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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 1

February 1, 2019

Finding Motivation During A Difficult Rewrite

I’m realizing it’s a reward problem. Maybe a bit of an unwillingness to accept reality problem as well, but at the core, motivation is lacking atm because of how difficult it is to feel rewarded by the work of rewriting.

Normally, I see writing a book to have these specific rewards that push motivation:

1) Problem solving. This is probably one of my favorite rewards. It’s quick, full of energy, and life consuming to spend a week or two drafting a novel, finding all those plot and emotional points and connecting it to the story arcs to make it all work. I love the challenge of outlining a book, finding all the problems, and then getting that satisfying reward of solving those problems with nothing in the way. It’s a high like none other and is probably part of the problem as to why I’ve been writing more complicated plots. I keep seeking the same reward pattern, but the limit is pushed by how used to the task I become. If it’s not a challenge, I don’t get the same rush of reward to solve the problem (hence why I don’t bother with Sudoku anymore. The pattern is too obvious to reach the solution and it’s not a challenge, just grunt labor when you realize it.)

2) Watching characters and the world form. This is what gets me through a lot of the grunt labor of writing. It is not a rush, but a constant, mild sense of accomplishment when I read back what I’ve written and see the ideas I initially had are taking shape and forming a story that others can enjoy. It’s the satisfaction of knowing I as a writer am conveying the ideas entertainingly, even if it’s time consuming. This is what it means to be a crafter and appreciate each detail to the point of a trance, even if it’s not necessarily interesting to reread and rewrite the same scene again and again until it’s done. Thankfully, you can spice this part up with bursts of inspiration, but only if you’re doing the work to show up for this part of the job every single day. If you don’t show up, you can’t find the energy.

3) Finishing a book. Seriously, I think half the joy of this is realizing I can finally stop all the work and get back to the idea stage again. This place is an amazing place to be. It is euphoria (until you realize all the work ahead of you to get that book formatted, promoted and sold because, hey, self publisher here.) But finally being DONE is such a freaking rush. I think this is what really pushed me to write in a serial format for so long. I could finish an episode and be done, publish, and move on to something else. And then, when I came back, it was fresh again, bright and alive instead of being trapped in the middle of the drudgery of grunt writing.

Rewriting is being trapped in fleshing out the world after all the problems are solved. It’s editing, but without the reward of having the book done when you’re done, because editing is still waiting. So what I’ve been doing to spice things up is to add those creative bursts, get something in there to inspire me. Complicate the plot a bit more to inspire me to push forward with more problems to solve. But those techniques also lead to me being trapped in this place longer, because each individual problem in a story must be solved or at least resolved before you hit the end. Even in serial format, you can’t have too many plot cliffhangers or the book doesn’t feel like it’s a satisfying installment, but a total tease of leading readers on. It means more work and focus to ensure what you’re creating isn’t just a begining, but a complete story.

And I’m extra trapped here because of the commitment. Because the rewrite is required before I’m allowed to publish the second book. There is this fear to step away from the rewrite is to ensure I’m never going to return and finish this shit. I’m a creative. I chase the high of inspiration and problem solving. Grunt writing is capable of draining all the happiness out of anyone like that. It can feel like pointless busy work. So when you know yourself, have a track record of putting off the things that bore you compared to the things that challenge and spark your creativity, you understand how your very nature works against you when distractions look so shiny and interesting.

What if I wrote a book about a serial killer who makes his first move during the worst cold front to hit a country in over 50 years? All his victims look like natural causes from the cold when otherwise people would be wondering, seeking a pattern as to why so many healthy individuals were dropping dead in one area at once. What if it was through the eyes of a family member who knows that their loved one never would have left the house–they were agoraphobic–and while they’re trying to convince the police that something terrible is behind all these deaths, they too become a target to this madman who decides it’s much more interesting to stalk the person paying attention, littering their land with his freshest victims? And now the police are wondering if there is a pattern, but they already have a culprit, the desperate, seemingly crazy person who keeps insisting that there is a killer out there. Is it to warn the town and save everyone, or is this someone who is just projecting their own crimes while looking for a thrill to share how they got away with all those murders?

It’s new to my brain. It’s sexy and enticing because it’s new. A hot love affair with a story plot that I wouldn’t even look twice at normally, except I’m trapped in a boring relationship with my current rewrite. But the guilt! The guilt cripples just as much. I want to focus on another story when I have a commitment to my current novel? You think I’ll get anything done now? No, I’d be frozen, frustrated, and nothing would be written at all.

Ideas are sexy, brilliant little flames in the head promising immediate reward. The serial format has been the closest thing I’ve come up with to solve this problem, where you can have those bursts of inspiration that will power you through a 10-30,000 word episode, but the longer it takes, the harder it is to keep the energy. And it requires something to jump to to keep the mind engaged. Sometimes you find yourself working on the same project so long, you don’t want to look at the damn thing for a few months, so you need multiple stories to jump to. And then, suddenly, you realize you have ?!? many series half written and you gotta finish something, and dear fuck, when did writing become adulting!

I might need a cheering squad to see me through to the end. I have worked hard to cultivate my creativity and motivation from within (and I am still seeking solutions) but sometimes when you feel stuck in something for so long, it’s hard to even get up the energy to push through. This is why I keep looking at hiring content writers. I know my strengths and I see my limits. And although I always believe it’s important to focus on making your limits into strengths, sometimes we’re just limited human beings and it’s better to seek a creative, innovative solution. But I’m in the middle of this commitment to this novel, and I can’t even allow myself to fully look at other solutions at the moment because it pulls my mind away.

Ah, my love affairs with thoughts. My mind is a slut, no doubt about it, and the problem is guilt more than anything else. If I didn’t feel guilty, I’d have forged toward a solution, but no, guilt is a familiar cage.

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