Archive: February 16, 2019

February 16

February 16, 2019

Website Shit continued…

My fuck, I’m exhausted. I don’t think I’ve gotten a proper night sleep the entire week. There’s something horrendously addictive and damaging to my damn brain every time I go to do any kind of coding. Too much reward for figuring shit out, and too much challenge because I refuse to waste my time actually learning a computer language. So I’m just picking and choosing what works, trial and error.

I’m looking at the new design (the background was so plain before) and I’m just back to my love of anime/videogames every fucking time. It kinda reminds me of Kingdom Hearts, actually… (a game I cannot commit to when their story falls short every damn time. But fuck, it was pretty. <3) Lol, better than the old lady look the website had before, but yeah, I might be devolving now that I’m getting healthy. I like it though. I love bright colors, fun shit–learned how to embed a font and that looks so bitching. So yeah, enjoying the results even as I exhaust myself.

I’m hoping I’ll be done this weekend… err, after the weekend. When the bf is home I can never focus on anything proper and I suppose I should acknowledge the whole V day of doom. But yeah, soon. Hoping. @_@

Hope your week is going better than mine! <3

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?Corporations Shouldn’t Be Our New Morality?

February 9, 2019

Rant time, babes,

Sorry, I heard some news and it just struck a fucking chord.

Hi, btw! XD It’s been a while. I’ve been doing so much website stuff to transfer members over to the new software. I’m literally in the process of rebuilding the damn library because I realized there is no plugin available to do the transfer, so I have to do it all manually. It’s going to take time and I don’t want people in a limbo of not being able to sign in. I’ll be sending out emails with updates to each member once their new account is ready and their new password available, so keep an eye out.

I’ve had a few epiphanies the last month when it comes to being content focused on the website. I’m looking at creating the ability to let new members pay $5 to either read the library of finished books, or $5 to read the new stuff as I write for the month. I want economically friendly choices just in case the $10 for both is just too much for some people. I’ve finally gotten past the emotional obsession I had to ‘fix’ all the old stories. Unless it’s part of a larger series, I’m not touching the old stuff. Letting go and moving forward. It’s also time to stop trying to get things ‘publish ready’ like I’ve been doing with the PATB books. It’s why I’ve spent so much time on those stories and not had time for any other projects. They’re long and I wanted them ready for publishing so I gave them all my focus, and because of it, the website has been suffering with only that content being added.

I’m taking the website back to a focus on taboo stories. You know, the stories that have been ignored while I’ve been writing perfectly awesome PATB books. I miss the dirty sex, and I need to find a damn balance to ensure the hot stuff is being written with the more sweet stuff. There needs to be more dirty books written, no joke. Half because they’re awesomely fun, but also as a fuck you to all this bullshit censorship happening. These books need to multiply instead of disappear.

I have to adapt to a new model of writing where multiple stories/series are updated instead of one again. I’m stretching, relearning, getting this brain to work now that it’s healed. It really is a lot of relearning how to do the same old shit and getting over my neurotic perfectionism. It’s not easy but it’s where I want to be as a person, so it’s well worth the work.

Seriously, you want a medal for basic human decency now?

Okay, so Starbucks finally gets around to giving their workers sick leave. This is a company founded back in 1971, and whose net worth is $30 billion. 5 days a year you’re allowed to be paid when you’re sick to keep you from coming through the door and working, that’s their sick leave. And no, they didn’t do it for some altruistic reason such as, well, giving a fuck about their workers. No, they didn’t want their customers getting sick. That was their mentality for this. Sick customers = bad business. So, Starbucks finally gets around to being somewhat decent on such a base level, and they get mad accolades from the public. A company who cares!

Similarly, the leader of Amazon comes out after being pressured by progressives to say he’s going to be raising all of his workers’ minimum pay to that of what some experts (these numbers are already old) would say is the bare minimum to living. That means ideally for a worker, their bills are paid, their heat is paid, they can pay rent, they can get to work, they can get groceries, and, maybe, if they’re lucky, they can pay their taxes and also have some left over for the kids, right? Here’s hoping health care is included in that, cuz it’s usually not affordable. A living wage is just getting by. There is no profit for the people making it, it’s just not being in poverty. So big cheers for Amazon for setting a standard to pay their workers enough, barely enough, while most other companies don’t even do that.

Nike and Gillette had huge, controversial (dear fuck, why is this shit controversial?) marketing campaigns. Nike for the acknowledgment of protesting as being acceptable in a country that is still battling racial inequality and a prison system built around oppressing black people and the impoverished, and Gillette for acknowledging it’s okay to have a penis and not be a total dickbag in a country that is still battling gender and sexuality inequality. It’s a big fucking deal for these corporation to do the bare minimum of reflecting back the major sentiments already in the country and in most modern societies on the globe. Normalizing equality? Wow, what a freaking shock, right? Accolades, cheers, awesomeness for just being real instead of trying to sell their products. Companies marketing to the future instead of the past. Brilliant.

And, in the midsts of all this supremely basic shit of just being rational in an irrational world, Tumblr bans any adult content to the point of women having hard nipples show through their very modest clothing being removed, Youtube demonetizes anything that uses fair use (aka, LEGAL content,) Facebook blocks anything potentially adult, and Amazon and all major book retailers ban certain subjects pertaining to erotica and romance in fantasy, to the point that sex ED books are placed in erotica or removed completely. Why? Well, we know for a fact with Tumblr it was to sign up Verizon as an advertiser, and Verizon doesn’t want certain sexual content to be associated with them. The whims of a 229.1 billion dollar company has decided the moral/ethical standards for 456.1 million users of Tumblr in the matter of one business deal, just so Verizon can have the ability to market their shit to those users the company wants to change.

Amazon (a 1 trillion dollar company) has decided the moral and ethical standards for the readers who consume the hundreds of millions of ebooks a year on their platform. If Amazon says it’s okay to have books about straight sex, but not gay, they can set a standard for millions of people and then other book platforms as to if gay books are allowed. And if this feels like a stretch, many books being banned are within the MM genre and it started on Amazon before other platforms like Barnes & Noble started following suit. Amazon has been caught shadow-banning erotic books (meaning they can’t be ranked and therefore can’t be seen by customers,) removing erotic titles completely with no explanation, banning authors who are just too good at selling books on their platforms, etc. I wish I were joking, but yeah, that was a huge thing in 2018. Amazon removed accounts of authors who were too good at selling their books. They claimed the authors were making money through illegal means but were unable to show or prove that was the case. Since it’s illegal as an author to have a lawsuit against Amazon, the authors lost their livelihoods without court case or trial or any fucking way to speak up for themselves and their reputations.

What’s my point in all this? EMBRACE DISCOMFORT!

When companies are giants, and they say something is ‘right’ and something is ‘wrong,’ (therefore setting moral and ethical standards,) society starts imitating those beliefs. Not necessarily on purpose but through what is available, what is SEEN. When a playing field is filtered so that no one can see that gay people exist in movies, people who live in bubbles of culture get very uncomfortable to realize gay people exist and it perpetuates the fucked up mentality of trying to make them disappear.

How many men freaked out when Deadpool was pegged by his girlfriend? He’s currently the queerest super hero on the big screen and he doesn’t even screw guys in the movies. We finally had a movie about black people that wasn’t about them just being black and dealing with racism and oppression. You know, they were allowed to just be people. This shit is taking too long! And it’s because the companies who hold the power to make our media aren’t looking to reflect society but to pander to the people who are uncomfortable with diversity.

Where do you think that old line comes from of ‘I don’t care what they do, just don’t let them get married,’ in reference to gay marriage? That comes from the mentality that marriage belongs to only one group of people (usually white and religious and straight) and it can’t belong to anyone else because that group is not exposed to the vast, beautiful wonders of this diverse globe. They think their experience is the only experience, partly because they lack other experience and are uncomfortable in gaining it. The same with when you had the apartheid in South Africa and you couldn’t mix those of different skin colors as a fucking law. When people grow up in a culture devoid of diversity, they normalize it and then push that oppressive belief structure on everyone they meet. Their discomfort sets the norms of society. Gross.

This is ancient era bullshit in a modern world. Segregation is not acceptance and it’s not equality and it sure as fuck isn’t enlightened, modern thinking, but we still can’t get certain races/genders/sexual orientations represented properly in media because some consumers are too fucking uncomfortable. It helps no one. When it becomes normalized, the way billion to trillion dollar companies have the power to make basic decisions and normalize what is on our television sets or computer screens, those wrong, fucked up decisions can start normalizing negative beliefs.

People have to stop running away from discomfort and face the fact that many people are fucked up over sex because of the repressed cultures they’ve grown up in. And how in the world are they going to be able to do that when books about sex disappear one after the other because someone thinks it’s acceptable to discriminate against fiction? How can people be allowed to think for themselves when in this modern world we’re finally breaking free of ancient, oppressive religious systems only to discover corporate policies are trying to be the creators of our morality and ethics by literally removing that which they disagree with?

Either it’s a ‘free’ market, or business owners are just talking out of their asses, being hypocrites while trying to control the market. And just so we’re clear, I will protect a corporate entities right to send a message (even if it’s an old fashioned, fucked up message) because I as an adult am well aware that my behavior and beliefs are still my choice no matter what messages are bombarding me. But I won’t sit here and bullshit that it’s okay for a company to discriminate based on the books people write or read. When Gillette made that ad, were they saying we’re not selling razors to men who believe in ‘boys will be boys?’ No. But Amazon is saying they’ll ban your books and even you as an author if you don’t conform to the moral/ethical standards they refuse to even state about sexual content in fiction. There is a huge difference there.

Think!

Think. That’s all I want for the world. For people to think and to break free of the mental cages they have built around them. There are enough assholes out there with superiority complexes who think they’re the only ones allowed to be free. Sociopaths who think they have a right to tell other people how to think and then profit off of them. Our books are our thoughts. Our writing is our thoughts. Our stories are the lessons we learn, the random thoughts we share and others enjoy. Who the fuck is anyone to take that away and make it disappear? To say which thoughts are right and wrong? Especially companies who don’t even have the decency to pay their employees a living wage while they profit off their labor?

Corporations aren’t some evolved, brilliant form of humanity that are going to save the damn world. They’re comprised of the same fucked up people living in the world today, and that’s it. They make money (some,) they destroy the environment and economy (some,) and it’s not a reason to believe they hold greater value over the individual.

It’s time to end corporate welfare and to stop allowing businesses to decide our ethical standards. Stop cheering for them to do the bare minimum when they have set the standard of people working 3 fucking jobs and not making enough money to live. Corporations suck at giving a fuck. They don’t care about people and their welfare, just how to take money from their pockets. It’s sickening—in a world where many can’t afford health care.

There is something in the human mind that is sourced back to our days of tribes where we feel we need to listen to what we perceive the majority is, be it the loudest voice, the most aggressive, or the most powerful. It allows really fucked up people who hoard wealth to have power over the minds of others. The same way we as a society need to overcome old software like anxiety and PTSD in the modern world, so too do we have to get past this tribalism bullshit.

We are a globe of humanity, and if that’s scary, you gotta face it and get over it already. The world isn’t going anywhere no matter how afraid some people are. Discomfort is not an excuse for oppression and discrimination or the rationalization of irrational, toxic behavior.

Also, seriously, fuck Trump. How disgusting to watch such a transparent manipulation of minds work in his orange crusted hands. That people are more comfortable with a known rapist and xenophobic bigot instead of reality is just a sad, pathetic reflection of the society we’re living in. People have to stop running away from reality and face their shit instead of making it other people’s problems.

*deep breath* Cathartic. Totally.

Back to boring ass website stuff for me. The bulk work is nearly done. Hopefully be back to writing soon. Sorry no freebies this week, just juggling too much. See ya around, babes. <3

~Sins

February 8

February 8, 2019

Website Shit

It looks like I’m going to have to recreate the library if I want to move the memberships in as painless a way as possible. And it’s not painless, it’s a fuck ton of work, but somehow it will be, at the very least, less obnoxious for members even if I’m losing my mind staring at the damn computer for hours on end to get this shit done. Thank fuck I compressed the library last month. It’s actually going to be easier to copy/paste the pages and update links than move each member.

This is for ease of use later. I have to keep reminding myself this. Neurotic, stupid, website shit now so it’s far easier with less problematic subscription issues in the future.

In less eye bleeding news, I updated the Demon Bonded Patreon page, finally, and it’s no longer an ugly ass mess. I’m liking the idea of getting character bios up there for each major series I’m working on. I naturally don’t have the damn time to write up the bios now, but I was able to get Ky and Lovely up there at least. I’d rather be updating the actual story but yeah, I can only do twenty things at a time. @_@

I’m going to bed. I did not beat the sun and it’s too bright outside to pretend to be awake at this point.

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February 7

February 7, 2019

Writer’s Block And Social Impact

Writer’s block is another name for performance anxiety. Heard this little line today and it hit a chord. I think of writer’s block as being sourced in perfectionism, but I didn’t connect perfectionism to performance anxiety. I should have.

I like to tell myself I’m in this unique circumstance, right? Losing brain cells, dopamine receptors, etc, from low dopamine, and then getting the opportunity to grow them back. The giant amounts of inflammation creating pressure on my brain from mold toxicity and allergies suddenly alleviated. It’s a freaking rebirth in a lot of ways. But did I come out of all that struggle better? What about more secure? I mean, I can actually measure my ability as being improved, my understanding, my cognitive function and skills all improved, but am I acting like someone secure in that knowledge? No.

I’m afraid. It’s such a foreign fear compared to the physiological signs of anxiety I lived with for so long. Allergies, inflammation, even the Parkinson’s all gave my these chemical and physical feelings of anxiety. Lol, not to mention the PTSD (apparently even after 30 years of having it, once cured you can forget it even had a damn impact!) What I feel when it comes to perfectionism doesn’t feel like fear, but depression. Like a dark wall that makes me reluctant, that steals my energy and tries to distract me with anything but the truth of what I want to be focused on. My circumstances might be justified as unique–I can rationalize why I’m in this place–but the reality is far more mundane.

I don’t know who I’m supposed to be. I don’t know how my writing will reflect on me as a person: if I’m good at it does that give me value? I mean, seriously, it’s like being back in grade school. Earn a gold star and you’ll be worthy of love and praise, right? I don’t know if I’m good enough to convey what I want to convey as a writer. I don’t know if I’m wasting my life. I don’t know if I’m taking the right path. I don’t know–fuck, I don’t know a lot of shit.

Ultimately, none of these questions really matter. It’s just the brain seeking a point of reference and wanting to compare, to judge, to weigh for the sake of doing it. When you realize you’re on a planet in a universe that is likely infinite in scale and therefore you will never have an actual point of reference because there is no static place, you realize this is just something the brain does to help you feel secure. They’re just concepts in my head trying to define the thing I do every single day to be something else, something heavy and weighted with meaning that only exists in my brain. Insecurity defines life with pointless meaning to help us feel secure. It is shit when you’re unaware and that meaning becomes toxic, such as deciding if you don’t write 8,000 words a day, you’re a horrible writer who doesn’t deserve to succeed. This is the dark side of human evolution. What allows us to conceptualize things such as quantum mechanics and have deep psychological thoughts is also what traps us into pointless, neurotic exercises placed on daily activity. It leads to depression and dissatisfaction when surrounded in perfect beauty.

I think I understand why the people who appear to get past this problem are very focused on a social impact to what they do. When I first observed this, I assumed it was marketing, branding, etc, and it turned me off because of it. I saw creators pushing these ideas of social uplift but I didn’t believe it came from a place of genuineness but just a sale’s pitch. Now–at least, with certain individuals–I see how wrong that is. Social value helps to drown out the inner insecurities that can plague a mind.

When I talk about censorship, it’s not from a place of anger because my livelihood is threatened and it feels like the world is unfair (although those feelings are there and very real) but from this place of compassion for the world and people in it. I understand 100% how damaging shame is, how detrimental to emotional and mental well being, and I see how censorship and banning of erotica leads to shame, to self hate, to very normal, healthy individuals left to feel like outsiders and freaks because of something as basic as their fantasies not being accepted in the consumer market on major book platforms. When books are banned, it’s not just the authors of those books, but the readers being told ‘what you like is not acceptable. Go away. You don’t belong here.’

When I focus on the cruelty and pain such a message sends, do you think the petty, pointless insecurities in my head can stand a fucking chance? No. My waffling, gotta be good at what I do or I haven’t earned my gold star doesn’t fucking matter at all. Does it break through my fears that my readers won’t enjoy what I’m writing if I don’t take the most amount of time to make it as perfect as possible? Eh… I wish. I really do. I’m working on it.

It is a place of insecurity I have found myself in as my health returns, and I’m still running down all the damn paths as to why and how to break through. But I have faith I’m going to get there eventually because if there’s one thing I know about myself, I will face the darkest corners of my psyche until I get all the blocks out. I am committed to growth, to joy, to fun, and to creating as much as I can and helping people feel comfortable in their own brains and bodies no matter how fucking wrong, and cruel, and dickish society and the many systems in there can be. No one should want to kill themselves over a sex fantasy. No one should fear losing their jobs, their houses, their families, their lives over the things they fantasize about. No one should be exiled from the world be it the Internet or their personal little bubble over the shit in their heads.

So, yeah, I gotta get the fuck over my own mental stuff so I can help with that, ya know? Plenty of people think this stuff, they know it’s commonsense to not discriminate against sexual fantasies, etc, but few are in a place to make any kind of a difference. Instead we’re seeing people in places of power who are censoring away any mention of sexual fantasies they don’t feel should be allowed to exist. The wrong voices are being heard even if they’re not the most prevalent. I am an anomaly and for whatever reason, here I am at the age of 36 after years of health problems finding myself with a platform, a reader base, a brain that’s actually working properly, and the compassion and fearlessness to take this shit on. So yeah, I have goals. Goals bigger than me even if right now it feels like I’m battling myself more than anything else.

There’s no point wishing for the world to change. If you want a better world, you gotta put the work in and help to recreate it as an accepting, loving, compassionate place. You can’t change society if you’re not being a voice in society. Society is just every single one of us with only a few speaking their truth. And shit, yeah, I guess at this point in my life, this is the way I’m hoping to change the voice of society: with dirty, naughty, rough, dark and taboo sexual fantasies. I know there will be plenty of people who don’t understand it, who will only see what’s on the surface. But I’m here to save the world with sin. Sexy, freeing, SIN.

Rigid rules and shame have no place in the mind and body. Until we can free ourselves from the mental prisons society and we ourselves have put us in, humanity can’t move forward. There are too many giant problems we’re facing on a global scale to allow ourselves to be frozen any longer over such basic, primitive things such as how we perceive our sexual urges in our minds and bodies and if they’re ‘acceptable.’ It’s actually crazy to think we’re still fighting this when we as human beings have had these fantasies since the dawning of our species. What a waste when we could have been enjoying these aspects of our minds from the very beginning. What a waste to have the modern world embrace it only to have a few repressed, frightened, judgemental voices censoring the very Internet to try and ensure people stay broken and ashamed and unaccepting of their very bodies.

Someone has to say enough. Someone has to be willing to be loud and normalize what is already normal in every psyche out there. So, yeah. Goals, babes. Who I’m going to have to be to reach those goals isn’t fully formed yet, but I’m working on it. I’m pretty sure she’ll be kickass and loud once she gets her shit together. XD

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February 6

February 6, 2019

Hiccups… maybe?

So, transferring the membership site is going to be a fuck ton more work than previously expected. Mostly because the current software refuses to export to a CSV properly and they have little to no info about how to fix it. Which means making everything by hand, including user profiles. =_= Fuck me.

I gave myself a deadline this time around because this shit has to get done. I’ve put it off too long and I’m unwilling to subject any more members to this bullshit. So yeah, I’m hoping to allow this to go as smoothly as possible, but I suspect once everything is switched over (hoping within the week but that might be really fucking optimistic) everyone is going to be sent a new password.

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February 5

February 5, 2019

Fear Of Loss. Fear Of Love.

I was watching a video—I want to say the speaker was a negotiator—and he said this in passing. When trying to understand what a person wants, some people are afraid of loss, and some people are afraid of love. It was this blip of a sentence he didn’t really go into, and yet so freaking profound. It’s also very interesting in the case of character development in stories.

In romance, there are a few types of stories out there, some that never really made sense to me personally even as I could readily accept they were well accepted within their community of like minded readers. I couldn’t understand the appeal. As a reader first, I never felt anything for these characters, which was partly why I turned to writing. I wanted to create characters who reflected an internal psyche I understood. I think at the core, all my characters fear love.

Fearing love requires a different character dynamic. Romance is not necessarily fun, a gift, soul mates meeting and everything sunshine and roses. It’s not even a focus on the quirk of falling in love with cutesy setups like buying a date for charity or a genie granting a love wish. These types of characters don’t want love. They’re not hanging out waiting for cupid to strike—if it’s a meat market, they are aware and miles away. Love and/or human connection is actually rather terrible, something to be avoided at all costs.

Dark romance is a safe genre to explore this kind of dynamic. There is less expectation of vulnerability. Opening this type of character’s heart is like opening a damn safe, and there will be blood, sweat, and tears to get there. It doesn’t fit well with normal romance where the characters are usually seeking love, desperate for it, so welcoming and open. For those who fear love it is the most sickly-sweet display and just doesn’t ‘feel’ right. These sweet characters fear losing love and are willing to cling so damn tight it’s just offensive to the sensibilities of someone who fears being clung too.

It’s intriguing the psyche reflected in the dynamic between characters. It varies author to author. I think for some authors to even know they’re seen in their characters could be reason enough for them to run and never share a story again. It’s why writing can be so difficult for some, especially erotica. It’s an exposure. Even if the readers don’t understand what they’re seeing, an author reveals a lot of self in the most mundane of words. Which is why as much as I don’t get characters who so readily, openly rush toward love, I also don’t understand the books where they are turned into objects incapable of love.

I see it a lot in very dark BDSM, where relationships become roles instead of connections. I look at these stories and see so much detachment from the body, from the soul, from the emotional center of self so greatly that the very characters created are intentionally flat and dead like furniture there to be abused and nothing more. Main characters turned into dehumanized holes and flesh. Their experiences aren’t even marked as emotional, just bland endurance as a human is broken down into basic hardware, software ignored. I never really understood it until that little line kept spinning in my mind.

Fear of love.

My characters fear love, but in the same breath crave it. They’re running from something they ultimately want, which creates the internal conflict, the push and pull. I think there are some psyches so afraid of love—I suspect after experience of severe trauma—they can’t even reach for it through their characters. They feel more comfortable recreating the dark places where they went numb, cold, dead inside because that’s how they know the inner world to be. A place to freeze and be smothered instead of finding self and transformation. It’s safe there. If they can normalize it enough in the mind, they might even stop feeling lost there. It might even stop being so terrifying to look out and consider leaving such an empty place.

This is of course a narrative on my part seeing as I have no idea as to what actually crafts characters like those, just that I find them as alien as the bright, open-hearted ones who feel so freely. But I know this dark place exists, a void that I have been grateful to slip free of every time it rears. It has only been a frozen second before the instinct to battle and survive burned through, where sensation and emotion saved. Pain is a savior against dehumanizing numbness, life among the psyche’s death. I’m not a cutter, but I understand it 100%. It probably doesn’t help that the few authors I’ve spoken to who write these objectified characters seem to reflect this detachment from inner self. I suppose that’s why I jump to trauma as the source; it’s prevalent. How people deal with trauma is different, the way the psyche recreates itself to either pocket around the incident or adapt into a reflection of it; but trauma is a norm in a population that thinks it’s rare.

What character would be created when knowing, truly knowing, he feared love? Do people who fear loss hate themselves as much? To fear losing something outside you, does that mean the world is never safe, that self is found in connections instead of within? I can’t even imagine being so secure as to readily create connections to be afraid to lose. It’s such a foreign, interesting concept.

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February 4

February 4, 2019

Hell yeah! Demon Arms Scene #35 musings

I found my manic joy, aka, creative fucking spirit! I’m actually really excited about how this scene is shaping up. It’s only the outline stage so I probably won’t post it until I get some serious wordcount, but I’m so happy! Already, it works so much better. The characters are seeing each other as people, probing for flaws, vulnerabilities, etc, while seeking something deeper. And flirting up a storm, which is just freaking adorable. <3

Okay, back to work, but squee! So fucking excited. See, all I had to do was let the fuck go of my previous conceptions of what it was going to be like to do this rewrite and have some damn fun!

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February 4

February 4, 2019

Writing Systems

I spent my evening finally creating an Excel spreadsheet for my finances. I’d been doing a paper journal for a while now, but I figured it was time to utilize the tools I have and take a crack at Excel. I’ve used Excel before, but mostly in list building. I had a penchant for cataloguing my manga collection when I actually had a manga collection. Paper is a bit of a luxury with my severe allergies and all.

Excel is about learning a new language and then utilizing that language to create functions that allow the program to calculate simple to complex tasks so you don’t have to. It’s actually pretty damn interesting once you get past the frustration of needing to learn another computer language just to do the most simplest of tasks. It’s so specific, a comma or = in the wrong place can ruin everything and I really couldn’t find a great resource for getting exact functions for my needs, so I ended up just trial and error a lot. As I was finishing up, feeling quite content to see my numbers add up properly depending on if something was marked paid or not, I realized how writing a novel is the same as setting up a bunch of functions to calculate your finances. It’s all about those systems humans create.

For those pantsers who don’t understand the value of an outline, this part is likely lost. But if you’re a commercial writer who needs to reach a guaranteed output, you can’t fuck around hoping you’re going to come up with a good story. You need to plan. You need to learn what makes a story good, why it’s good, and figure out the tools that you have to create that result. Think of this like planning how you want your finance sheet to work, what it’s supposed to do, and then how you’re going to get there with the correct function. Before you do a thing, you’re already visualizing what you want.

Next, you plot (create your functions) with an outline. Let it take the time it needs because if anything is wrong in this step, the results just won’t work. Fixing a fatally flawed book after the fact is so much harder than creating one that has all the right elements but failed to fully reach its potential the first time around. Make sure you’re planning the story that’s going to work, that’s going to sell.

Flesh it out with a rough first draft, aka, input all your financial data from dates to amounts to background info, etc. You have to research what you must, spend the time to get all that info for each bill, figure out which bank/card account is paying for it, when, etc. It’s an investment of time, as is fleshing out a first draft, placing things where they need to be, figuring out what must happen first, choreographing scenes, figuring out where to place that emotional reveal for the most impact, etc.

After that, you don’t have a computer to do the work of going through each layer and computing, unfortunately. That’s you as a writer. But you do go through for that next draft. You’re guided by your input and outline, and you polish it out scene by scene, following those instructions to craft a book that’s going to entertain and ideally sell. But you can’t just manifest it out of thin air, you need those first steps. And when you have those first steps, and you make that plan, as a writer you know you have everything available to get to the end just so long as you are willing to invest the work and time.

That’s really the beauty of any kind of writing system. There is no ‘only way’ or magic bullet bullshit; writing systems are about the confidence and assurance they give you as a writer to know you’re going to get to the end. I write in events, breaking long novels and serials into chunks of story that interconnect to build suspense and momentum and keep readers hooked through big wordcount. I do that because I know that’s all I need along with a clear outline (even if that may come a little later–whoopsie) to ensure I’ll complete whatever project I tackle. And I can put that system mentality toward anything, be it trying to make a video game for the first time, or build a new business, throw an event, etc. As long as I can visualize, plan, plot a foundation and build off it, I know anything is achievable–even if I have to learn a bunch of ridiculously convoluted shit just to understand the language being used.

Yeah, so if you didn’t figure out I was a nerd before this, now you know. Comparing Excel spreadsheets to writing. XD I swear I’m a rebellious, wild writer of fuck fics. Totally.

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February 3

February 3, 2019

Demon Arms Rewrite Scene #35 Musings…

Kinda dreading this scene to be honest. It needs so much work. I can remember how much info I crammed in there the first time around. I had no idea how to handle a book like this when I first wrote it. Romance? Puhleeze, everything before this was straight to bed (or wall/solid surface) fucking. I actually had split this scene into 2 because of how much was in it the first time around. Now I realize it’s probably going to have to be more like 4 or 5 to pace it out properly.

In the same way you can info dump, so too can you just insta-love and create a sense of connection with no actual base to build off of. I’d like to fix it this time around. Nothing crazy, but some actual damn relationship development verse the 2 conversation and then straight to bed of before. I mean, when it comes to Fox and Vince, it’s literally a novel and 1/2 before they actually get physical. So not that long XD but let’s try for a little more realism. Hell, maybe a damn date or two.

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February 2

February 2, 2019

The Beautiful, Unpredictable Phenomenon of Bitching

So yesterday I finally went into all the frustrating reasons shit just isn’t working with the rewrite, aka, I couldn’t find my motivation. But hey, once breaking it down, acknowledging that I’m bored–so fucking bored rewriting this book that was done what, 2 years ago now–I woke up today not as blocked.

The psyche is a strange, mysterious, sometimes predictable place. Sometimes there’s just something inside that wants to be heard. It doesn’t have to be an important damn message (I’m bored!) but it’s important to actually hear it. Because when you don’t hear it, the psyche holds you back, it drags you down, demanding attention like a squeaky cat again and again until you finally just stop what you’re doing and face it (or go into some sort of crazed rage.)

Bitching and ranting is an important part of being human, and damn, the Internet has made that fucking difficult. Because you can’t just bitch on the Internet like you’re talking to yourself. No, people show up and either judge, or agree, or want to fight you on your totally irrational opinion because all shit born out of emotions is beautifully irrational and it’s just a mess. Most people write shit down to understand what they’re thinking, but when you read words in front of you–even words you didn’t write–they become personal messages specifically to each and every reader who shows up, and their reactions can be big.

I should probably write stuff in a little journal or something, but I feel like it would defeat the purpose of letting everyone know I’m still alive. Alive and kinda bored because I want to get back to writing dirty porn instead of this very fun, interesting, crazy shifter love story of characters I absolutely adore. I know, it’s irrational, yet it’s true. Doing the same damn thing every day is redundant and my brain is fighting for freedom.

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