. I’m recovering from both the health issues and the trauma, and I keep looking out my window thinking not just that I should do something about my garden, but occasionally that I want to. So that’s a step.

And while I’ve taken a hiatus from vegetable gardening, there’s been more internal growth happening than I would have imagined possible. Discovering the Enneagram a little over two years ago and the subsequent work I’ve done has been no small part of that. It’s only because of that growth I’m even considering getting my hands dirty in the soil again.

In other words, before I could turn my attention back to the garden in my back yard, I needed to uproot the weeds growing in the garden of my soul.

Refocusing on Joy

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about what I actually want.

One of the traps of the Enneagram Three is that we get so busy trying to figure out what other people want so we can achieve value by delivering it to them that we rarely take the time to think about what we want and what we find fulfilling. Part of the trap is that we believe fulfilling other people’s expectations is fulfilling. If I’m helping others and giving them value, I feel great! So of course that’s what I want.

But… is it?

Obviously, yes, helping others is a wonderful thing, especially if we’re doing it while also doing something we enjoy. Getting to the point where a Three is unselfishly using what we’ve learned while pursuing our many passions to mentor, coach, and bless others, and earning a living while doing so, is a way to take the shadow of our type and turn it into a blessing.

But we can still get so caught up in delivering value to others that we neglect the things that give value to ourselves. Especially when the fight to achieve the success and excellence we strive for is beset by so many challenges—changing industries, changing technology, a changing economy, and more. We can get so busy staying on top of the tactics required to excel in these shifting sands that we forget there’s more to life than riding the Great Sand Worm to our next destination—that there’s joy in the ride, and, quite aside from the pursuit of anything, simple pleasures in small moments that feed our soul.

It’s these moments of simply being that remind us Threes that we’re worth more than what we’re doing. We need to lean into them and make space for them so we don’t forget what they feel like. So we can remember how to stand in a church service and enter joyfully into worship in communion with people we care about instead of self-consciously wondering if all the eyes turned the other direction are secretly staring at us.

And these are the moments I’ve been thinking about as I strive to create a sustainable life for myself. They’ve prompted me to ask myself questions such as this:

What fulfills me most?

What do I enjoy?

Who am I right now, and who do I want to become?

What could I see myself doing for the next twenty-plus years?

How can I make room for the activities I enjoy just for the pleasure of doing them, such as gardening or playing piano, in the midst of striving for my lofty goals?

“Our Enneagram type isn’t something we can simply shed like a worn-out coat once we see the holes in it. Recognizing and working with our patterns is more like shedding a skin when it becomes too uncomfortable—there’s still more skin beneath it, and it’s still our skin and made of essentially the same stuff, it just fits better.”

These are questions I’ll need to continually ask, because our Enneagram type isn’t something we can simply shed like a worn-out coat once we see the holes in it. Recognizing and working with our patterns is more like shedding a skin when it becomes too uncomfortable—there’s still more skin beneath it, and it’s still our skin and made of essentially the same stuff, it just fits better.

However, as I grow the next version of the skin I’ll be living in for a while, I’ve defined some new goals—new “milestones of success,” if you will.

I want to make space for myself to own my own value. To spend less time worrying about what others want or expect from me.

I’ve learned that while I’ve been paying so much attention to what others say I need to do to succeed in my chosen career (or in life in general), I’ve neglected more than my vegetable garden—my soul garden has also suffered and become overgrown with weeds. This has made it difficult to enjoy life, but it’s also meant I’ve often felt I had little to give to the very career I’m trying to grow or people who matter most to me, which is totally counterproductive.

It’s time to make more space to nurture and grow the things that feed the fruit I truly want to give to the world.

I’m not going to lie, it’s already been a lot of work. But I know it will be totally worth it.

Further Up and Further In

These separating onions have the prettiest flowers…

The shadow of the Three may be vanity, but the gift of the Three is authenticity.

I’ve always striven to be authentic, but I look back and realize that, like gardening, I’ve had varying degrees of success.

Often, even when I thought I was being authentic, I was actually trying to bolster my own ego. I may have typed a post like this, then gone back and taken out all those unflattering bits at the beginning that leave me wriggling in shame and left only the lesson I learned at the end. And if I left the raw pain or ugliness in a post, it was often from a place of neediness—wanting validation and support instead of revealing a part of myself that I already knew was flawed and that I’m still actively working on.

I’m not going to lie, the thought of hitting publish on this post makes my mouth a little dry in a way I haven’t experienced for many years. But it’s also a promise to myself—a promise to be bolder and more honest with myself and others going forward. And I want to give others permission to recognize their own flaws and the work they need to do, too.

Part of my journey has been in recognizing that my own needs do have value. It’s okay that I need someone to tell me that I’m okay, and that I’m valued in the world for more than my work. That needing others to support me does not make me a burden or selfish or a failure but part of this beautiful thing called being human. It was the neglect of this personal affirmation and an overemphasis on the value of my efforts (among other things) that created this wound in the first place, and perpetuating the problem is no way to heal.

But on the flip side, until I can look at myself and tell myself that I’m okay, that I have value without doing a darn thing, and that it’s okay if no one else in the whole world loves me because I do, none of the validation and support others give will mean anything, anyway. I need to be able to say to myself, You may not be perfect, but you don’t have to be for me to love you. I love your imperfect parts too.

And singing, even singing badly, makes you happy, so it doesn’t matter how others perceive it.

Audience Growth vs. Personal Growth

While actively seeking the attention of an audience makes me want to crawl in a hole and stay there, since I have to market in order to have a career, I’ve decided I should lean into joy while I do so. The question is, how?

I hate the process of constantly creating content for social media, even though I love the many positive interactions and connections I’ve made with others there.

However, I love the creative exploration of long-form blogging, but I miss the social connection I used to experience in the blogosphere of the late ’00s when lively comments sections and blog communities abounded—nowadays, people would usually rather leave a comment on the Facebook post in which I shared the blog post (if the algorithm actually shows it to them) than in the comments section of someone’s website, which I actually understand. It feels safer to leave a comment (or, more often, a reaction) on a familiar platform, even if it’s just as public as someone’s website. (I struggle with it too, and I know how illogical it is!)

So, since that’s the reality, what am I going to do about it while also honouring my own conflicting needs of garnering audience attention and community in order to have an author career while not doing it in a way that puts my mental health in the toilet?

Honestly, this is something I’ve struggled with for as long as I’ve been writing professionally. I’ve found a few ways to market effectively that I enjoy—for instance, I have a wonderful author newsletter, which I enjoy creating and which has connected me with a lot of amazing people. But how can I nurture even deeper relationships with my community and invite more people into it in a way that feels good in my soul?

For now, I’m going to try an experiment with blogging the way I used to blog, when I loved it—sharing stories, life lessons, silly tidbits, behind-the-scenes updates, and even introducing my characters as though they’re real people (instead of telling cute stories about my kids like I did back then). I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that I hope you, dear reader, find enough value in my stories, opinions, and personal therapy sessions that you want to stick around, and maybe even put yourself out there a little bit in my comments section, too, so we can truly connect.

But even if you don’t, even if no one joins me on this journey, walking it has value for me. From the early days, this blog was about sharing my joy and art and putting my messiness on the page. Tilling this soil has always produced fruit of some kind. So it’s time I dug out the weeds I’ve let grow in the cracks and start allowing the Holy Spirit’s fruit to grow and ripen in this space… not because others expect me to, but because I need to.

So please excuse the mud, but you can’t grow beautiful things without getting a little dirty in the process. I hope you enjoy the fruit I’m slowly uncovering.

A calming image of a white flower with the quote, “Before I could turn my attention to the garden in my backyard, I needed to uproot the weeds growing in the garden of my soul.” - Talena Winters

Thank you for reading this far, my friend. If you got through that entire post, I probably already know your name… and if I don’t, I’d like to.

Either way, it would mean the world to me to know that you enjoyed this content and would like more of it (because, whether I like it or not, it’s always more motivating to me to create for others instead of only myself). If you’re feeling brave, please leave a comment or send me a message. If you’d like to be more subtle in your support but you don’t want to miss the show, please be sure and subscribe to this blog or join my reader community, the Books and Tea League. And please share this with your friends.

Life is hard, but it’s easier together. I look forward to digging in to the dirt with you.

Talena

Working on a cure for Business ADHD…

Image courtesy of Jackson Simmer on Unsplash.

This week, I was lamenting to my husband about how anxious I am about my inability to properly nurture all of my various entrepreneurial endeavours, especially the ones I most want to grow, and he said I had business ADHD.

My goodness, does that feel accurate.

With the heightened anxiety I’m experiencing just as a bi-product of being in perimenopause, I’ve been looking for the cure to my “business ADHD” for some time. I know why it exists—as a freelancer, income is never guaranteed, and my passive income sources are not yet substantial enough to make up the difference. So whenever I get nervous about my income, I spin my attention to whatever seems the most likely to produce an immediate income boost—or at least an immediate dopamine hit by making me feel productive, whether that’s the smartest use of my time or not.

I’ve tried to make good decisions, but I’ve been coming to recognize unhealthy patterns I have that have gotten me into this position in the first place. (It’s a work in progress, so I suspect I’ll continue to find more.)

I feel like I hoard business endeavours like some people hoard shoes or household clutter. And whenever I start to feel overwhelmed, the idea of actually shutting down one of those ventures to make room for more energy to grow in my preferred direction is even more overwhelming.

But I think I’m making progress on a cure, both for my fear-based patterns and my overwhelm. Yes, it will require letting go of some of my darlings. (Obviously.) My husband couldn’t be more supportive.

I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t terrified.

But hopefully, I can focus that fear toward growing in healthy ways, instead of constantly dispersing my attention between things that will only contribute to my stress.

More updates coming soon.

The Long-Overdue Update

Hi, friend! It’s been a minute. I have the best of intentions to post here more regularly, but I’m still working out how to make it happen. After all, I update a lot of outlets regularly, and putting up posts on my personal blog often drops off the bottom of the list when the energy has run out.

At any rate, I think it’s been nearly a year since I did a proper blog update that wasn’t an essay of some kind. (Yikes.) And just a few things have happened in that year!

Mostly, I’m going to skip them and tell you what’s happening in my life right now. (I mean, you don’t really want to read a play-by-play anyway, do you?)

Let’s start with a writing update.

  Every Bell that Rings is in Revisions

I’m almost finished my first round of revisions for Book 2 of my Peace Country Romance series, which goes to my developmental editor next week.

This book is the follow-up to Every Star that Shines. I began writing it in late 2022 after launching Every Star, with plans to publish it for last Christmas season. But the many challenges of last year that I mostly skipped over (but which I hinted at in this post last December), plus taking several months to move My Secret Wish Knitting to its own website, meant that the drafting process got interrupted early on, and I didn’t really start work on it again until late in the fall of 2023.

However, I dove back into drafting in earnest at the beginning of this year (in conjunction with my new reader community, the Books and Tea League, which I’ll talk about more in a minute), and I finished the first draft several weeks ago. I really love how this sweet Christmas romance is shaping up, and I’m excited for my readers to get to know Noel and Stephanie better.

Here’s a little more about the book:

Can his Christmas spirit banish her ghosts of Christmas past?

Stephanie Neufeld despises Christmas cheer. How can she get into the spirit when the season only reminds her of a childhood she’d rather forget? But when the nurse agrees to cover a co-worker’s shift to avoid the town Santa Claus parade, she doesn’t expect her first patient to be her high school crush—the guy who once ghosted her after a single date.

Noel Butler can’t just sit around for the holidays with a busted leg. Instead, he concocts a new challenge: make the attending nurse he almost dated fall in love with Christmas. Since she won’t speak to him, playing Secret Santa won’t entangle his fiercely guarded heart. Will it?

While Noel’s selfless dedication to helping some fostered teenage twins melts Stephanie’s icy reserve, she can’t help but feel his Santa hat isn’t his only secret. When old wounds reopen, will fear keep Noel and Stephanie frozen in the past… or can they discover a warm new reason to celebrate the season?

Every Bell that Rings is the second standalone title in the sweet and clean small-town Peace Country Romance series. If you like second chance interracial romance, heartwarming stories of healing, and joy-filled white Christmases, you’ll love this wholesome love story.

Pre-Order your copy Now   New Reader Community Launched

Last November-ish, after working on it for nearly four months, I launched my new reader community: the Books and Tea League (BATL). I envision it as a place where I can spoil my readers and really get to know them better.

One of the primary benefits for readers so far has been getting early access to the first draft of Every Bell that Rings as I wrote it. I’m also creating a digitally narrated audiobook for Finding Heaven, and those chapters are also being posted in the membership as they are created. Free followers get access to several stories and previews of all my other books, and premium members get access to my entire catalogue, as well as some other fun perks.

The membership has already gone through a couple of iterations. I originally hosted it here on my site, but due to the cost of the service I was using to gate content (since the native features of Squarespace at the time weren’t suitable for my needs), I moved to the Ream platform in January. Ream is a baby company, “designed by authors for authors and readers.” It’s got some awesome features already, such as a built in e-reader app, and it’s constantly introducing more. (Their constantly improving Discovery feature is a great way to find other authors and their work.)

I’m really excited about Ream, and I’m excited about continuing to grow my community there. BATL members get news before any other channel most of the time, and I’m always thinking of ways to make the benefits even better. (I’m particularly looking forward to the community group features they’ll be releasing sometime this year.)

If you want to learn more, you can check out this page on my website. Or click the button below to explore the Books and Tea League on Ream.

Check out the League on Ream   What’s Coming Next

As per usual, I’m keeping busy with client work for editing and copywriting, and have especially been enjoying some recent author coaching projects. Besides my indie author clients, I’ve been regularly writing book descriptions for a major publisher since early 2022, and I now also get regular work as an editor for nonfiction from a small Christian publisher, which has been super fulfilling.

I’m grateful for that freelance “day job” work while I continue to explore my own creative projects and expand my book and knitting pattern catalogues.

Actually, earlier this year, I almost decided to close down My Secret Wish Knitting, but I have since changed my mind as my health has improved. Which just goes to show you, you should never any make major decisions while you’re feeling poorly that could be postponed until you have no choice. :-) (I’m not actually sure how wise that is, but it worked out in this case, lol.)

As far as writing projects, I’m very excited to be diving back into the world of Rise of the Grigori to work on Book 3 in that series. Because mermaids! And magic! And high-stakes epic fantasy! Woot!

I also hope to finish my plot structure book for writers this year, and am attempting to also work in regular updates on my Author Alchemist blog (formerly my Writing Tips blog). So you can see why I’ve been neglecting this one a bit, lol. (You can sign up for my Word Wizard Academy newsletter to get updates about the book, the Author Alchemist posts, and a free plot structure booklet, if you’re also a writer or aspiring to be one.)

Exploring Other Art Forms

In addition to writing, I still knit once in a while, of course.

I’m also developing my digital art hobby, especially since the explosion of AI-generated art. I’ve been working on improving my skills a great deal, and I’ve even been eyeing up a few courses to help me become an even more skilled digital artist. It’s been awesome for my mental health to have this outlet, and I love improving my skillset in this way.

You can see a few of my images around the website and in this post. I even sold a piece of art as a cover image recently for an upcoming issue of Mythulu magazine!

I’m trying to figure out if there’s an actual market for my work somewhere, like maybe selling greeting cards or prints here from my website or in an Etsy store. For now, I’m mostly just posting my images in the Books and Tea League and playing around so I can learn and make beautiful things. I also love completing smaller creative projects with more immediate gratification than the long slog of a writing project or knitting pattern.

Here’s a piece from a series I’m working on of personified nature fairies. I finished it to include with an article I also wrote for Mythulu about my process. The piece is called First Frost.

A small Caucasian fairy boy in a green tunic jumps delightedly on dried seed heads in a field of purple poppies at sunrise. His steps transform the dew into frost.

What do you think? Would you like to see an option to purchase images like these in some form?

Side note:

I just noticed some imperfections remaining in this piece that I didn’t clean up completely during the finishing process, but now I’m trying to decide if I want to. Part of the interesting thing about AI-generated art is that it’s not perfect.

I think a lot of the angst I see in the creative community is that people are both upset with how well AI generators can do (so they feel duped that the heavy lifting was done by a machine, not a human), but they’re also upset with the AI’s shortcomings, and glory in pointing out the flaws in the final images. I think the way forward with these machines is to use them to assist us in our work while not expecting them to be able to replace a human eye and artistic skill completely.

The errors I see in this image were actually introduced by me while fixing other errors the AI had created in the original image. So yes, I’ll probably go fix them, because I can.

But also, I might leave them. Because, overall, I’m far too focused on creating something flawless, and this is my hobby, not my job. It’s healthy for me to have something like this that doesn’t require me to hone it to perfection to enjoy it.

And it would be healthy for the critics to recognize that art, even AI-generated art, is subjective. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, which means there is a place for all types of art in this world.

For more about my position on using AI to assist in the creative process, see my last post, “Finding My Voice in the AI Wars”.

(Note that I’m approaching AI images from the point of view of a creator. There are other issues related to people using these images to deceive, but that, unfortunately, is a human problem, not a machine problem.)

  Personal Stuff

Time continues to move on, and my family continues to evolve. My oldest son, Jude, is nearly finished his combat engineer training in the army. We’re thankful that he’ll be posted to Alberta when he’s finished in May. After most of a year where he’s been far on the east side of the country (with a trip home at Christmas), it will be nice to know we can see him more often.

My other two boys are living at home, working, and figuring out their next steps.

You may remember that I posted about our bad fire season last year. That didn’t just happen here—Canada in general had a bad fire season in 2023.

This year is off to a roaring start—literally. Three days ago, a fire only a few kilometres from my town and only 17 km from our home required a two-day evacuation from people only slightly closer to it than we are. We had barely any snow this winter and it melted early. Our yard and field are dry and brown, and we desperately need moisture.

I’m doing my best to hope for the best, but I’m also preparing for another bad year as much as I’m able and making evacuation plans with my family. I have a feeling this year will be another exercise in learning to trust God for the safety and well-being of all those I care about around the country.

It’s a lesson I need to relearn often.

How are you handling the anxieties of our current world condition? Everyone’s emotions have been running high for years, and I feel like I’ve forgotten what a less-distressed world felt like. So I try to only focus on the things that affect me, and only the things I can control about them or do to prepare, for my own mental health. I often don’t have bandwidth for more than that.

How about you? Any tricks to retain your peace of mind in troubled times like this?

Finding My Voice in the AI Wars

A young girl stands tall and strong as a defender of a robot against an angry mob. Created with Bing Image Creator.

I’ve never considered myself to be much of a rebel. The DISC test agrees with me—I scored over sixty percent on Compliance. My mother once described my childhood personality that way—compliant. Troublemaker, I was not.

That compliance has served me well in many ways. When I know what expectations are, I can usually meet or even exceed them. Being agreeable (for which I scored over eighty percent in the Big Five test) has allowed me to ride the waves of changing times and adapt to changes in my career and industry without much drama. (I abhor drama.)

As a kid, I used books as my escape from the drama in my real life. I would lose myself in adventure after adventure, using the dopamine hits of the story to soothe the pain of just being a kid dealing with a lot of stuff kids really shouldn’t have to deal with.

It wasn’t long before I discovered that my natural artistic ability could also bring hits of dopamine and serotonin in the form of validation. But more than the external motivators, the act of creation itself was both healing and soothing. I could use art to express emotions that I found extremely difficult to speak aloud.

I always pursued art in many forms—music, drawing, sewing, designing clothes, and writing being foremost. Later, I took up knitting and scrapbooking. I painted flower pots and walls. I made tile mosaics. I even gave making bead jewellery a try. I’ve rarely found a new medium or art form that didn’t interest me in some way, as my overflowing art supply cupboard can attest.

Some mediums were experiments I dabbled in and decided weren’t for me. Some became lifelong passions.

The older I got, the more I learned that to make room for what I truly loved, I would need to say no to some things. I didn’t have to pursue every interest. I could even put aside interests I’d once pursued with passion but that no longer served me (which is why scrapbooking is now a thing I used to do). Just because a thing existed didn’t mean I had to excel at it.

These earlier explorations have informed my current forms of expression. My skills as a songwriter—learning to use language succinctly, expressively, and within tightly constrained boundaries to tap into people’s emotions—have helped me become a better prose writer and editor. The art of scrapbooking in both paper and digital mediums was my introduction to digital art and graphic design, which is now one of my favourite things to do. And the skills I learned while writing a full-length musical accelerated my career as a novelist when I made that transition, because I had already spent almost twenty years studying the craft of story.

Because I was self-taught in so many of these areas or learned them through self-directed study rather than a formal program, I have often been hesitant to label myself with the terms these skills imply. Despite becoming proficient in several disciplines, it took me a long time to call myself a writer, a composer (my actual college training!), a knitwear designer, or a graphic designer. I’ve even been paid for my photographs, yet would still only call myself an amateur photographer. Even though nearly everything I’ve done since the moment I could speak was creative and artistic in some way, it was years into adulthood before I would call myself an artist.

But, eventually and through various forms of validation, I gained the confidence to claim those titles for myself. Even still, I often find myself getting caught in the comparison game with others—wondering how I could dare to claim a label that so many greats before me have borne with such honour.

The Impostor Syndrome is real. And it always comes at moments when I feel most vulnerable.

A talented artist painting themselves as an impostor. Created with Bing Image Creator.

However, long before I would claim the artistic labels, the things I created were how I expressed the parts of me I didn’t feel I could safely show the world in any other way. Through my songs, stories, and art, I could work out my personal beliefs, values, and concepts of the world. I could express my frustration with the way things are, and project a vision of they way I wish they were.

I wasn’t rebelling, but I certainly wasn’t making my art to conform to someone else’s idea of what it should be. I learned the rules so I could safely express myself within them in a way others found pleasing while being unique enough that the work was still “me”. My artistic works were all ways of showing the real me, and conforming to genre expectations was my way of serving others while I did it.

Because I understand the fears and identity issues that come part-and-parcel with being a creative, and I’ve also spent my entire life acquiring the skills required to become a proficient artist in several mediums, I believe I am qualified to speak to the current fears ravaging creatives around the world when it comes to the existential threat posed by AI.

And, after having spent time learning the capabilities and limitations of AI to a reasonable degree, I’m finally willing to speak up about it.

The New Art Revolution

Ever since ChatGPT and generative image models gained widespread notoriety in late 2022, creatives have been wrestling with questions of whether the machines are on the cusp of replacing us, and the implications of using AI to help us create our own art. Can we say “we made it” if the heavy lifting was done by a machine? Can we even use these machines ethically if they were trained on materials without the original artists’ knowledge or consent? And how long before people are just making all their own art with generative AI and no longer want to pay professional artists like us to do it?

In other words, the onset of the generative AI age has instigated an existential crisis unlike any artists have known before. It’s no wonder that the mere mention of the two little letters A.I. in many online forums is like inviting the mob to stone you. Scared people who feel backed into a corner aren’t known for their magnanimous, generous behaviour.

The way many artists feel about generative AI. Created with DALL-E3 via Bing Image Creator.

To answer the questions that have instigated all this fear, I think we need to first define what art is, and what it isn’t.

Art is a way for humans to express themselves. Anything that allows humans to do that is a tool, not an artist.

But, some would argue, the ability to create art is not constrained to humans, as Suda the painting elephant proves.

Okay, yes. There are animals who can paint. But are they expressing themselves? Are they trying to relay deeper truths, emotions, or ideas through their work? Are they working out their trauma and reshaping their concepts of the universe? Are they capturing something innate to the experience of being who they are?

I don’t think so (though I’m sure there are some apes out there who might prove me wrong). Suda isn’t so much “expressing herself” as “performing a trick” by creating work that humans taught her how to reproduce. And, in so doing, she’s raising money to help support herself, since her keepers sell her art to pay for the upkeep of their elephant sanctuary.

Yes, you read that right—people are paying for elephant paintings of a calibre that a six-year-old human could create, and they’re doing it because humans didn’t create it and it’s just a well-performed trick. In some ways, Suda is a tool being used to create a source of income to support the work of those who want to keep her and others like her safe. Is this evil? Is Suda about to steal a “real artist’s” job? Should we go on rampages because Suda, an actual sentient being, can create unique and original pieces of art that are similar to, but not exactly, what a human artist directed her to make?

Of course not. In fact, it’s pretty cool. That’s why we marvel at it.

So, when it comes to images and stories created with the use of generative AI, are they “art” created through machine learning, or the result of a trick the machine learned from copying humans? And if the product is a clever trick, how could we ever consider it “real art?”

I’m not immune to the existential angst caused by AI. I tried ChatGPT within the first week of its public release, and one of the first things I did was to see how well it would perform when writing book descriptions—one of my sources of freelance income. I was quickly assured that it wouldn’t be taking my job soon—but I could also see that it might only be a matter of time.

And you know what? I’m not getting much of that type of work anymore. Large Language Models (LLMs) are still not amazing at writing book descriptions, but they’ve improved a lot since November 2022. They’re now so much better than the average author—who typically hates writing book descriptions—and they’re so much freer than paying a pro to write a book description for you, that I totally understand why authors are now outsourcing this work to a machine.

And, in general, I think this is actually a good thing. Because in seeing how Chat sums up the story of their book, these authors are going to learn how to do it better themselves. And they’ll also be able to sell more books because they’ll have better marketing copy than they used to have. Lastly, most of these authors probably would never have hired someone to write their book description for them anyway. So, overall, that means the world has been improved, even if it means there are less people hiring me to do this work for them.

I’ve also heard authors talking about using LLMs to help them edit their books, whether it’s by giving them developmental feedback or helping them correct spelling, grammar, and punctation. More than that, some authors are using LLMs to actually write their books in the first place.

Do I feel threatened by this, even though writing and editing are my two primary sources of income?

I was, at the beginning. I had a lot of worries about how this would affect my career as an author and a freelance writer, or how I would get my work noticed in a market that would soon be drowning in quickly produced books. (As if it wasn’t already bad enough!)

Now, I’m over the fear, and I’m just focusing on the work of making sure my business can survive this new artistic revolution—and not only survive, but hopefully thrive.

Am I upset that other authors are using generative AI to help them do things they could pay me to help them with?

Not at all. First of all, because I’m not entitled to anyone else’s money (something many artists raging on social media would be prudent to remember). But also because I’ve seen what generative AI can and can’t do. I know how much work it is to get it to produce the thing you want it to produce. I’ve also found the use cases for AI that work for me and that make me feel good about my business and creative process, and I’ve realized I can still have a happy and fulfilling career without trying to “keep up with the AI overload.” (Honestly, I was already a slow publisher compared to many humans. So there wasn’t much to overcome here, as I was already well aware that slow and steady can still win the race.)

For me, I don’t use AI to write my words for me. However, I also don’t fault people who do use AI to help them write—many of whom have finally been freed to tell the stories inside them because they can use LLMs to help them do it.

(If you’re interested in the ways I use generative AI as an artist and creative, leave a comment below. I can put that into another post, because this one is already going to be way too long.)

Even if an argument could be made that Suda is being creative, I don’t believe AI models can be considered the “creators” of the art they are used to produce. Despite it’s moniker as an “intelligence” (which is inaccurate), AI generators don’t think. They predict. They respond to stimulus and use complicated algorithms to land on what that response should be. And they’re often wrong.

AI generators don’t spontaneously vomit stories or images or anything else. They were trained with certain “tricks” that make them very capable of simulating a whole lot of things in any style imaginable. But unless a human conceives of something they want the generator to make, and then goes through an often long and iterative process to get exactly the thing they wanted (which usually requires a great deal of revision and editing in multiple tools to create a finished product for their purpose), the so-called Artificial Intelligence won’t do a darn thing.

And even when you tell it what you want, it maddeningly only gets it right a percentage of the time. It’s like an over-eager robot butler whose entire job is to serve you, but whose training and experience has yet to match its enthusiasm, so it can be absolutely certain and wildly wrong.

Why Are We Even Fighting About This?

Throughout history, every innovation has opened new doors for creatives, entrepreneurs, scammers, and hucksters alike. Every new technology provides new tools for us to gain advantages—and to lose them, if we fall prey to someone more savvy with them than we are.

While AI has already been a force for good, propelling advances in healthcare, industry, and many other fields, companies and politicians are already gearing up for how generative AI tools can be used maliciously to affect national elections happening in several different countries this year.

In the wake of the recent Taylor Swift pornography deepfake scandal, how can we trust anything we see on the internet anymore? And if generative AI tools have been used to create so much harm, how should we feel about using those same technologies to advance our creativity?

There’s no denying that these technologies are moving at hyperspeed. Part of the fear comes because of the state of advancement—we don’t have time to remain educated about all the ways generative AI can be used to deceive us. And the output it creates will soon be so realistic that detection will be almost impossible.

Besides that, how can it be fair that inexperienced artists who haven’t spent years “putting in the time” to develop the skills of a true artisan are able to create gorgeous work with a few words in a prompt generator? How could someone using AI tools to enhance their undeveloped or non-existent artistic skills ever be considered a “real artist”?

There are plenty of reasons to be suspicious of AI and those who use it, or at least some believe so. I believe the fears and vulnerabilities AI brings have induced not only the tendency to lash out, but Impostor Syndrome on a massive scale. If a machine can duplicate what took us years to master in mere seconds, what is our work truly worth? Doesn’t it just make you want to throw an armband on everyone who uses AI of any kind so you’ll know they’re a fake?

Hmm… that will end well.

I’m saying all this tongue-in-cheek, obviously. I believe there is room for everyone to express their creativity, because humans are a creative species. My appreciation of one person’s work or creativity doesn’t diminish my ability to appreciate someone else’s—if anything, it enhances it. And it doesn’t really matter what tool they used to make it. Quality work is quality work.

Besides, on its own, AI just isn’t that good. It requires a lot of human intervention to make something truly amazing.

I made all the images in this article with AI, and I didn’t retouch any of them. They’re dazzling, to be sure, but look closely at any one of them and you’ll see imperfections that an illustrator or digital artist would never have let slide. I left the imperfections there intentionally—both because retouching this many images for a mere blog post would have taken a massive amount of time, and because I wanted you to see that AI art has flaws. In a way, that is part of the art form itself.

In other words, AI generated art has become an artform unto itself. But it’s still only as good as the human who works with it.

How Humans Will Win the A.I. Wars

I don’t have the gift of prophecy. And I’m not even particularly long-sighted when it comes to how future events will play out. However, I am often what I call “cautiously optimistic” about those future events, and I’ve been proven right more often than not.

That being said, I predict that artists won’t win the AI Wars by raging against the machines—which is a futile effort. Instead, I believe it is those who adopt AI into their toolkit who will be best poised to leap into this new age of AI that has been thrust upon us.

And to do that, we need to get past all the fear and infighting.

When it comes to things that scare me, my default response is to understand them. Often, in learning about the boogeyman, I find out he’s more like a scared kid who didn’t have the opportunity to develop good communication tools or opportunities to better himself. (The Boulder Hat Guy in Meet the Robinsons comes to mind.)

My approach is more like Lewis in that same movie—curious, experimental, open to new things, willing to see how technology can be used to improve humanity while being cautious about its dangers.

And I believe this is how humans, and artists, will emerge victorious in this new paradigm.

As many others have said, there’s no putting the AI genie back in the bottle. The best we can do at this point is to try and guide the development of the technology so it doesn’t precipitate the apocalypse while also learning how to adapt to the new world that is upon us now that it’s here.

Some artists will never choose to use AI in any way, shape, or form, and that is completely within their right. There are still writers who write books with pen and paper. And there are so many established ways to create art that don’t require the use of AI.

Some artists will choose to embrace it whole-heartedly in every part of their process and business.

And some, probably most, will be somewhere in between.

However, everyone needs to stop trying to tell other artists which ways are “okay” to create. That’s the point of art—that we can express ourselves in any medium we choose. If John Cage writing a piece in three movements in which musicians do nothing but sit there for four minutes and thirty-three seconds can be considered art, then certainly someone using a generative AI model to express their ideas can also be considered art.

I think some of the perceived threat lies in the name “Artificial Intelligence”. We need to understand that AI is not actually intelligent. (Not yet.) It’s a tool.

Without humans, AI is nothing. With a human directing it, it can be made to create incredibly moving pieces of art. (It can also be made to produce dren, and it produces a whole lot of that, because any tool is only as good as the skill of the person who uses it.)

Who’s the Real Enemy?

Sadly, no matter what you choose, someone will find a reason to be upset with you and even mock you for it. But that’s actually a “them” problem. If you’re a person who feels the need to lash out whenever the term AI crosses your screen, realize that the problem isn’t the person on the other side of the screen who is curious about AI. You’re lashing out because of your own fear and vulnerability.

Transition and change always induces vulnerability. When we’re uncertain, we often look for someone to blame so we can regain a feeling of control. We want to put our pain somewhere so it seems more manageable.

While it’s understandable to be afraid and uncertain in times of transition, you need to stop hurting other people because of your insecurities, and go figure out how to deal with them yourself. Lashing out at other artists isn’t going to make you safer. Throwing stones at someone else’s career will not help yours rise.

Please, I beg you, instead of letting fear turn you into one of the mob, seek to understand what you fear. Instead of lashing out at those who embrace what you’re afraid of, try to humanize it.

I’m not suggesting we “humanize” AI. (The people running the companies that produce it are working hard enough on that on their own.)

But I am suggesting that we humanize those who engage with it. That we empathize with their humanity and activate curiosity about why and how they use it instead of trying to exert control over their creative process.

We also need to understand what AI can and can’t do.

Might it be used to blow up the world? I don’t know. Maybe. I hope not. That’s definitely not in my control. (But don’t think I don’t occasionally lose sleep over that particular issue.)

But can I use it to express my feelings of uncertainty and sadness about the ways this new technology has divided a community I love (the artistic community) and produced a level of vitriol I didn’t know was possible?

You tell me. I created the following two images as part of a long series a few weeks ago when I was feeling particularly distraught about the way the creative community was behaving. I didn’t clean these up at all, because I feel like the distorted faces add to the emotion I was going for.

An AI-Assisted Rebel

I’ve used my art to say many things over the years that I didn’t think would be heard as easily in any other way. But, for the most part, I’ve been quiet in the AI Wars, watching the battle rage around me, grieving when people I considered friends casually threatened to “kick to the curb” any author or artist who engages with AI in any way. (Yes, that’s a quote.)

But it’s time for me to say something. Because, frankly, this matters to me, and the not saying something has felt like being muzzled. It’s prevented me from expressing myself as I want to, and it’s prevented me from sharing openly about the joy that playing with generative AI has brought back into my life.

Yes, I said playing. As a recovering workaholic who can turn anything into a job, playing with AI, specifically AI art, has brought a level of play and joy back into my life that I haven’t felt as a creative in many years. Silliness is something I lost touch with many years ago, but now there are times I make silly things just for fun. Often, new ideas are sparked in the process.

Generative AI has also enabled my husband, who doesn’t share my natural artistic ability, to express himself with art in ways I’ve never thought I would see. And it’s provided a new common interest. Last weekend, we spent the entire weekend using silly prompt games to bond and connect and play together.

That’s not something you often hear spoken about when someone’s debating the merits of generative AI—that it could be used as couples therapy, or just a fun date night.

And it’s because of this joy, this play, that I’ve been able to find the courage to overcome my high Agreeableness and high Compliance and find my voice.

This image was the result of a prompt game. The image represents a take on “Snow White and Rapunzel run a 20s mafia with Prince Charming in a 20s action movie poster.” How much do I want to write this story? So much. Created with Bing Image Creator.

This was the product of a prompt game for “Baby dragon in a…” I filled in the blank with “pocket”. And you better believe I want to write a story to go with this image now. Created with Bing Image Creator.

Am I “taking a side” in this war?

Maybe. But what I’m using that voice to say is this:

We don’t need to be at war.

It’s okay. You can choose your own path, and the path that someone else chooses doesn’t need to threaten you. “A rising tide lifts all boats,” as we indie authors love to say, and that includes artists who use AI as part of their process.

I think I’ll end this here, even though there is much more to say.

If you are someone who doesn’t really understand how AI works, or you want to understand the pros and cons around copyright and the ethical issues around the way models were trained, I recommend this excellent article by photography instructor Tom Ang: “Copyright Bites AI”.

Now, because I know there are people who won’t be able to do what I recommend in this article and who won’t examine themselves before lashing out, I want to give you fair warning: while I invite a civil and reasoned discussion of the different concerns relating to AI in the comments, I will delete anything that becomes a personal attack or decays into senseless vitriol… no matter how casually or flippantly delivered.

And if, by chance, the writer of the “kick’em to the curb” comment reads this (or anyone who wholeheartedly concurs with that opinion)—I hope you have at least been convinced that drawing black and white lines isn’t going to be a long-term solution to surviving the AI Wars. Because when we fight each other, the only people who win are…

Hmm. If you think of someone, let me know.

Unleash magic, my friend. With whatever tools you have available.

Because the world needs the magic in you.