Superman Vs. Lex Luthor: Save The Lube!

I woke up this morning and realized I wanted to be Superman. I wanted to have a dangerous adventure that involved the fate of lubrication and ended in making Lex Luthor my bitch. Thanks to a blank screen, I could and did all of that before I finished my first cup of coffee.

I won’t be sharing my naughty piece of gay fanfic, yet, but the piece got me thinking about character development, research, and writing in general.

What I love most about writing in general is the possibilities are limitless. I can be anyone, do anything, and go anywhere. If I want to travel to a galaxy far, far away I can. I do. I can save the world, once I put it in danger in the first place, and I have all the superpowers one would need to accomplish that goal.

Not every word will be perfect. There will be grammar mistakes, punctuation errors, and all of this is okay. That’s the miracle of editing. When I start a piece like this I just like to capture the random thoughts down. I turn my dark and twisted imagination into something tactile.

Every bestselling book, every blockbuster film, every chart topping song started off as an idea. Just a single thought that someone took the time to put to paper and continued to grow like a seedling planted in the ground. With my own writing the original idea gets buried under a mountain of fertilizer (bad writing) until I can get to the editing stage. Once that is accomplished, the piece usually blooms into a beautiful flower or nutrient rich food or just more crap.

Research comes in handy for me while an idea is freshly planted. Personally, I have no experience being a superhero, so to stick with the ‘write what you know’ part of writing I research. I should watch Smallville or read DC Comics and some gay porn. Then I should interview the character(s) to find their motivation, their goals, their dreams until they are as familiar to me as my own desires.

Sometimes research can be more fertilizer to a planted idea. Only it’s the good kind, the kind that makes the idea grow into something more. I continue the bad writing, piling on, until I finish the piece. Then I edit, get rid of the extra fertilizer and dirt. Occasionally, all that will be left is bad writing, but usually among the mess there is something worth saving. A hidden gem, something buried that can and will bloom into a great piece.

If I never sowed a single seed, I’d never write anything. I guess it’s important to me to write, even if what I write is awful cringe worthy stuff. I don’t have to share that writing and can just delete it when it’s truly bad. 

My first novel is a perfect example of that where my second is a testimonial to sowing an idea seed into a plant. I’ve learned that even something I see as pretty much stupid and label awful writing that should never see the light of day is okay to write, because the goal is to write, period.

I often let ideas sit for months and sometimes years. I let them grow and then I revisit it when my Muse is ready to tackle it. My Muse is a little difficult to wrangle from time to time and she occasionally needs to be chained up to make her do what I want, when that happens, yeah. Maybe I’ll work on my first novel one day. At the moment my energy is focused on getting Forced To Change published. 

After all these gardening analogies I may have to play in the dirt today. Sometimes, I just need to get an idea down because I wake up wanting to be Superman. Doesn’t everyone or is that just me?