Tuesday’s election results in the United States have left a lot of people feeling shocked, dismayed, upset, and angry. Others are pretty happy with that result. And even more people have moved on, thinking, Well, that’s over.
It’s not over, really. Whenever a new administration comes in the White House, changes occur. I suspect that the changes under Donald Trump this time will be even more significant.
However, this is not a political blog. There are thousands of bloggers and podcasters and commentators who are going to analyze and rehash and predict and try to figure out what happened in the past week.
If you want that, toddle on over to your favorite pundit and listen in.
This post is about the future.
Let’s establish something about the present first.
This outcome was one of four that could have occurred. The four outcomes (in November anyway) were:
- Trump won
- Harris won
- The vote was tied (yes, that can happen)
- The election was close and it was being litigated
I even read an article the day before the election listing all of those outcomes and talking about which one was likely. (The writer ended up being wrong on their predictions.)
The polls and trend lines have shown the strong possibility of a Trump victory for almost a year now. The reason that President Biden stepped down wasn’t altruistic. It was because the polling was so bad for him that he either got out of the race or lost big in November. (If you think Harris’s loss was big, Biden’s would have been much bigger. She at least made it into a race.)
People have known and discussed the possibility of a Trump victory for a long time now. It was an emotional shock to the system—maybe for everyone (in good and bad ways)—but it wasn’t a surprise.
And now, here we are, facing a future that is uncertain. We don’t know exactly what Trump’s policies will be, nor do we know how they will be implemented. We don’t know if they will have an uneven impact across the country or if the impact will be the same everywhere.
This has been a U.S. election on steroids. The difference between this one and the last two is pretty simple, though.
Trump won outright. It’s hard to argue with a victory like that.
So the post-election period will not include litigation and rioting in the streets. That’s a good thing.
It means that the next few months will be less chaotic than most thought they would be.
Less chaos leaves room for a lot of planning on the part of smart businesses and government officials.
We writers need to plan as well.
But that begs the question. How do you plan when you have no idea what will happen next?
Well…I hate to say this, but that’s called living, folks. We never know what’s going to happen next. Usually that feeling of not-knowing is just background noise. Every now and then, though, it’s front and center, like it is right now.
I wrote versions of this post in the past. I’m going to reiterate what I said in those.
Here’s how you live and run a business in uncertain times.
- You figure out what the possible futures could be.
- You figure out the impact those scenarios will have on your business.
- Plan for the worst but prepare for the best.
- Plan for struggle and
- Make sure your plans are concrete.
- Be prepared to make modifications.
- Review your plans every week or every month throughout the period of uncertainty.
- Be sure to include your personal time and finances in those plans.
- Uncertain times—whether they’re good or bad for your business—can be extremely difficult emotionally.
- Remember that the world will go on.
Most of these points are self-explanatory. Let me explain a couple, though.
The first one is quite important: figuring out what the possible futures will be. That pre-election article I mentioned above had done that. The analyst looked at what he saw as the various outcomes of the election, outlined them, and considered them.
Once you know the possible outcomes, you plan for each one of them. Yes, some will favor your business. Others will not. It’s up to you to figure out what will happen in each of those scenarios.
Let me remind you that hope is an emotion and not a plan. You might hope things are going to go a particular way, but if they don’t, you need to be prepared.
Right now, we have three months to plan. Three months to implement whatever your business needs. You plan for the worst. You also plan for the best. I’ve written a lot of blogs about the fact that success can hurt a business too. (Too much cash outlay too quickly, for example, or hiring too many people to keep up with demand.)
By the end of those three months, the few months after that might have come into focus. You plan for that focus. You also plan for uncertainty.
There is going to be a lot of uncertainty for the next six months or so. Brace yourselves for that.
I don’t use the word “plan” lightly. You need to consider what’s ahead, and your plans need to be concrete.
If you have posited four scenarios, then you need four concrete plans for those scenarios. If you can, you go with step one and step two and step three.
You will end up modifying those plans a lot as the future shakes out and we get more than an inkling of what’s ahead. You won’t be able to do some things you can do now. You might have other opportunities that you didn’t expect.
That’s how uncertainty plays out.
You need to make the same kind of plans for your family and yourself. Good outcomes, bad outcomes—they’re all in play at the moment. Do the hard work of planning ahead, and you’ll thank yourselves later. You might be surprised by a sudden change in your business, but you’ll be prepared.
What do I mean by “surprised” in that context? I mean that maybe the outcome you had strategized as the least likely is the one that happened. But you had planned for it, so you’re ready.
That’s how all of this works.
I hate to tell you this also, but there is good news for writers in uncertainty and difficult times.
People consume more entertainment. They watch more movies, fight over sports instead of politics, and they take up hobbies as ways to keep themselves distracted.
But most of all, they read. Book sales always go up in uncertain times. Books are cheap entertainment, comparatively speaking. A person can get four or more books for the price of a movie ticket.
People also use libraries more. Once they feel their finances have settled, they will return to buying books by their favorite authors. So even if someone “just” get your books from the library, eventually, they will pick up an actual copy on their own. Or they’ll tell others about it and those people will help you make a sale.
Writing helps you escape as well. Indulge yourself. Write something you don’t think will sell.
The world is changing, and you never know what might hit with people. You certainly can’t base it on what was.
That’s the other thing. As I said above, the world will go on. It always does. Sometimes there’s fundamental change, and sometimes it seems pretty stable.
We’re in a period of change.
And that’s pretty much the only thing we know for certain.
Note: I will be doing quite a few posts in the next few months, as I deal with all kinds of changes. Most of those posts will go on Patreon. If you’re interested, you can find my Patreon page by clicking here.
Also, Dean and I have revived what used to be called the Kris & Dean show, to help writers plan for 2025. We did a video. Take a look before Tuesday, which is when this program starts. Here’s the link.
“Facing The Future in Uncertain Times ,” copyright © 2024 by Kristine Kathryn Rusch. Image at the top of the blog copyright © 2024 by Kristine K. Rusch
There isn’t as much uncertainty for everyone as many would prefer to believe. The playbook (Project 2025) is published and available to read (all 900+ pages of it).
Those of us who write romance, erotic fiction, or any (including children’s) fiction with LGBTQ+ characters will be classified as p*rn writers and could face jail time. We definitely will not be able to sell our books via current market places which will be threatened with fines and possible criminal penalties if they don’t ban our work no matter how much money we make for those retailers. Creating/maintaining our own stores will not be an option, either. Credit card companies and shopping cart software will be making the same (against us) choice.
The decisions we make must include the options of: 1) shutting down our businesses, 2) abandoning our readers and our current work to start over in other genres under new names, 3) leaving (if we have the resources) the country in order to continue writing, or 4) accepting the risks of being jailed, deported (if your family has been here less than three generations it won’t matter if you’re a citizen, born or naturalized), or 5) executed if we try to stand up for our rights.
Yes, they published that. Publishing something is easy. Implementing is not.
I’m going to keep doing what I do, including writing LGBTQ+ characters.
But, as I said in this piece, we all need to make our own choices. We need to make decisions that will take care of ourselves first, and then take care of others.
Erotica writers have always been the canary in the coal mines. Over and over again, this century especially, we’ve warned writers about book banning trends we see from retailers, credit card processors, funding/promotional platforms, etc. We’re always ignored and then the writers who don’t explicitly write about s*x but do have Queer and/or Trans characters in their books and/or characters who have s*x on the page (or implied outside of marriage, in non-conforming pairings, etc.) are always surprised when their books / sales / promotions are banned.
The P25 policies/bans are already being implemented across the country in “red” states and proposed or implemented in more conservative local jurisdictions in “blue” states. Librarians are already being threatened with jail for not removing books with LGBTQ characters or books containing factual U.S. history. (One book, for example, that accurately discusses the reality of the damage done to the lives and society of the Wampanoag Tribes after the English arrived in Plymouth was reclassified as fiction without notice or public input by a board in Texas that deliberately excluded librarians from its ranks.)
Eliminating the ability of LGBTQ people to live openly is very high on the xtian nationalist playlist (as it was in Nazi Germany). Eliminating books with characters who are Queer and/or Trans (unless they’re the evil villain) is one of the first steps (again, as it was in Nazi Germany) towards that.
As to implementation, one of the ways fascism works is voluntary compliance in advance. Barnes & Noble is already purging its virtual store shelves of erotic books. Amazon probably will be next. (Amazon has a long history of misclassifying children’s/YA books with LGBTQ+ characters portrayed in a positive light as p*rn.)
I’m sure for most writers #3 “Plan for the worst but prepare for the best” means planning for a reduction of income or losing access to their ACA health insurance. But in reality, for many of us that’s a best case scenario. The worst, if we don’t return to the closet/stop writing and selling books, includes jail, deportation, and/or execution.
If you’re already in the “take care of other” position, one way of helping (in addition to the obvious of buying our books sooner rather than later if you have the discretionary income) would be passing along emigration lawyer recommendations for folks who are looking leave the U.S. (If you contact me via my website, I can share any information with folks trying to help them.)
Thank you. Maintaining sanity is the most important thing in these times.
Life is about cycles. Things go this way and then that. To and fro.
One side was upset four years ago. The other side is now. This time, however, we have a track-record to refer to. So not everything is unknown, even in the current situation and how different the word is now than it was then. And that should make planning a bit less traumatic.
But your ten points are exactly how my parents taught us kids to live. Plan for the worst case scenario, but hope for the best and enjoy it when it comes. Always be flexible in those plans and be ready to adjust mid course, if necessary. And don’t catastrophize things. And be open to opportunities, even with people you perceive to think differently from you.
If only our “leaders” on both sides would accept that cooperation is the best plan. Even if it can be contentious sometimes.
Life will go on. So thank you for your common sense approach.
Thanks, Kris. Good to have a reminder that the future is always uncertain, but here we are, ever on the edge of it. We survived before, and we will again.