I Think I'll Set Up Shop Here In The Gutter

I read my "smut" at writer's group last week....

To be fair, I did spend the last two hours of work leading into the group frantically writing an opening to the story in an attempt to drop the story down to a bit more of a PG-13 rating. I was able to get to about three or four pages into the story before it starts getting "naughty," so I was able to read that much at least.

Nearly had a heart attack in doing so, though. I just sat in the meeting mentally riffling through all of my writing to think of SOMETHING else that I could read. No dice. At least, not unless I decided to bring up something that I wrote YEARS ago just for S&Gs. Then it hit about 7:30. We had a half-hour to still fill. Everyone else already read. We were just kind of staring at each other trying to figure out what else to talk about. That's when I sort of bashfully went "Well, TECHNICALLY, I wrote about 10,000+ words since last session. I just don't know if anyone would want to hear what I wrote.... it's.... kind of.... MATURE." I then proceeded to explain the rabbit hole I dove head first into.

They all chuckled that we were all adults, and that it would be fine. Granted, there was a gentleman - fairly new, this was his third or fourth meeting - that seemed to be around my age; probably older, though. Then there were two women that may have only been about ten years older. The rest of the group, though, were definitely closer to my mom's age, and older. Being the clear youngest in the group, it still felt awkward to read THIS kind of story for them to critique. What happens if the sex scenes need tweaking? What if they don't? I don't know which would be more awkward, them being like "Well, I think that it would seem more realistic if he...." or if I got a resounding "WOW! Well done." Because that would mean that I now know where there minds were....

It's bad enough that I know family members that enjoyed "Fifty Shades of Grey," I don't know if I could handle actually knowing people who enjoyed my smuttiness.

Anyway, I was later informed that just about as soon as I spoke up with "Well, TECHNICALLY, I wrote..." that my face just FLOODED with a blush. I was like a human strawberry for the last half-hour of the meeting. And that blush stayed for at least an hour! I'm not cut out for this!!!!

I read the intro to the story, and stopped before anything "naughty" actually happened. Both parties were still clothed - although Jolene was quickly remedying that - and it was just a bunch of flirting leading up to that point. Nothing terribly too bad. I probably would have read it proudly if I didn't know what was going to start happening in the next sentence.

When I stopped, the room kind of filled with a whining "awwwww," so... I guess that means I caught their attention? I don't know if that's because I was doing good, or if they wanted to hear the sex portions I wrote. The only other comment was from one of the newer regular members commenting about my sort of voice change. Normally, I'm about 80% dialogue and only 20% action/scene setting. To try to let the reader know the situation leading into the sex scene, I did a quick recap of the roleplay that inspired me. It was a LOT of background info. She noted that: "You normally do mostly dialogue, and this time we barely had any."

Well, she would have had a lot of dialogue if I had continued, but I wanted to just quickly set up the scene, and including all the dialogue leading up to it didn't seem practical. Still, the way that she said it, I wasn't sure if it was a good thing, a critique, or just an observation.

Then I got an email from one of the group members asking if I cared enough about improving the story to want a beta-reader for it. We could do a story exchange: my smut for his super dark murder scene that he fears will make him look like a twisted psycho. I've written fairly dark and grisly murder scenes - I asked a bunch of people my senior year of high school if they knew what happens to human eyeballs when you burn to death - so I could easily read his bit. STILL not sure about sending him mine, though. Again, I don't know if it would be more awkward if he gave me advice on how to improve the sex scenes, or if he told me it was amazing.

Still, on the off chance that I decide to send it his way, I wanted to polish it first. Slowly but surely, I went back over the story about a dozen times the past week trying to get it to a point where I'm confident that I can't improve it on my own. I still have a couple of lines that don't seem quite right, but it's the best I have for right now. Rensin's a bit harder to get the voice right than I gave him credit for. I just can't give him that spark of bashful innocence like his player managed. So, super added props to his player for being such a great writer. I even asked Mouse to pass along my praise.

She offered to get the two of us in touch - me and Rensin's player - but I just feel that would be super weird considering the circumstances. I'd rather just know the character and not the player at this point....

Despite my better judgement, I DID share the Jolene/Rensin story - titled "Rensin's Conquest" - as well as the Devon/Trish work-in-progress story "Some Like It Flame Broiled." I don't know why, but I just NEEDED to share it with someone, and Shadow happened to be online while I was still trying to calm my blush from writing group. I freaked out to him; basically a "WHAT DID I JUST DO!?"

He chuckled, and told me that he was fairly certain it was good since I'm such a good writer. This of course lead me to tease that he's like my mom: barely actually reads my stuff, but still has unwavering faith that I'm an amazing author. More talking back and forth along those lines, and eventually I just sort of caved and sent him "Some Like It Flame Broiled" with the understanding that I hadn't finished the story yet, let alone went back to polish it.

I dunno. I guess the fact that he's a close friend makes it somehow less awkward for him to read the dirty bits? No real critique one way or the other from him, aside from "<3 Trish" and "You should finish it." Positive reviews, I guess.

Well, last night I finally finished my polishing of "Rensin's Conquest" and sent that over to him too. He's part of the online D&D group with Rensin and Jolene, and so he'd probably be one of the best suited to have an outside perspective on whether or not I have everyone in-character. We'll see if he reads it and/or what his thoughts on the matter will be. I'm predicting it will be raging hatred for Jolene for playing with innocent Rensin's heart, but at least evoking emotion means I did something right, correct?

I also tried to switch gears by talking to Shadow about the MASSIVE love triangles - knots; web? - that I'm trying to set up in "Glitches" between multiple different characters; mainly Chayse, Lia, Willow, Devon, Nyssa, Ripley, and Lincoln. It sort of wobbles between Chayse being the center of a triangle, to Willow being the center, to Devon being the center, to Lia being the center.... I feel like there needs to be more romances in my story that isn't interwoven with those seven characters, but right now the only other option I have is Colette and Joseph.

Anyway, while talking to Shadow about all of this - just to have SOMETHING to talk about that isn't sex-related - I started to get a real passion for "Glitches" again. I think I'm going to finish off "Some Like It Flame Broiled" just so that I don't have ANOTHER work-in-progress hanging around, and then try attacking "Glitches" some more. I need to get an outline figured out. A road map so I know where I'm going with everything.

I think the easiest way is to come up with the individual story arcs for each character and then find a way to weave them together. That was SUPPOSED to be what I wanted to tackle this month while also doing my MasterClass on screenwriting, but somehow I ended up down the dirty-birdy rabbit hole instead. People keep reassuring me that it's perfectly fine; "romance novels" are a big seller. Still.... what a debut into the writing world.

Speaking of my MasterClass, my mother's birthday present to me this year was to sign me up for the Aaron Sorkin class on screenwriting. Isn't she just awesome!?

While Sorkin is entertaining, he also is super awkward to listen to. He's kind of like this:

He even more-or-less said this in a
disclaimer in the intro lesson.

He meanders when he talks, and tends to share examples of what he's trying to teach as a means to prove his point. However, the examples are so specific it's hard to still grasp what he's trying to say. I'm still going through the "pre-writing" portion of the class, and so perhaps it seems only vaguely helpful because I'm not actually trying to do things such as research quite yet. I'll keep you posted on how the class goes once he gets into the actual "this is how you write a script" portion.

To finish up, a quick touch-base on my reading progress:

OH. EM. GEE! "Ready Player One" is quickly jumping up the ranks to one of my favorite books! I'm so in love. All the geekiness. All the 80s pop culture. The actual suspense keeping me on edge. The main character's voice, how he tells the story, is witty and I can't stop promoting this book to everyone I see. Almost literally. I had a customer in the store the other day that basically had the 80s Saturday Morning Cartoon line-up tattooed around his left leg, and so naturally I talked him up about "Ready Player One."

I have no clue if I can finagle things around on the reading challenge check-list so this book still fits, but at this point I don't care. I may not fit all 12 challenge points in before 2017, but I'll definitely have at least 12 books read!

Alright, now off to try to finish "Some Like It Flame Broiled" so I can FINALLY get out of this gutter and start working on something I can read without looking like I replaced my head with a giant tomato.

This Rabbit Hole is Filthy....

I think I'm officially down the Rabbit Hole, guys!

Working on the smutty Devon/Trish story was NOT my only trek down this road! I added about 1000 more words to that story - I'm not sure it has the same intensity though - but most of my time was kinda focused on a new story. Remember Jolene? My new D&D character for Bear's online campaign? Yeeeeeaaaaaah. Remember how she's a prostitute? ......yeah......

Let me rewind. So, Bear started up this game in like June or late May, but I never got to join the original campaign. Bear decided to do a reset with new characters in the same world setting, and re-invited me. Spink's wedding was the night of the first game of the new campaign, and then two Saturdays ago was the second session; where I froze up in character-creation so I couldn't play.

The game keeps a perpetual game-log of everything shared via the IM component. Which means, not only could I go back and read the session I missed, but I could also read the original campaign; for generic entertainment purposes. I ended up copying both into two different Google Docs for later consumption.

Well, I read through the session I missed, and then re-read the session I was present for, but didn't play; to make sure I had a basic understanding of how the game played and the world Jolene was in. Hubby suggested against doing this to avoid me accidentally including info my character shouldn't know - Metagaming - but I've always been fairly good at keeping Out-of-Character-Knowledge separate. To the point where Lia and Willow have both done super stupid things even though I'm on the outside going "NO! Don't do the thing!" but they didn't know better... so they just went with what was in-character.

Sorry, I'm rambling. Point is, I went back and read through - which took up some of my free time at work - but I'm SOOOOO glad I did. It's so entertaining! Plus, this one character Rensin is just too adorable. I really like how he was built; nice and complex. And, if you know anything about me, you should know that if he's my favorite character it means he's fairly broken.

Rensin is part of a race of Northern barbarians who are claimed to be decedents of giants. There are no adults less than six-foot tall, and most are closer to seven-feet. Even Mouse's character Mahtab, a young woman still possibly capable of growing, is about 6-foot-2-inches. Then you have Rensin. Poor guy is 6-foot-3 and is therefore the smallest full-grown male in the village. He's routinely called "runt" which is only made worse by three things:

1. Rensin is the orphaned son of a great warrior of his village; one of the renowned "living legends" - or, at least FORMERLY living - of his region. Being a "runt" makes him seem even more of a disappointment to his father's name.
2. The person who seems to call Rensin a runt the most is his master - he's an apprentice; not a slave - the local swordsmith Alric.
3. Alric's daughter Mahtab also picks on him on occasion about being a runt since he's only an inch taller than her - there abouts - and she seems to be Rensin's closest friend; also, she's the king's granddaughter. The King of the North is a mountain of a man at about eight-feet tall; so it makes Rensin feel even MORE inferior.

Still rambling, I know, I'm almost to my point.

So, there's adorable Rensin who tries to bolster his pride, only to be quickly deflated by the playful Mahtab who doesn't seem to realize the anguish she actually causes him. He's already fairly down on himself because he doesn't think he could measure up to his father, both figuratively and literally. He keeps trying to say that he'll surpass his father's greatness someday, but in the same breath seems to mutter how useless he currently is. The man is also a bit of a blockhead who doesn't seem to understand subtlety or sarcasm. Completely clueless when it comes to matters of the heart.

Plus, the avatar for Rensin is friggen ADORABLE!

JUST LOOK AT THIS SAD FACE!
FFXIV: Gharen by YanareKu

Doesn't he just look so wounded? And I don't mean all the battle scars. He needs huggles! Lots and lots of them!

And THAT'S where Jolene comes in. He's a bit of a handsome fella, and, being a barbarian, he's only wearing a loincloth and a very large, shiny sword made from a dragon's fang. Honestly, I'm not sure if it's the body or the loot that caught her eye first. Still, he seemed a good mark, so she went for it. There was LOTS of flirting involved; he didn't catch any of it. So the half-elf Prisys chimed in to try to lead him towards the "lightbulb moment"; it worked, but he still didn't quite get that Jolene was willing to sleep with him. That needed more nudging from the other two women in the group: Mahtab and the dwarf Dunina.

FINALLY getting that he was being given the green flag, Jolene leads him and his female party-mates to the house Jolene is currently staying in as their lodging for the night. For all intents and purposes, the screen fades to black, everyone knows what went on behind closed doors with Rensin and Jolene, fade back up to him gleefully exiting the bedroom the following morning. Play continues as usual.

Then I was left alone with no customers, for five hours, completely undistracted, and bored... and tired. My mind wandered into the dark recesses of "What exactly DID happen behind those closed doors?" because a) Rensin was clearly a virgin trying to hide this fact from the women around him, and b) Rensin had nothing worth stealing aside from his sword, so what was Jolene's angle?

Eight pages later - which I'm still polishing up a bit - I got my answer, and a blush of embarrassment that THIS is what my writing has come to!

Part of me is shamefully proud of it, as evidenced by my telling everyone that I've written it. The larger part of me, though, is mentally locking this thing away with the Devon/Trish AU story; never to be seen by the light of day.

Which begs the question: What am I going to read at writing group tonight?

Maybe I could read either of the smut stories and just skip over the sex parts? I mean, it's "smut" and not "porn" because the ratio between actual plot and sex is at least fifty-fifty.... I hope I come up with something a bit more PG-13 at least for tonight.

Still, I find it ironic that, aside from "naming things" being the bane of my writing existence, one of the things I say I'm terrible at writing are "repetitive action" scenes such as long conversations/monologues, chase scenes, fight scenes, and.... you guessed it.... sex scenes. Yet, here I am writing two different "aggressive romance novels," as Bear put it.... Part of me again wants to actually read the "dirty bits" to someone so that I know if I'm at least improving on this skill.

Sheesh. What a skill to have....

You proud of me, Mom?

Well, like I said last week, "Fifty Shades of Grey" is a thing.... Eh, at least I'm writing. I could be... um... not.... writing..... right?

Aside from all of that, and reading through the backlog of old campaign sessions, I not only finished "Reformation" but I also started up a new book.

"Reformation" still wasn't my cup of tea. There was a good story there, but I feel like the book didn't follow it. I walked away still disliking Langston's tactics, but not only did I not HATE her, but I was curious about her. I felt the story should have been focused more on her. I'm an odd duck, I know. Either way, the ending seems to rush to a conclusion, and I just wish there was MORE there. So much so that when I started up my MasterClass: Screenwriting with Aaron Sorkin this past week, one of the assignments is to take an already existing story, and adapting it into a screenplay, at least for 10 pages. I decided that "Reformation" would be my "existing story." Sadly, I had to return the book to the library before I could finish the assignment, but I have the basis, so I can go back and work on it more the next time I have the downtime to re-borrow it from the library.

I'll talk more about the MasterClass next week; this post is already super long.

The book I'm currently reading is called "Ready Player One" by Ernest Cline. One of my co-workers found it at a garage sale and figured it was perfect for me. Boy was she ever right! Seven pages in and I'm already in love. Geeky gamer references, 1980's pop culture, a relatable main character, and glorious humor; awesome. I'm not terribly far into the story, but I'll keep you posted.

For now, though, I think I've spoken my fill for this week. Lord knows what I'm going to talk about next week.....

August Will Be New Script Frenzy Month!

First off, a quick call out to my nephew whose birthday was last week:

Love ya, sweety!

Alright, back to business. Sorta.

I slacked off this week. I didn't even remember to check-in over at Writers’ Huddle for the summer writing challenge. I've been stalled because I can't seem to figure out where to go next with my story, and so I've been avoiding it all together.

On the plus side, I'm about 2 days ahead of my schedule to finish reading "Magnus Chase and the Sword of Summer" on time. I keep teasing Ronoxym that Magnus is just a blonde-haired Boston version of Devon. The more I read the story the more I feel it's true. I find it so amusing that Rick Riordan and Ron essentially came up with the same character. On top of that, it's not like Ron was influenced by Riordan, since Devon's been around for over 3 years before Magnus Chase was printed. At least 2 years before Magnus was introduced to the public.

Speaking of Ron and Devon, Ron's still chugging away at his super Alternate Universe one-shot. Since in this reality Devon is an actual, psychotic Brotherhood member, Ron just writes that he's "Arson"; his Brotherhood code name as well as Street name when he was homeless. It's hard for Ron to even refer to this evil version as Devon, which is interesting. Anyway, he's been writing at least a little bit each night this past week; checking in with me on his progress pretty much daily. Hey, at least ONE of us is writing, right?

I'm excited to read it. He just finished up the first draft last night, but he says he still needs to go back and rework it since he doesn't think he got Trish right in the first half. Still.... EXCITED! You don't know how hard it is for me to continue writing this instead of hopping over to Google Docs to give the story a read through!

Now me? I think yesterday I finally broke my mental block. I gave up trying to figure out the opening scenes. I know more-or-less what I want to happen, but I just can't get the details. So, I allowed myself to just jump to the next scene I DO know the details. It's such a simple thing: allow yourself to NOT work linearly. Yet, it was exactly the sledgehammer I needed to get past my mental block.

I couldn't get very far before doing actual work at - gasp! - work! However, I at least decided to just write up an outline. There won't be a natural stop like in a novel or movie, but if I more-or-less know where I want to go in this "season" - as it were - of the comic then it might be easier for me to fill in the blanks. I know I want to follow the Devon storyline, so I'll write that up first. I'll then go back and put in the character arcs for Chayse, Willow, and Lia. Then probably go back through again to sprinkle in the redone Marvel-Canon characters, as well as Lucas and the concept of the Challengers of Heaven.

I feel like I'll be going back through my James Patterson MasterClass notes for this one. That, and any I make during my next class! For a birthday gift - BTW, Happy Belated to me!!! - my mother bought me another MasterClass for the second year in a row! This time it's screenwriting by Aaron Sorkin; best known as the writer for "The West Wing", "Sports Night", and "A Few Good Men". Such great timing! I start seriously working on a comic script and MasterClass sets up a screenwriting course that started THIS WEEK. Like, I'm one of the first people to ever take this class! So exciting!

A friend of mine is also beta-reading "Glitches" for me and is planning on giving me his notes later today, so that's just as exciting. We already discussed the pitfalls I managed to pick out in my obsessive read-throughs. So, I'm waiting to see what else he could advise me on. I mean, he already gave me one or two really good notes on things I never would have thought of myself due to the subtlety of it.

So, no, I didn't really do anything this past week aside from avoidance and obsessing. However, now I have all the tools I need to get me pumped again. I'm sensing a writing comeback. Okay, so I don't know HOW good of a comeback this SPECIFIC week will be, since Spink's wedding is this weekend, and so my free time is pretty booked. Still, August is looking GOOD.

I'm apparently also very modest....