Rebel Take-Aways From Writer Corey Croft

Vancouver author and indie publisher Corey Croft sat down with me and dropped some of the most honest, hard-won wisdom about writing and creativity I've heard in a long time. He wasn't performing. He was just telling the truth, which is rarer than it sounds.

Turn Your Couch Time Into Writing Time

Corey didn't start writing because he had a clear schedule and a tidy desk. He started because he finally admitted that the time he was spending watching YouTube while digesting lunch was, in fact, time. "You always have time," he told me. "You just have to make it." That shift, from waiting for the perfect moment to claiming the imperfect one you're already sitting in, is what got him from a head full of story ideas to an actual novel.

Let Writing Do What Therapy Couldn't

Corey went to a therapist because his girlfriend suggested it, and he arrived deeply skeptical. (His description of realizing they'd just ask about his childhood was delivered with the kind of deadpan accuracy that makes you snort your coffee.) What actually worked for him was sitting down and writing through the depression and anxiety instead. He didn't just vent onto the page. He built narratives around the hard stuff, cocooning it in story until something worth sharing came out the other side.

Kill the Ego Before It Kills Your Work

This was the piece of advice Corey kept circling back to, and he said it better than most. "Leave the ego at the door. Let it shrivel up and die on the vine." He's not talking about abandoning self-belief. He's talking about the specific kind of ego that makes a writer think they're too good for a small idea, or too important to hear a no. The writers who last, in his view, are the ones who genuflect to reality and keep creating anyway.

Treat Writing Like a Job, Not a Mood

Corey works nights. So on the days before a shift, he gets up, trains, showers, puts on proper clothes, and sits down to write like he's clocking in. No pyjamas, no ambient drifting. Stephen King's On Writing is part of his foundation here, and it shows. He also mentioned that writing late at night, when he gets the chance, feels almost rebellious. Like you're stealing hours from the dark. I completely get that.

Describe Less, Feel More

Corey's mum reads his work and called him out early on for piling on the sensory detail until the prose buckled under the weight. He took the note. Now he picks one, maybe two sensory anchors and lets them carry the scene. He's also fiercely authentic about not writing characters he can't genuinely inhabit. He doesn't write female lead characters because he doesn't think he'd do it justice, and he'd rather leave that space to someone with a more genuine claim to it than fake his way through it with good intentions.

Love the Freaks. They're Holding the World Together.

When I asked Corey what he wishes people understood, he didn't hesitate long. He's worried about homogeneity. About how easy it's become to accept a ready-made answer instead of doing the messy, uncomfortable work of figuring things out yourself. Every person he loves deeply, he said, has defects. Those defects are what make them specific, weird, and irreplaceable. "I love the freaks," he said. "The freaks make up the world." That's not a bumper sticker. It's a philosophy he actually lives.

Keep Creating to Keep the Strings Attached

Corey was refreshingly candid about his ongoing battles with anxiety and depression. What gets him out of bed isn't a morning affirmation. It's the fact that he's got stories in his head he hasn't written yet. He's eight books into a ten-book series. He has ideas stacking up behind that. Creativity, for him, is the connective tissue between himself and the world. "To sever that," he said, "would be to watch the planet float away like a leaf on a lake." That's not a metaphor you forget.

Corey Croft is the kind of person who makes you feel better about being a little strange, a little broken, and deeply committed to making things anyway. Catch the full conversation with Corey Croft on The Rebel Rebel Podcast and find his work at CoreyCroftAuthor.com.