I've been an author for nearly a decade.
Is that long enough? Do I get a badge now? Has the ancient curse lifted?
Technically I’ve been an author for much longer, but for reasons I’ll explain below, I’m saying ten years. I’m 30, so that’s a big part of my life.
This is somewhere between short story, article, and comedy.
Way back in 2012 I went with my friend to his fresher’s week at Edge Hill university. He wore jeans and shirt, I wore a suit, and was mistaken for a professor1. I got talking to someone at a bar and later at a house party covinced her I had invented a cocktail called the Battenburn. It consisted of pure orange juice and disaronno. Usually 60/40 in favour of the juice. It’s a weird drink, but to be fair I made it up on the spot. I named it because it tastes like battenberg.
I found out about a month ago that she has been asking bar staff for it this whole time. I somehow neglected to tell her it was made up. This is officially my longest running joke.
I liked the campus so much during that darkened, chaotic 2012 adventure that I applied to do a degree there a few weeks later. I didn’t have the grades because I ‘pissed around’ in college (I wanted to be many things and kept changing courses). If I remember rightly I argued my case on an open day, brought a folder packed with short stories and concept art that the tutor didn’t read. I got in. By September 2013, I was officially a Creative Writing student. I was on track to being a novelist who could afford to feed himself2. In my mind, this was the ultimate goal, and it would take only five years. Five years and I could buy my own damn sandwiches without government interference.
Of course, I had already done a lot of writing, so I was confident. I was three novels in by then, and at 21 years old, I was technically a mature student. Like with many aspects of my life, this put me in between two identities. It raised a question like the branching timelines of a video game. Hang with the younger people, or the older people?
I chose both.
I threw myself into it. I started my own writing society, brought in guest speakers, hosted events, I even set homework. I did a bit of stand-up comedy, I got told I had a distinctive writer’s voice. I got a scholarship for ‘Excellence in the Creative Arts’. I wrote poems about time travel. I starred in Channel 4’s Lego Masters3, I signed up for the Student Union president position as a joke and had people complain when they couldn’t vote for me. I spoke to a bestselling author and realised they are human beings4 like the rest of us. I was a judge at the Edinburgh Fringe literary festival. I won the Comedian Award at the Uni’s ‘Rad Ball’ (a better, weirder alternative to the official graduation ball) and I got told I was a real poet by a man I admired. None of that was in the right order, all of it was brilliant.
But then it ended. I graduated, returning solemnly to Manchester, a city I still feel alien in, and I had to find a new crowd to perform in front of. It took a while, but I made some friends. I was not yet a published author - I had left uni without managing that (ignoring a time travel microfiction on the now dead postcardshorts) - but I was an author with a direction.
I started my rebirth with a poetry night, got bored, then did comedy poetry. Got bored again, did stand-up and silly videos. I quite like stand-up. Making silly videos is something I missed doing. It’s nice to be back at it.
So I have been trying to ‘make it’ as an author for nearly a decade
Discounting my two degrees (four years) and 2019/2020 (don’t want to explain, you’re not here for sob stories) I have technically only been at it for four years, but I don’t like to see time like that. I like to see it as a single line, a continuous arrow of progress. Even as I went in and out of depression (not a sob story, try to name one artist without this issue) I kept writing. When I found out some agents check out your twitter before deciding to sign you or not (I’m screwed) I kept going. When I spoke to an author friend who waited twelve years to get signed before her publisher imploded and tried to keep the rights to her book, I kept pushing. And as the whisperings of AI ‘writing’ and AI ‘art’ began to suffocate the inspiration from my friends, I stayed motivated.
I was motivated because I enjoy writing. Sure, it is a job, one I spend hours each day on, but it is never drudgery5. You will know from reading my stories that I care about making them entertaining, even this post. I do not subscribe to the idea that a story must teach the audience a moral lesson or pretend to be smarter than it is (and for that reason I find most spoken word poetry boring). Rather, I want to tell a story that is fun. Anything deeper than that usually is there on purpose, but I don't bash you over the head with it. It's there for you to dig up and find.
And if I ever do bash you with the story, I trust you will tell me.
What is a Phillip?
I began my life as a writer to entertain myself. I would read short story collections in my school library and think of preferable endings to the stories. My favourite one to rewrite was about a meteor that was built into a church and which contained a fossil of alien life. If you know the story, tell me please, I am still looking for it 15 years later.
That’s where I began. That is who Phillip Carter is, most of the time.
The artist formerly known as Phillip Carter wrote WHO BUILT THE HUMANS? after uni, without a chair or a desk. The entirety of that book was written either in my bed, or - when we lost our family home - on the floor of a rented house. When I picked the meticulous order for the stories, so that reading it in several directions worked flawlessly, I did so by sticking cut-out titles to a bit of selotape I kept on the coffee table for a number of weeks. My mum is very patient.
I find it inspiring to remember that WBTH was the thing that kept me waking up in the morning through a pretty difficult year. I put a lot of time and effort into that book. The result is a beastly 125,000 word debut that lots of people love for lots of different reasons.
Whatever happens, there is going to be a second one, and it is even weirder.
So how is it going?
WBTH has got a lot of good reviews. I’m glad I made it as weird as I did, even if it does make it impossible to advertise. And I enjoy being an author. I get a lot of psychological freedom. Any idea I have is mine because I had it.
I’ve been working for myself since 2012. I’ve survived off student loans, self-employment support, and the few times I’ve been paid to write stories or edit things or sell books. I have had job interviews, but I’ve never been good at them. I’m good at doing jobs, I know how to pick things up and put them on shelves. I can work a pallet truck. I can keep myself to myself.
I have a character I play when I do stuff that isn’t performing. In that way I can still perform and get along with people. I become Phil (with one L, an important distinction) and Phil is very good at pretending he knows things about the football and remembering the intricate details of the drama in the stock room. Phil is a functional member of society. Phillip? Not so much.
Consider the difference between David Robert Jones, David Bowie, Ziggy Stardust, and Cobbler Bob. Phil is to Phillip what Cobbler Bob is to Ziggy. And, much like Bowie, there was a point in my development where the lines between my Ziggy and David blurred. I became the drawing of the bestselling author I created when I was 17.
A new outlet
I performed some comedy about time travel at Bright Club recently, and it made me realise that articles like this one, and some of my funnier stories, are actually stand-up comedy in disguise. If I delivered this in audio format it would be funnier, and I could improv in extra details.
Since then I’ve got back into doing skits on instagram.
Not everything has to be a novel. What a revolutionary thought.
Rise of the machines
I grew up with people who would take credit for work that wasn’t theirs, so of course I knew people would use AI to ape the styles of authors they could never hope to compete with. I am surprised nobody else was worried about it.
I always thought the world would end in my lifetime. But, so does every other dark-humoured comedian and sci-fi author. It’s hardwired. If I didn’t think the world was ending tomorrow, I wouldn’t write so many jokes about it. I’d probably write jokes like James Corden’s. You remember his jokes, right?
Precisely.
I need the edgy glamorous doom and gloom and existentialism. They are the spices that make me unique, that make my work memorable.
What drives me
I’m not a marketer, and I’ll admit I have struggled to make this author thing work. If I was motivated by money I’d be doing literally anything else.
I am motivated to see the story to its end. When I’m publishing, I’m motivated by an imaginary image of someone coming up to me at a book signing, telling me that I am the reason they didn’t give up writing. That feels further away now, even though it’s actually already happened with a close online friend I met through my memes. Hi Bill.
The way I write takes a lot of time. I like my work to have layers and detail. I want my books to be re-readable in the same way big video games are replayable. My biggest fans have read WBTH two or more times, and they keep reminding me about how much they love it. That was my intention all along. That’s a proper book.
WBTH2 is for them, and for you. You’ll see a free story from it soon.
When does it end?
Ten years is a long time to have no fixed income. I spent my 20s not holidaying like all my neon orange friends from college, but writing these books and mean-spirited descriptions of people who weren’t actually real and if they were real never used that much spray tan. To be honest, my 20s were decent, I just liked writing this paragraph. Writing was an adventure, still is.
“The default state of the universe is play”
And it was a choice, but I didn’t realise just how difficult it might be. It’s isolating. On stage you get feedback right away. When you’re writing, sometimes the project is never finished. It’s a six-month outburtst that your flatmates don’t even get to hear.
No, there are more efficient ways to create worlds.
Rebirth
I’ve just applied for another degree. This time round, ten years later, I might be an artist and an actor. These are things I already do but I don’t talk about much, because I’m used to just putting the stories here. I was content as an author, I still am, but increasingly I feel the landscape around the art has shifted so violently that I don’t have anywhere safe to stand. I want to do something that robots can’t copy yet, in the months before they work out how to do it.
The default state of the universe is play.
I want to be closer to that. I want to play. To improvise. To adapt. To tell jokes, to laugh. I want to have enough money to visit my friends sometimes because I miss them. I want to travel, not far, just a city across, and clean the inside of my head. It feels dusty. I want to pay my mum a bit more rent.
I want to be something more than what I am right now.
Is it over?
No. I am going to keep writing and posting, but in September two things should happen.
I get that degree, meaning I post a bit less often for a while.
A book comes out and I buy a giant robot crab and take over the world.
I need to transform, to find something a bit more stable.
Is comedy stable?
If you found this useful, if it resonated with you, or if you want to tell me a joke in the comments, I would appreciate that.
How to support me whilst doing your regular shopping
Below this paragraph are some links for Amazon’s digital bookshelves and Lego shops. I am an affiliate (as both an author and Lego influencer), meaning that if you already shop on Amazon, you can do your shopping through my links, at no extra cost or inconvenience to you, and Amazon will beam me some money sometime. You can also buy WHO BUILT THE HUMANS? through the Time Travel Books link, and I still get that extra comission. If just one person does it, I’ll have made more money doing this than writing books this month. Hi Mum (Mum reads these).
Being mistaken for a professor would continue throughout my career, including times when people walked past me at events to talk to who they thought the performer was. I understand now why spies wear suits.
This has yet to happen. If it wasn’t for mum feeding me and letting me live with her these past few years, I don’t know where I’d be. Thanks mum (she reads this, even the slow bits).
My sister and I won the Lego Masters speed build, but the camera people didn’t catch us raising our hands, so they edited it so it looked like someone else won. You can see us, hands raised, behind the ‘winners’ (who were really nice) in the shot. I’m over it, honestly.
Increasingly, the notion of a human author feels ridiculous. A few months ago people were tentatively using AI to write prompts. But now, many of the uninspired, the boring, the perpetually puzzled and lacklustre, feel the need to outsource all of creativity to AI. It’s fine as a tool in the same way a dice and some written prompts on paper are a tool, but when you are the tool and the machine is the ‘writer’ something is inside-out. AI-written content is to literature what a paint grenade is to doing your own home DIY. Sure, you were technically nearby when something painted the room, but did you really do anything? How much outsourcing can you do before you are not involved at all? I lie awake at night thinking about how vacuous these people’s love lives must be. You plug yours in, I’ll plug mine in, see you next week. Wait, don’t trip over the wire!
Unless we count the marketing part. I don’t like marketing unless I can become a character and make a joke out of it.
Good stuff mate, sounds like you’re really building something.
Loved reading your story! Your degree will be in ....? I missed that somehow! Please tell!