I spoke on my first book panel ever on Friday.

It was at Can*Con 2026, a science fiction and fantasy book convention in Ottawa.

The topic was Toxic Writing Relationships, and no, it was not about writing toxic relationships; it was about having a toxic relationship with writing.

I did fine. Some people nodded, some even laughed. That felt good. And it felt good to not put my foot in my mouth (for once).

What was really incredible was seeing how many things we all appear to be sharing, particularly when it comes to the kinds of pain we all seem to feel. It’s always bizarre and yet utterly validating when someone you’ve never met before is nodding their head about how much Adobe sucks, or how hard it is to promote their work.

And while I wanted to launch into a big spiel today about how much I loved hanging out with some incredible people, I wanted this issue to actually do something. I feel so helpless a lot of the time when it comes to this industry, and yet after talking with and seeing so many people talk, I realized our biggest obstacle is just not connecting with each other enough. Because we all want the same things.

We all want this to be our ikigai.

But to do that, we all need to share our knowledge. Because if we don’t share our knowledge, we’re going to continue allowing our potential brethren to be led astray by hucksters and scam artists. I’m tired of all the people hawking $15 PDFs, $300 courses, or $3000 communities.

More often than not, those same folks are using LLMs and generative AI to “create” their resources, which is only marginally better than copying a Google AI Overview and pasting it into a PDF. Thing is, those lists are always bullshit, because they don’t have the full story, and they’re always a bit…’wrong’ somehow. Like, there’s always something off. Same way how there’s an uncanny valley vibe around AI visuals, I always feel the same way about these lists of “helpful resources.”

But what I want you to take away from this issue today is this: if you’re not creating, and you want to be, stop reading this and go and do that thing.

Then, and this is important, once you’ve done that, I want you to let me know. Shoot me reply, send a DM, I don’t care how you contact me. In fact, it doesn’t even need to be me: you can share or send it to someone else. But I want you to share with someone and not just post about it.

Because you owe it to yourself to get yourself out there and SHARE with someone. You deserve the CONNECTION that you have thus far not had.

Now, if you’re lucky and happen to have people who you trust to read and review your work, bully for you. But I’m not letting you off the hook. I want you to let me know, so that I can put you in touch with someone who needs that help from you. You’re in a great spot, fantastic. Now it’s time to pay that back.

What I want is for writers, artists, and creators of all stripes to be able to link up and get and give feedback in a constructive manner. It’s why I’ve been chipping away at this newsletter and the two others I put out every week (usually). It’s why Gonda and Erin and I have been doing the Live AMAs (usually). It’s why we created The Green Room. It’s why we run V13.net. It’s why we do all this shit.

We want artists to thrive.

Help us do that. Reply today and let me know if you need or can give this mentorship for other creators.

∴ If this newsletter has done anything for you, it would mean everything to me to hear it. Hit reply and tell me what you think. One sentence is enough.

Regardless, thank you for reading. Thank you for reading in an age of increasing illiteracy, cultural stagnation and attention divestment. You are doing something revolutionary. ∴

You're reading Verse & Vision — V13’s literary newsletter.

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