I can’t stop thinking about Audra Winter.

My BFF Jess was the first person who told me about her and since then I’ve watched… a few reactions. To say the least.

For those who aren’t in online book spaces that have become obsessed with this, the short version is: Audra Winter is a 22-year-old indie author who managed to get massive hype around her debut novel on TikTok — a fantasy novel that she first came up with when she was 12, and has been diligently working on ever since. It’s got a queer, neurodivergent protagonist, and I think some enemies to lovers stuff, and people were super hyped. She got somewhere around 5-6,000 pre-orders, which is basically unheard of for indies, let alone indie debuts. She commissioned a ton of art, the print editions of the books have fancy touches like sprayed edges, and people were talking about them as collectors items.

Then the book came out and it was bad.

Or at least, from screencaps I’ve seen, and from what people who’ve read it have said, it was bad. I haven’t read it myself, but my understanding is that it’s a combination of feeling unfinished and unedited story-wise, and having prose riddled with errors. (Though Winter says she has worked with both developmental and copy editors.) I’m inclined to believe the readers about its quality.

After that, things went poorly. Hype turned to backlash, Winter got defensive then later promised a revised edition ASAP (but would still be charging for the print version of it), Goodreads had to freeze the book page. I’m not on TikTok where most of this went down so I haven’t seen the responses there, but I suspect they aren’t kind. (Here’s a deep dive; I don’t agree with all of her takes but it sure is thorough.)

A lot of people think Winter is a scammer. I vehemently disagree: people pre-ordered a product, she delivered the product, the product was bad. It happens! The big question is, how does someone manage to believe her book is a work of genius, and convince thousands of people of that, only to discover upon release that actually it’s half-baked and full of problems?

Well, I can’t say for sure. I don’t know her, but I have a theory, and it’s this: it happened because she’s 22, and she’s been working on the project since she was 12.

Hear me out.

When Jess started describing this debacle, and got as far as saying that bit above, I cringed and had to hide my face in my hands like I was watching a horror movie. This was a cringe full of empathy, for the record. Because there but for the grace of god…

I don’t want to make it sound like 22 is too young to write an excellent novel. A few people — a very few — that age and even younger manage it. But it’s such a small number because the majority of us, definitely including me, were simply not that good at writing yet at 22.

I, too, had a passion project fantasy world I started working on as a pre-teen, and continued poking at off and on until after I finished college. It was full of magic and romance and angry teenage girls with giant swords and cute boys who sometimes turned into angels for no particular reason. There was tragedy and angst and forbidden love!! I was pretty sure it was brilliant. It was not.

It was, however, really fun to write. It was fun to daydream about. Fun to make up worldbuilding. Fun to come up with super dramatic twists and turns without thinking through if they made sense. It was fun to write up character profiles and draw my OCs! And yes, it was fun to share with the world.

This was the dark ages of the internet, so indie publishing was not really a thing yet. E-readers did not yet exist in their current form at all. Wattpad wasn’t around. FictionPress wasn’t, either. But I still made a website for my writing and you know what we did have? Webrings. I found a webring with other teenage writers and we all shared our work with each other and drew each other’s characters and it was such a good time.

There is a part of me that wishes writing still felt like that. It was fun and exciting, and crucially, I didn’t have even a little bit of self-consciousness about it.

Eventually, though, I decided I had to get serious about writing, since posting my fantasy project on a website that only a dozen or so people ever found did not somehow magically attract literary agents. (I barley knew what a literary agent was. At that point I was about 22 and the blogosphere was juuuust starting, so information was not as easily accessible as it is now — and had been even less so when I was really in the throes of it as a teenager.) I studied writing craft and story structure, I read more critically, and I learned about publishing.

Another key thing I did was write other things. I think this is a major reason why Winter’s book turned out the way it did. When you write your first big passion project, you have no scale of comparison for it. It feels like the most genius idea because it’s the only idea you’ve ever really run with. Then you have another idea, and write something else, and suddenly you can start seeing flaws in your first idea. Then you write something else and can start seeing flaws in both of your other projects, and also maybe start seeing some flaws in the thing you’re currently writing but you figure out how to correct them, and look at that, you’re maturing as a writer. But if you never turn that corner, and only ever work on the same project for years at a time, you simply never get that experience.

I don’t say all this to mock Winter. I have a ton of empathy for her. If indie publishing had been this accessible when I was 22, and if my webring had had the reach of a semi-viral TikTok account, yeah, I’d be in the exact same boat, getting the exact same reaction.

I’m not really in a position to give Winter herself advice, but if I were talking to other young writers in the midst of their teenage passion projects, here’s what I’d say:

You are doing exactly what you should be. Revel in it. Find friends to cheerlead for you and hear about all of the twists and turns and cool worldbuilding you’ve got planned. Go ahead, commission that artist if you can afford to and that’s what your heart wants. Make a cover in Canva and write out your character profiles and create a wiki of worldbuilding. Do whatever your heart desires and let your passion drive you.

Go ahead and share it if you want to… but not via publication. Share it with other teenage writers, or for free somewhere friendly. It’s fun to share your work! But as soon as you enter the publishing industry, it becomes a whole different beast, and you have to start balancing the id-driven joy with more advanced craft. I know some form of publication is what nearly every writer wants — me included! — but let yourself have this one project sheerly for the joy and fun of it.

Then, when you feel like you’re ready to publish it, write something else instead.

Like I said above, you will grow more as a writer, and write something that’s much better, by letting another concept blossom and seeing it out start-to-finish. You’ll learn that your first idea is not always a work of genius (again: mine sure wasn’t), and you’ll learn how to find new ideas and develop them, which is definitely a skill you’ll want down the line.

Yes, with this new project, you’ll also still want cheerleaders and friends to hype you up, because I do believe getting cheered on and having people who are excited to talk about your ideas and your work is a vital part of being a writer. But also, this time, you should show your work to beta readers and critique partners who can help you start to spot your story’s weaknesses and flaws. Study story structure. Read up on craft. Push yourself into the murky world of heavy revision — structural revision first, then more granular.

All of which is easier said than done. I don’t think there’s ever been a writer in the history of the world who hasn’t daydreamed about publication and critical acclaim while they were drafting… But a huge part of why that teenage writing project is so compelling is because you don’t have any of that stuff happening yet. All you have is your ideas and your words, and before you have the pressure of publishing on you, it’s so much fun.

Trust me: over the last couple of years I’ve fought to get that fun back. Writing something just for myself, without worrying about if it’s a real story, or trying to force it to become one, feels bonkers — like a waste of time. But it’s also the closest I’ve ever come to recapturing the joy of wild teenage writing.

At the end of the day, I am honestly rooting for Winter. I hope she’s able to do her rewrites and ship the revised editions she’s promised so she can put this behind her, and I hope this doesn’t stop her from writing more in the future. I think it’s cool that she’s ambitious, she’s clearly got ideas that a lot of people connect with, and I would never discourage anyone from actually sitting down and writing.

While I’m sure it will be painful when she looks back on this, I hope she doesn’t cringe too much. Just about every fantasy writer I know went through some version of this (albeit without the public backlash). Realizing the first project you fell in love with is not THE project of all time is a common growing pain. I hope she steps away from it and starts thinking about what’s next instead.

Some Other Stuff

I wrote a blog entry that was actually posted over on my blog itself a few months ago! Specifically a review of the Onyx Boox GO 6, an e-reader that is… fine. It’s not amazing, but it’s also not locked into the Amazon ecosystem, so I’ll take it.

As for other stuff, like seemingly the rest of the world, I’ve spent the summer obsessed with K-Pop Demon Hunters. The soundtrack really is that good! Reading-wise, I read The Wedding People for my work book club a couple of months ago — not something I’d normally pick up, but I was surprised by how much I enjoyed it.

I’ve also started reading more blogs — not that there are too many still kicking around out there. It turns out Firefox has a pretty solid, free feed reader extension. Do you have any blogs you particularly dig? Send ‘em my way!