Have you ever been scammed?
As of this week, I have! 🎉🥳
I’m trying to celebrate the act of ticking ‘being scammed’ off my bucket list, because the truth is, I’m painfully embarrassed. Instead of trusting my intuition and seeing the situation as it truly was (which was: too good to be true), I got caught up in the excitement of a shortcut.
It’s made me reflect on how important intuition truly is and how the lazy sod in me who’s enticed by a shortcut is stymying my full potential not only as a writer but as a person.
🏠 Instinct - The Finsbury Park Apartment
Allow me to tell you the full twisted cautionary tale.
As I mentioned in the last newsletter, me and my partner have moved to London. We have heard constantly how expensive living here was and how difficult it was to find a place to live.
So, it was with immense joy that we found a great place after less than a week of searching. Would you believe it? No? Well, you’re already more on the ball than I…
We’d posted in multiple Facebook groups and messages were flooding in. Most of them were either too far out of the city, too expensive, or too cramped. One apartment in particular, though it was further out of the city than we’d have ideally liked, was great. It was affordable, the landlord seemed friendly, and it was in a great neighbourhood.
The landlord invited us to view it, but because were leaving the next day for Portugal, we didn’t have the time. She put us in touch with the current tenant who sent us a video of the place. We decided we’d take it.
So far, so good.
We were over the moon. On a whim, I did a quick online search about scams. One website said that if you couldn’t view the place in person, ask the landlord for proof of bills and proof of identification. I asked, and the landlord happily sent through a photo of her passport and a photo of an electricity bill with the apartment’s address. She then sent through a legitimate-looking contract, which we signed.
So far, so good.
She asked for the deposit to be sent through. Completely normal. Except, and this was the first yellow flag that I ignored, the bank account we were to deposit into was under a different name to our landlord. Pushing our doubts aside, we paid the deposit. £1100 … not an insignificant sum.
The next morning, the landlord requested the first month’s rent in advance. She claimed that she was unable to lodge the deposit until this had happened. Now, the yellow flag turned red. I asked some friends who assured me that this was simply not the case. They told me not to send any more money through.
I asked the landlord to speak on the phone and she called me a few hours later. We had an amiable discussion, but now that my doubts had been awakened, I couldn’t push them aside. I reached out to the current tenant who, strangely, could no longer speak to me as she’d suffered an untimely death in her family.
Okay. Weird.
The next couple of days passed by with intermittent messages flung back and forth between the landlord and myself, getting nowhere. Contact has slowly waned and now, we feel pretty damn stupid. We’re quite sure we’ve been duped.
Of course, we’ll try and get our money back, but we aren’t confident.
🚩 Intuition - The Urge to Cut Corners
Cutting corners is a stupid thing to do, basically always.
Whether you’re in construction, investing, education or book publishing, the desire to speed up the process is tempting. Many times during the writing and publishing process of A Rockstar Has Exploded, I wanted to cut corners.
Did I really have to rewrite the book for the fifth time just because one of my friends had found an inconsistency in a subplot?
Did I really have to hire a professional line editor? They were gonna take a few weeks to go through the manuscript, then I’d have to review all their suggestions, send it back and wait a further couple of weeks for it to be proofread.
Did I really have to buy a proof copy and read the whole thing again (for the hundredth time) to check for any minuscule errors that most readers would never notice?
The answer to these questions, if I trust my intuition, is YES.
Yes, you have to go the long way.
An hour of your time now could save you a dozen hours in the future. Rewriting, though it takes a seemingly endless amount of time and energy, will save you hundreds of dollars of editing down the line. Paying for a professional cover designer will save you gigantic headaches if you were to instead go with your cousin’s friend’s hair removal specialist’s son who claims he knows his way around Photoshop but actually just loves Canva.
We all know deep down what the right thing to do is when faced with these opportunities. Our intuition tells us that it’s worth putting in the time to get the best possible product into the hands of your reader. But even knowing that, it’s easy to be swayed by the promise of time and energy saved.
Trust your intuition. Put in the hard yards. It’s worth it in the long run.
🪄 Integrity - The Lure of Tools and Tricks
Oh good golly, how helpful is Grammarly? Or ProWritingAid? QuillBot? Ludwig?
I recently took the plunge and got Grammarly. I’d seen it advertised a million times but never bothered checking it out. Now I have it, I’m rather mystified how I coped without it. However, I have noticed that it sucks some of my personal style out of my writing if I accept all its suggestions.
There are loads of apps and services out there that claim will ‘supercharge your writing!’ or ‘supercharge your sales!’. Be wary. For every app that will genuinely help you, there are a hundred that will drain your time. One second you’ll be downloading the trial version of Inkarnate: create fictional maps online! (which, let’s face it, you don’t even need), the next you’ll have spent 10/12 hours of your dedicated writing time reading reviews on the eighteen different map-making apps available.
I warn you of this trap because I have fallen into it.
Use tools sparingly. They are great for algorithmic tasks (tasks that have a clear computational need like maths or spreadsheet work), but pale in comparison to your creative brain when it comes to heuristic tasks (tasks that require creative problem-solving).
You are the writer. Your creative soul is what makes your work great. Don’t dilute your writing by employing endless tools and tricks in the hope they’ll save you time or money. You’re better off relying on your instinct and intuition.
This way, even though it takes longer, your writing will have a much more important quality: integrity.
Take your time. We’re in it for the long haul.
That’s the adage I needed to hear before I transferred that money to the dicey landlord.
I let my anxiety about the future rush me into making a panic decision. I got too excited and went for the shortcut, hoping so desperately it would work out that I convinced myself it was real.
Right now, with thousands of books coming out every day, and TikTok trends leading to astronomical sales spikes for a few lucky authors, it’s easy to feel the time pressure. But don’t let your excitement to ‘beat the system’ rush you. Slow down, use your instinct and intuition, and remember that good work lasts.
🍻 Cheers to you and your integrity
Let me repeat:
Take your time. We’re in it for the long haul.
📣 Shout Out to: The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman
I couldn’t put this down. A friend of mine recommended it. She said she loves the characters so much and she was excited for the upcoming release of the fourth book in the series. So, I bought the first book (released back in the Covid days of 2020) and read it in two days.
I was busy walking around London, writing, and editing a film, but I couldn’t stop. I’d wake up at 4 a.m., unable to sleep, and find myself reading until the sun came up. The characters are charming as heck — they’re all older adults who have such wisdom and emotional intelligence but also are a bit dotty — and the murder mystery plot is fantastic.
Highly recommended!