the illusion of productiveness (writing about naughty parts)

Okay, I can stop yelling at my muse. Over the past weekish, I've spent as much time as my brain would allow me rewriting a story I wrote a while back. I may even have something worth reading when all is said and done. I feel like I might actually get somewhere one of these days. After this, the plan is to submit the story to a publisher, cross my fingers and start rewriting something else.

Which brings me to my current internal debate, how graphic is too graphic? I'm not a huge fan of explicit sex scenes. I'll read them, but after so many pages of grunting and squirting, I get bored easily. I know, I know. I write erotica, but I don't like to read explicit sex. Strange? Maybe. Sometimes it can seem more like a badly written instruction manual than an erotic story. I don't like it to be so graphic I feel like I'm reading porn. But I wonder if readers feel the same way. I think a lot of people hear that someone writes erotica and that is exactly what they picture - graphic sex scenes and not much more. Or when they think about romance novels, they think of love scenes that are subtle, filled with flowery euphemisms and cuddling afterwards. I write something in between.

I'm worried now that when I start to submit my work to mainstream publishers, they'll tell me I need to write to one extreme or the other. Should I do it, even if I'm not comfortable with it? Is that the only way I'll be able to keep readers - either a fade-to-black or an all-out blow-by-blow? I don't think I should have to compromise between what I'm comfortable writing if it works with my characters and what I think publishers will accept. I know there has to be a certain level of compromise when it comes to editing, but will I have to sacrifice what I consider the quality of my writing in order to get it into the hands of a bigger audience?

*sigh* I like self-publishing, but I don't want to feel like that is always going to be my only option.

the scary depths of imagination

Sometimes I wonder, do I have too much time on my hands?



I realize I don't until I start doing things like this with my spare time. Is this art? A giant toy? A weapon that will mass hypnotize the (hetero) men of the world into a helpless stupor? Or just, you know, a giant plaster o' pussy? Perhaps the answer is far too much for our minds to handle. Personally, I think I'm better off not knowing. Especially since it appears to have wheels.

Unblocking the Mental Barrier

I figured I had to write in this thing, given that the cobwebs (and the photo in my last entry) were taking over.

I think I've finally named my demon, the real reason I've been so unproductive lately. I put entirely too much pressure on myself. I know that doesn't sound like much, but my whole life has been wrapped up in writing. I've been doing this since I was barely old enough to know what a plot was and it's been my dream to see my name in print for years. But the pressure I put on myself is greater than any outside barrier that could influence me.

The problem is that I want to be perfect. It's a fantasy, but I want to live up to it. I want to be a best-seller without any effort. I want to just sit and write and have the story come out nearly perfect in the first draft and have every person who reads it love it from the first sentence and be showered with awards which I will humbly accept and live on my money from that so I don't ever have to work an hourly wage or live with roommates or worry about car payments or mortgages or any of the other crap that "normal" people are plagued with. It's silly, but it's a dream.

I can't lie. I've been holding on to this unreal fantasy for so long, training myself to let go of it will take some doing. But I have to. If I want to write professionally, I have to get over this illusion that I can do it without putting in the work. That's what I'm forcing myself to start now. I'm looking at old stories I've written and trying to rewrite them. Not just the ones with a few typos here and there, but the ones that need major restructuring. And I have to let myself acknowledge that they need that level of work instead of saying that people should like them in spite of their flaws. I have to force myself to see the weaknesses in my writing and be willing to put in the hard work to improve them. And I have to learn to forgive myself for not writing near-perfect first drafts. I have to be willing to change my entire way of dealing with these issues if I ever want to have a chance at a writing career. I don't want to be one of those people who talks about writing all the time and never produces anything. It's a sad way to be.