Confuse Connie Continuation Considerations...

The writer/Muse inside me is always willing to explore the dark, twisted, and shall I say demon side. What can I say, I consider this my day/night job currently. Through my writing this occasionally manifests in weird, sometimes embarrassing ways. It is my intention that something I write whether it's a story or blog post will help someone else. Enter the second part to Confused Connie or as it was originally titled, Confused Connie Again (CCA). 

I sat down to edit and repost this story. It was the game plan set forth in my last post and boom, it's a (mind)field. I stopped reading, closed it and decided to process my reaction instead. So today I decided to prepare my Muse for demon psyche battle. I made a cup of coffee, started writing, stopped, played a game on my phone, took a shower and started my day again with a new cup of coffee and my go-to reading for inspiration.

As I mentioned in my last post incest is a taboo topic that I chose to tackle. I posted Confused Connie to Literotica back when I first wrote it. At the time I had some real world issues I was working through with my alcoholic father along with a few other life depressors like unemployment. I hadn’t written Forced to Change. Back in 2010 I’d never thought about publishers let alone known any might one day be interested in my work. So as I mentioned earlier I pulled the story down when I saw an opportunity to transition my art, er, uh writing to mainstream. A chance to finally beat down the unemployment factor that was still playing a vicious role in my life and decision making? Yeah! Woo Hoo! Three months ago my publishers and I parted ways. Oh nuts, here we go again. 

As I said, about a month ago I started rereading CCA and I stopped. I have some weird feelings about the writing today, mostly it is not who I am as a writer, storyteller, or even person now. So I can’t decide if I should or more importantly can repost the follow up piece. When I compare and contrast who I am today versus who I was four years ago there are huge differences. I attacked different subject matter, processing my then current issues. This is the challenge of an artist’s Muse. Mine, silly one that she is, freely admits she is dark, twisted, and an undercover sadist in comparison to my being a full blown masochist.

My hesitations are about the fact that I am forcing myself to revisit some old wounds in my life. The masochist in me prefers pain spiked with pleasure and this is more pain than anything else. To work on this story I must face wounds which I have closed and healed. For the most part I enjoy writing and never know where it will take me. It is one of my main goals for my life to use my work to do some self-work as well. 

I use my writing as personal therapy. That inner work on self is usually reflected in my newer projects. Unfortunately my decision to repost my incest pieces has made me acutely aware of these old scars. So the challenge I’ve inadvertently set forth for myself is to take a long hard look at an old battlefield with new eyes.

Add to this problem, I stumbled onto Literotica at a time in my life when my target audience changed. I sought out (Dirty Old Men) DOMs to view my work instead of my trusted friends and family members. Strangers instead of people who know me well. Now that I’m working on the finishing touches to FTC my circle of peeps know how to find my work too. Also the realist in me has hopes of publishing and marketing FTC to yet another type of audience. So I have to ask myself the question 'is this something I really want to explore and expose about myself as a writer'. The situation with my now ex-publishers suggests it is not a good way to go.

This line of thinking may or may not be a good idea as it pertains to marketing to a mass market with the hopes of mass appeal too. I promised myself to be more honest with myself about six months ago. If I really want the advantage of being more truthful with myself, the knowledge I’ve gained from processing my demons and baggage for the sake of my writing I do need to finish what I’ve started. It isn’t always easy to go over painful events from my past, but processing and writing them down is self-work that I recognize as a major improvement to my own creative. I was inspired to this course of action as I mentioned in the following post.

Okay, so since I’m set with my intentions by this blog post. I’ll let you, my dear readers know how it goes by the end of the month. I’m going to pray on it and hope it is the benefit I believe it can be to my writing. If not, comfort food and TV marathons are in my future, while I process the need for another plan of attack for my inner demons, er, I mean my writing.

My Family, My Lovers...

You may or may not have noticed my publishers and I parted ways. It was on friendly terms. I read in their contract that I signed that incest was not something they were interested in publishing. That's the way I remember it today, but I could re-read the contract to be sure. See, I always had in the back of my mind, VC Andrews. She was a best selling author in 1980’s and it was her tool box. She wrote the same story over and over with the exact same theme in all her books, INCEST. Flowers in the Attic told it best for me.

If OmniFic’s position is not to publish family members bumping uglies, well, I need publishers who are willing to put the family lovin’ business out there. Period. It was the missing element to Forced to Change that tied the story up and helped it right,write itself. Once I added that element into the story, it finished telling me where it wanted to go. Just that easy, my head had the answer to what was wrong with my novel and why it refused to feel finished. I couldn’t write an ending that didn’t include that aspect to the storyline. So, now that I’m staring at less than a weeks worth of rewrites and desiring using NaNo this year to flush out the 2^nd book in the series, Changed by Time, I’m goal-oriented with a full plate.

I first got into Literotica because incest/taboo was the most read category there. All the authors I follow have their reasons, but as the #1 read category, I needed to crack that code. I tried my hand at it, but I couldn’t get a ‘h’ rating for my attempts. Though the reviews were good, when my publishers suggested it wasn’t their style, I adjusted. I pulled down my incest stories from Lit. I see that as a mistake now that I’m correcting. So, that’s why the rights to FTC reverted back to me. No hard feelings. When my needs change, so do my working-on goals. Duh, that’s how my life works.

See, my #1 what if question is 'could having sex with my father have saved his life'? But according to the rules I grew up with, he was off limits as a lover. He was always married. I try hard not to disrespect other women, even one's I barely know. In my mind I passed on the opportunity to bed Peter 'MADE MY PANTIES WET' Steele with a note played on his instrument, a single word from his lips because a girl told me she fucked him the day before I met him (work with me here, in my fantasy, I had a shot). She was funny and beautiful for the twenty minutes we discussed her previous evening activities.

I learned the hard way that it ended friendships I valued to go after another woman's man. So my motto became 'PROS before Bros' IE, LADIES FIRST! Ain't nothing wrong with a PROfessional Sex Worker in my book, I pick up tips from them. The fact that my Sperm Donor wished I'd been an abortion and decided to let me know that information because of his addiction made me who I am today. What he ENJOYED, I HATED on principal from that day forward. What he FEARED I tried, including dating white men exclusively most of the time, especially a white cop. My Bio-dad once said, "No WHITE COP babies!" to me while I was dating one...

I respected my mother's fear of pregnancy before I found my way in the world. So I gave him that one. No babies, until I figured my shit out. Condoms. The Pill. And I knew in my heart if I accidentally got pregnant I was keeping the baby. In the meantime, I mothered animals and became friends with a lot of women who decided to step up for the job motherhood. I am PRO-CHOICE & PRO-LIFE at the same time. I only argued the point with my bio dad because he claimed to be PRO-LIFE while making all the kinds of choices that put him in a grave at 64 years of age. 

So Confused Connie is back up on Literotica once again. There are 2 follow-up chapters but it will take some time to get them all posted again. Bare with me, I'm also close to the finish line on FTC and working on getting that published in the coming year. My goals are set, but adjustable for life. Cuz my personal truth happens to be when I play architect in my life, Goddess laughs and sets a different obstacle (life lesson) in my divine path...

A Homicidal Maniac Who Rapes Dead Babies Might Live Next Door To You

I know one lives across the street from me. How do I know? A successful author of horror writing lives across the street from me. As far as I know when she feels homicidal she writes. It’s one of the few things I know about my neighbor I’ve never met. She’s published and she earns her living with her work. I rarely see her, though I’ve seen her husband weekly take their garbage cans down to the curb. I respect her privacy and can only divine things about her that she puts out into the world, IE, I’ve read her work.

I find that most authors of the horror genre are homicidal maniacs. The only difference  I see between a horror writer and a serial killer is one lets their thoughts play out on the page while the other takes their thoughts out into the world and plays them out in real flesh. As I watched the news earlier today of the school shooting in Oregon, it was painfully clear to me the shooter did not know this difference. Or maybe they did and didn't mind the consequences of their actions. I prefer not to pay those kind of consequences for my actions. My thoughts and prayers are with all those affected by this person’s choice of action.

I guess that’s the dividing line between most writers and those in prison or loose on the streets acting out their thoughts in the real world to me. I do what I consider illegal all the time. One of the main character’s in my book, Forced to Change is an assassin. Jared gets paid, very well in fact, to go around the world killing people I don’t like. He really enjoys his job. Especially when his targets are homicidal sadistic rapists. That’s his version of Christmas wrapped up in an assignment. He won’t even take money to kill them, he does it for free.

Personally, I’m a big fan of freedom. Being locked away in prison would be a suffocating experience for me. I avoid it by walking the line of man’s laws and staying on the side that keeps my black ass out of jail. As of today I’m legally allowed to smoke weed. I can light up a joint in the state of Oregon and smoke that sucker down to a roach. I won’t say whether or not I did so before it was legal because I believe my joy over this new law explains that perfectly. For the sake of keeping my beautiful black booty out of jail, I only wrote about puff, puff, passing the chronic prior to today.

NaNoWriMo: The Scariest Time Of Year For Writers

October found me discussing my writing process as a whole in preparation for NaNo. What’s so hard about a writing contest that challenges you to write 50,000 words in a month? That’s only 1,667 words a day. No big deal. Yeah, right. It’s a nightmare, especially if you suffer from writer’s block, lack of time, your Muse keeps escaping her chains and dungeon, etc. It’s why all of my posts last month were about my writing process. It was my hope to encourage other writers, that way I don’t have to go through this big scary contest alone.

So, I’m doing NaNo this year. Yeah me. Yes, there you have it, all written down and everything. Some of you may or may not have noticed I didn’t actually say whether I’ve done NaNo before. So I’m telling you right now, right this minute, nope, I’ve never done it. I’m a NaNo virgin who desperately wants to pop her NaNo cherry, er, uh, you know what I mean. I think somewhere in the back of my mind I was attempting to psych myself up for actually participating with my posts last month.

After much debate on which novel to work on I’ve decided to kill two birds with one stone. I’ve promised to finish the Rising From The Fire story for years. Although I didn’t start this piece for the contest, I know that what’s published has been begging for a rewrite anyway. I’ve brainstormed RFTF and have all the sex scenes plotted out. The characters are developed, but the lion’s share of the writing has yet to be done. To stay fair and in the spirit of the NaNo contest I won’t count any chapters that were pre-written and will only use the parts that make up the rest of the story as part of my 50,000 word count.

Granted, I could have started a new project, something specifically for Literotica or made the follow-up novel to Forced to Change my goal. However, I’ve been promising more Rising From the Fire for years. I love the story and it has been bouncing around in my head forever. It has simmered long enough that it should be soup already. I just need to commit and get ‘er done and NaNo provides the perfect excuse to do so.

Also because I’ve never done NaNo before, I want to give myself the best chance of completing this task so as not to discourage myself going forward. Funny story, but there’s another contest that takes place over Labor Day weekend, the 72-Hour Novel Writing Contest. Being the dullest knife in the drawer on a regular basis, I tried that one instead many years ago. I didn’t actually enter it, cuz there’s a fee to participate in the actual contest and I’m frugal, but I tried one Labor Day weekend to write an entire novel. That would be my first novel, the dreaded horror show of writing, which I finished a few months later.

So y’all get to join me as I brave the NaNo contest for the first time. All signed up and everything. I’m not scared one bit (biting fingernails). There are plenty of projects that I’ll be working on this month to and including moving across the country. Bottom-line, to win the contest all I need to do is complete a 50,000 word manuscript and upload my word count to the site before midnight on November 30, 2013. No big deal, right? Especially with the amount of other things I have going on right now. Rigggght. I can already say, I probably won’t win this year. But at least I’ll try and you never know. We’ll see what happens…

Update: Oct. 3rd, 2016
So last year I tried to get the bulk of Changed by Time done. No luck, my inner demons pulled me off task so hard I'm still stuck with barely an outline started. I'm considering working on it this year. I keep trying to try to beat the writer's block I'm having with this one piece. So wish me luck and I'll let you know with a brand new post after the contest this year if I'm in a position to do so. I hope to get FTC out this month at the latest in December. This year is all I promised myself but yes I'd like to get the lion's share of CBT done first. The Changed Series has me putting on the breaks right now, so I'm hoping by putting my intention out there I'll have some luck with my inner writer...

The Hard-On In Writing: Rewriting & Editing

Okay, to recap this month’s posts: To detail or not: kill your darlings, it’s not lying if you call it fiction, and it’s okay to write crap. Basically I’m coming back around to kill your darlings, rewriting and editing. Wow! It feels a little full circle, but that’s the process with writing unless you’re perfect. I’m not perfect. I’ll probably make several mistakes today, but that’s okay because I’m human. I don’t mean to make so many mistakes, but I’d rather make mistakes than have regrets. I intend to leave this world without a single regret, and hopefully surrounded by a rainbow of men and…*blush*...er, um, way off topic, back to editing and rewriting.

I’m currently reading The Alphabet versus The Goddess: The Conflict Between Word and Image. I’m only sixty or so pages into it, and I have no idea what I’ll take away from this book as a whole. So far it has me thinking about the fact that I don’t even question my own literacy, though I can remember back to when I couldn’t read. When subtitles in a film would frustrate me or even a pictureless book seemed daunting and overwhelming. If not for Mrs. G, my favorite librarian, I wouldn’t have risen to the challenge of reading and writing.

I started writing stories around the time I learned to read. Although The Alphabet Versus The Goddess inspired some of my favorite songs on Ani Difranco’s latest CD, Which Side Are You On? and she’s my favorite writer’s block unlock tool, I really don’t know. As Once Upon A Time likes to remind viewers in almost every single episode, there’s a price to pay for using magic. Not to jump off on a philosophical tangent but if literacy is a magic power that I have, what is the price I pay for being able to use it? Editing?

In my head, every piece I write is a movie playing out. Most of the time the visual lands on the page. When I edit, if it’s not there already, I plop down the details. It is my hope that the reader sees the picture I envisioned on each and every page. Or at the very least they get a vivid picture that will keep them reading. The parts that end up being crap, I might rework, delete, or edit. I never know until I’m re-reading, rewriting what will stay and what will end up lost to the dreaded delete button. I enjoy editing videos and stuff, but when it comes to self-editing my writing, I’m lousy at it. I’m much too close to the story to see what I wrote.

It’s a rough draft though. It’s the garden that needs tending. Sure there’s plenty of fertilizer and dirt in the mix, but underneath it all there is a story. A character drowning in bad writing. An emotional scene that makes the story worth reading. One dimensional characters that come to life. No matter what level my writing is at, I always need other people to read what I wrote tell me where I’m unclear, what’s not working. Dare I say, an outside editor or beta reader?

This is not to say that we as writers don’t need to do our own editing and rewriting. Before I could start submitting my work to a professional editor, I had to clean it up, flush out the story, rev up the scenes, and capture the details. Grammar and punctuation rules come into play here. I'm still not perfect at them, but I generally take care of the glaring mistakes that make a reader cringe.

So what happens if it still really, really, really sucks? If it doesn't look like editing will help at all? Well, rewriting the entire thing may be in order. With Forced to Change I ended up writing the bulk of the story in first person narrative, then switched it to third person narrative, and then ended up back in first person narrative. I know insane, right? Granted it was after I was already under contract with the third person draft when I went back through and set it to first person. The only thing I can say about this amount of work was, wow. Even as much work as it ended up being, I knew my characters, scenes, plots, theme, and settings backward and forward. I was so much happier with the latest draft once that was done. That accidental insane amount of labor will be a tool I use again one day.

Anyway, so that’s my writing journey for the most part. Write crap. Detail for no other reason than to detail. Kill your darlings. Above all else, write. When anyone asks me the trick to being a writer my answer is always, WRITE...You’ll pick up the rest along the way, but if you don’t start somewhere even if it’s something as simple as typing the following line over and over again, ‘just write...’ you’ll never have anything to edit or rewrite. So write it down or type it up or speak it into a recording device and get it out there. The tricks and tools come eventually.

Writing Down The Boners!

In Natalie Goldberg’s book, Writing Down The Bones:Freeing The Writer Within she points out human beings are the only species on Earth with this magical power, literacy, reading and writing. I read the book years ago and have since lost my copy. I mean to replace it one day, so I’ll do a bit a paraphrasing for this post. The one thing that stood out in the book to me, the thing I needed to read most was that it’s okay to write crap. Giving myself permission to write badly is the most valuable tool I ever put in my writing tool box.

Why? Writer’s block...You could be the most talented writer in the world, a true perfectionist at the craft of writing and if you are congratulations, I’m so happy for you. Writing is probably as easy for you as breathing. Not me though. As I mentioned in an earlier post I started out as a ‘edit as you go’ writer. I had to make the switch to a ‘write by the seat of my pants’ writer after reading that book.

I had these great ideas for stories and I would write anywhere for 2,000 to 10,000 words on a particular piece and I’d stop. Either I couldn’t get back into the flow of it or I had no idea how to move the story forward to get to the end. I wrote myself into a corner constantly or the story just got really boring. Cringe worthy material graced the pages and I couldn’t write another word. Before Writing Down The Bones I let myself be defeated by writer’s block. I considered writing a hobby and continued to pursue jobs that took me far away from the goal of writing for a living.

I needed to know how to finish the story. I was desperate to figure that out. Even when I copied another author’s style, storyline I still couldn’t make the magic happen for me. I discovered a formula to most of the books I read and while studying the craft of writing I picked up on a few things like plot, theme, setting, and story world. I stumbled onto Randy Ingermanson’s newsletter which spoke of this formula that I could see in other writers and still had yet to figure out for my work.

Unemployment found me attacking the craft of writing a story like a puzzle that needed figuring out. It could be put together if only I could find the key to the map of writing fiction. I turned to reading authors and genres I enjoyed and I tried to get my characters to do the same, finish telling the story.

Overall my biggest issue turned out to be writer’s block. When I read Writing Down The Bones it was like finding a key to my map with writing. That key was it is okay to write shit, crap, junk. Bad writing is allowed. That was the most freeing thing I could hear about writing. I immediately changed my goal. Instead of telling a great story and worrying that every detail was perfect, I wrote total and complete garbage. The only thing that mattered was I was writing, my new goal.

I’d finish the scene and get past it onto the next. Impossible unrealistic crap could and did happen to my characters. Scene changes that made no sense sprinkled their way across my words. A real world setting would switch to the future and take place on another planet in an entirely different universe. All of sudden in a modern urban tale there would be a 15th century warrior. Fairies and elves would run rampant or a minor character abruptly took center stage. I was writing. Something was happening on the page or nothing was happening on the page and that was okay. Nothing happening was the basis of one of my favorite television shows, Seinfeld. That show elevated the power of ‘nothing’ to a new level.

My grammar and punctuation were awful. There weren’t even darlings that needed killing. It was mundane dribble, but hey, I was writing and finishing stories. As I’ve said, I hate, loathe my first novel with a passion. I got that first novel length story under my belt about two months after I read that it was okay to write terrible stuff.

I was so proud of myself for finishing. Yeah, Woo Hoo! I proved to myself that I could group 75,000 words together to tell a story. I may hate the novel, but after it was done I managed to figure out my next biggest issue as a writer. I read and re-read every single word over and over again cringing the entire time. Often with lots of alcohol to help me get through it. It was painful to discover I had other issues now that I'd made writer's block my bitch. I was able to triage my weaknesses and learned what my strengths were as a writer. Being able to do that honestly and truly as a writer was humbling, yet very freeing.

Turns out that although I wrote for my enjoyment my target audience at that time was my biggest supporter of my writing, my aunt. She’s married to a minister and related to me through blood. This woman who I love and adore changed my diapers and has known me all my life. In the back of my head I was writing stories to please her. Turns out, my fantasies, the things I really enjoyed reading (and writing) were not for her eyes. I know where I intended my first novel to go. My aunt wanted to read it and I’d agreed to send it to her chapter by chapter as I wrote it. I so did not write the novel I meant to write. I only realized this hard truth as I finished writing my first novel.

I dropped my wonderful aunt as a beta reader. Considering she was the only beta reader I had at the time it was pretty easy to do. My next couple of beta readers were virtual female friends but eventually I landed on the right ones for me, dirty old men. At that point, I had a target audience that fit with the kind of writing I wanted to do and this little porn writer was born. So, I write down the boners, or orgasms, sometimes both, occasionally neither. I write until I finish the story and then the hard, difficult work starts. Rewrites and editing...

Creative Editing: It’s Not Lying If You Phrase It Right

Okay, since this is the month before NaNo I figure I’ll talk about my writing process for the month of October. What’s NaNo you ask? The full abbreviation is NaNoWriMo though most people just call it NaNo which stands for National Novel Writing Month. There’s an entire website dedicated to this long standing November practice of attempting to write an entire novel during the month. You can sign up or download the app and you’re all set.

Plenty of first novels have been written during the month of November because of the website. From the novice to veteran authors, for example James Patterson is a huge fan of the site, it’s a place to get feedback and share. It’s awesome. Most writers I know are aware and have their own NaNo stories to tell, though most are creatively edited.

I spend a great deal of time creatively editing the details of my life. I’ve been doing this for years. It’s a practice I started about the time I started writing at seven years old. If you write fiction you’re given liberty to creatively edit. You’re a liar. You’re getting paid to lie, you do it and call it fiction. Woo Hoo!

I ask a lot of ‘what if’ questions, and based on my history I create a scenario, an outcome for the character. Action and reaction, over and over until I finish the story. It’s easier to write what I know, so typically as the writer, the creator the character has my reaction or a creatively edited (what I wish I would have said or done in the same situation). I find a great deal of inspiration in getting to say the thing I wished I’d said, but didn’t in a particular situation. So long time creative editor. By the time I’m retelling the story, I said that line, that I failed to say. It left my lips at the perfect moment and did its job. Then I go on to remember it the new way.

At one point I felt bad about doing a creative edit. My mother instilled that fear of lying to her early on and the disappoint on her face when I was caught in my first lie left a life long impression. I carried a great deal of guilt over it other than when I put pen to paper, that I couldn't forgive and until I started calling it 'creative editing' or 'fiction' and a friend laid the Edie Brickell lyrics on me, “I swear I remember it that way, (too)," I would have continued to feel that guilt.

I have a friend who does it all the time not only that, he does it right in front of me. From his lips, the most mundane activity is hilarious. We laugh, although at first I tried to correct the details, until his version was too funny to bother. Example, we were riding in Dante 2, my truck, somewhere and a bug flew in the window. It landed on my sandal covered foot. The bug crawled up my leg, so I pulled the truck over, hopped out and shook it off my leg. That’s the true story as I remember it.

In his version, I was speeding down the highway when all of a sudden my driving became erratic. I screamed as he grabbed the ‘oh shit’ handle. I almost crashed us into the car in the next lane. I crossed three lanes of traffic, creating a pile up in my wake the entire time screaming and hollering incoherently. I pulled into the nearest parking lot, dashed out the driver’s side door, waving my arms like a lunatic. Tears streamed down my face as I finally returned to the vehicle calm and collected. I stated, “There was an enormous bug on my foot,” while holding my hands a foot apart. In his version, he saw a ladybug, that was it.

Okay, other than the fact that his version casts me in a bad light, I had to admit, yup his version, so much funnier than mine. Today, which version do I usually tell? His of course, edited without the carnage of creating a pile up.

Carnage is great for fiction, as I mentioned in the last post, “kill your darlings.” The phrase has two meanings to me. First kill the stuff you’re so in love with in your writing for the betterment of the scene, story but also, killing characters is acceptable too. Supporting cast and sometimes even main characters can die. It's allowed, really, truly I swear. Some writers overdo the killing, example, ‘Game of Thrones’. The point is with fiction, creative editing go for the extreme. It’s not reality so carnage is allowed. The creative edit is usually funnier even if everyone involved knows that's not what happened, instead of a mundane event you'll find a wonderful story to tell.

To Detail Or Not To Get That Specific, Duh!

I’ve been in the copy edit stage for a while now with my debut novel, Forced To Change. This is a good thing. No, really it is. It means that when the novel is published it will be polished. Each and every word as I intended or agreed to so that the story I meant to tell is the one that you read. I really needed an editor. This way I’ve had five so far. Five different people, it’s a team of editors. Woo Hoo! Five different sets of eyes going over my story. It was an unexpected advantage, unexpected because once again, I'm not always the brightest bulb in the room and I didn't realize how much I needed a professional editor. Not even beta readers could catch all the little hidden mistakes that I can’t see any more purely because I wrote it.

So this becomes another example of where I have to practice patience daily. I’m cool with it. Really, I am. Okay, it was a lot ego-bruising at first. Then someone reminded me I have no history with my publishers. They have a list of amazing, established authors that they’ve worked with for years. People that brought much larger platforms to the table. I just started my writing career a few years ago. I haven’t built up the audience yet. I had no idea what the business side of writing entailed.

I’m getting a quick education and a part of that is, editing takes a lot of time and a lot hard work. Not just me, but from a team of individuals on my publisher’s side. People who are hoping this book turns a profit and does amazing when it’s available just like I have the same dream. Only no one gets paid should my book fail epic-ally. Then all their time, money, and energy is out the window, while I sit around being disappointed, but not defeated by it. Why? Well, it’s my first novel. As much as I love the story I wrote and told, the realist in me knows that usually the debut novel doesn’t do much market wise.

The debut novel establishes an author’s credit. The way the scenario for most typically plays out, it’s the success of the second, or the third novel that elevates the first novel. Or, it takes years and years for the first novel to gain a following. As much as having a best seller out the gate would validate my career choice of writing professionally, I’ve got a deadline in mind as to when I’ll have to sacrifice my time and energy to a dreaded, stupid day job for the benefit of my needs and survival. I'll tuck my dream away for a bit and try again in a few months or years when I’m in a position to pursue it again.

Okay, so that was completely off topic. Details. Um, about that. In writing I mean. Well, sometimes they are necessary. No matter what your process as a writer is, your story is better when you get the details out of your head and down onto the page. I’m a ‘seat of my pants’ writer, though I used to be an ‘edit as I go’ writer. A while back I decided I’d attempt to ‘outline strictly’ or ‘organize, but loosely’ my next work. I read a piece where that was apparent in the work and I could only see the benefit of working that way. This means that before I put word one down of the next novel I should at least have a brainstorm, an outline, maybe even a scene list done before I sat down to write. I did and am currently working on the follow up to FTC. Woo Hoo!

The advantage of working on a novel this way is it cuts down on writer’s block. When I sit down to write I have a direction every single day to go in until the story is finished, rather than my usual word count for today game plan. No matter which way you write though, when you’re capturing a scene down on the page there comes a point where you want to share. Maybe it’s the setting, or a description of the character or how the weather is at that moment or what song is playing on the good old iPod for the character. How much is too much? When does detailing go from moving the story forward to bogging it down with information that the reader won’t want to read and possibly they stop reading the book?

That’s the trick to detailing, finding the balancing act of giving enough information to keep the reader interested. Painting a vivid picture but not so much detail that the reader skims until it changes or something happens, if you’re lucky. Remember they always have the option to stop reading, period.

This is why the editing process is taking a great deal of time with FTC. For my 3 long time loyal followers (welcome to the party 3 new ladies), you guys know how much I like to detail. I also slip specifics in that don’t seem important at the time, but later come back around. Although Stephen King recommends ‘kill your darlings’ he can say that. He’s established as an author and has a working history with his editor. So, sometimes a three page description of person will end up in his work and as a reader I accept this and most of the time enjoy it anyway.

Since I’m no Stephen King, I accept that my editors pull some of the stuff I feel is necessary to the telling of this story. In other words, they murder my darlings for me. When I have a chance to let the edit marinate, I see their point. Sigh. In the end I usually defer to their wisdom and most of the time the sentence/paragraph/scene reads much better for the correction. 

I think I’m pretty good about cutting my own darlings. For example the original draft of Forced To Change the first paragraph was this whole thing about spilling food on her breast and making choices. At the end the main character walked out of the house not caring that she had a bright spot of yellow on her white shirt.

I thought the paragraph did this great job of establishing the character’s state of mind. It captured her depression, low self-esteem, etc. It was the setup of all setups for who this girl was. By the time I was done with the second draft or third draft it was gone. A darling no more. 

I loved the paragraph, but I didn’t feel it was good for the story as a whole. I covered her state of mind later and I do a more relatable job of it as the reader moves forward in the novel. All the things that one paragraph did are spread out over the first chapter. It was my darling and to keep it weighed down the story.

My recommendation when writing, when choosing whether to detail or not to detail, DETAIL. Break every rule of writing you can while writing your first draft. The first draft is for all the mistakes. Write prose and not enough if necessary, because the goal is to write. With NaNo coming around next month a lot of people will attempt to write their very first novel. Sticking to the rules of writing can and does create writer’s block and the goal is to get that first novel under your belt, right? So write. Detail until anyone reading the scene can see, taste, hear, feel, and smell the entire thing the way you mean it. It’s much easier to amputate your darling.

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?