Week 7 - Waste Not, Want Not

 

Week 7 update – slowed down a bit here and there, but now I’m back on track, and back on the romance book. Having paid work and its attendant deadline threw me off for a couple of days, but I fixed it by going back to longhand in the morning. I also got some rewriting/typing done on the detective story before the internet distracted me. Looks like it’ll be the romance for the time being, I can’t say for sure how long. Plans, plots and intentions can change on a dime. Such is the life of a pantser.

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Speaking of distractions, my subconscious lobbed a doozy at me, probably as a last-ditch effort to knock me off my productive course. When the new story ideas didn’t sway me, Mr. Subconscious decided to go for broke and dump the whole shebang on me. Long story short, a long book of short stories. In other words, an anthology.

For years now I’ve made it a point to write some form of fiction every day. Best case, it would be a specific story aimed at a certain genre or market, hopefully with some kind of payment attached. Since depression and writer’s blocks often interfered with that, I decided flash pieces—everything from brief paragraphs to full stories under a thousand words—would also fill the bill. This way I could honestly say I wrote some form of fiction that day, even if I never returned to it. Writing is writing, after all, and one way or another, no writing ever goes to waste.

Some of them did lead to better things. One night I scribbled a bit of fluff about a reporter interviewing a human who’d been raised by vampires. It wasn’t very serious and ended after a couple hundred words with the reporter meeting the parents, with the (off-camera) expected result. I set it aside but didn’t quite forget about it. Over time the premise morphed in my mind into the tale of an orphaned child (female at first, later male after I discovered the TV show Supernatural) who’s taken in by a flock of vampires and grows up to work in a brothel that caters to paranormal beings. That became my erotic M/M romance Belonging, one of my best sellers. The fantasy/detective story I’m currently working on got its start when I mashed two of these random flash bits together. You can read that background info at the October 8, 2022  entry of this very blog.

I’ve got years—decades, even—of these things, scattered around in notebooks and a couple computer files. Some might someday bloom into full-grown stories or even books. The others…well, quite a few were scribbled down before bed, sometimes right before midnight, in a panicked effort to keep my daily writing habit intact. They’re not often coherent. Or clean. (For example, last week I jotted down how leprechauns come by their pots of gold. It has to do with another meaning for “pot” along with the phrase “shit a brick.” And the source of fairy dust? You don’t even want to know.) My sense of humor was shaped in my early years by Mad magazine, later by National Lampoon and Monty Python. This is the type of thing that comes out of my head when I’m tired, or desperate, or both. Most of them are unfit for human consumption, let alone development into a decent story. Or any kind of story, decent or otherwise.

But, Mr. Subconscious whispered seductively, what if you dusted off some of these piles of crap, polished ’em up a bit and passed them off as a self-published ebook of humorous short-shorts? Like Jokes for the John, but for lit majors. Most people don’t have the attention span to deal with a whole book anyway.

And instead of calling him out as a total nutjob, tired, desperate, writer’s-blocked me replied, Y’know, that’s just crazy enough to work.

So now I’ve got another side-side project. I haven’t stopped work on the detective book or the romance. The series is still in the queue somewhere. But now so is this. Any time I get blocked I’ll haul out a random notebook and see what’s in there. The bulk are going to be on a par with the leprechaun thing I alluded to a couple of paragraphs back. But there still might be some gems among the crap. If I can scrape together a hundred of the best of the worst, whip it up into an ebook and sell it for $1.99—hell, that’s less than two cents per story. If you only find one out of the batch you like, you still come out ahead. You can’t beat a deal like that with a stick.

Besides, I’ve been wanting to improve my formatting skills, and I need to learn how to make my own covers because right now I can’t afford to pay for one. This will give me something to practice on. I might even make a little money from it. No writing, or effort, ever goes to waste.

I’ll need to come up with yet another pen name, though. Variations on my real name have already been used, and I want to keep my other pen names for actual serious stuff. Damn you, Mr. Subconscious. You’ll pay for this. See y’all next week.

Grab Bag

So much for the weekly blogs. The writing, on the other hand, has actually begun to pick up. Too bad there’s about to be a break again. This post will be a selection of what’s been happening, what’s about to happen, and what I hope happens afterward. Hang on, it’s gonna be a bumpy ride.

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First up, my medical issues. Any of you of the male persuasion reading this, proceed with caution; I’ll be discussing the downsides of owning a female reproductive system. Ladies, stick around. This could be of help to you at some point in the future.

On September 22 I had a number of tests, including a D&C, to determine why I’d been bleeding from my uterus off and on since March. My reproductive organs had retired well before I did, way back in July of 2004, the date of my last period. Any time you have blood leaking out of your vajayjay after going through menopause, get it checked out. Especially if said menopause happened almost twenty years ago. I wasn’t told this directly by the doctors, but I think mine was due to polyps in my womb. That’s usually what causes vaginal bleeding after the bulb burns out in your Easy Bake Oven. One of the things they planned to do down there while gathering test samples was remove any polyps they found. They must have found some and removed them, because after four-five days of pseudo-menstrual bleeding following the surgery (this is normal and no cause for alarm), everything dried up and I’ve been fine since. Not even spotting on the undies, which was a major pain.

All of which became irrelevant, because the doctors told me they found cancerous/pre-cancerous cells in the tissue samples they removed. There’s also a growth on one of my ovaries that showed up during an  ultrasound. That could be benign, or not. Doesn’t matter. Given my age and the fact the Easy Bake Oven ain’t ever going back to work anyway, there’s no point in further tests or chemo treatments. Easiest, cheapest and safest solution is a total hysterectomy—uterus, ovaries, whatever other cancer cells they may find down there. My regular doctor mentioned this when I got my initial tests and said it usually takes care of the problem. My doom-and-gloom neighbor said there might be additional chemo (she had her hysterectomy back in her 30s). I’m hoping that won’t be necessary.

So, come Tuesday, I’ll be getting spayed. I never bothered having kids so I’m not stretched out enough, so they’ll be removing the equipment through my stomach instead of through the vaginal area. This means a couple of days in the hospital. Luckily my most recent paid assignment is due the day before, so no work conflicts. I’ll have to take a notebook and some pens in with me so I can write longhand during my stay. I did that during my hernia surgery back in 2004 and it worked out fine. Be interesting to see what I produce while under the influence of pain meds. As long as I don’t have a talkative roommate, this may work out pretty well.

Once my non-functioning reproductive system is removed, I’ll no longer be biologically female. Some states may not allow me to use the ladies’ room any more. On the other hand, with that and the adoption of the proper pronouns, I may now qualify to be a writer at Marvel Comics. There’s a silver lining to everything.

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About the paid work mentioned above: that’s been another stressor these last two weeks. In addition to doctor visits, I got two assignments in the same week, the second due the day before surgery. The first is done and out; the second will be taking up my weekend. Bet I don’t get a thing for the rest of the month. This is good; it gives me time to work on my own stuff. This is bad; the paid work’s been helping me cover expenses, and would really help out with the medical bills that’ll be headed my way shortly. Hope I get something in November. I really should have been writing instead of playing computer games over the past two years. Yeah well. That’s on me. This entire summer has been a wake-up call. Hopefully after this I won’t be interrupted by yet another medical issue.

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Finally, some good news. Not only did the sampling surgery catch a life-threatening problem before it could escalate, it jolted me out of a dangerous rut and got me writing again. And the writing’s taken off. I’m still on the Twilight Zone detective novel, but with all the changes I’ve been making to that slapdash pantser mess that was the longhand first draft, it’s like an entirely new story, and a far better one. I know the characters better now, what they’ll say and how they’ll react. It’s all coming to life. This always happens when I write a book, especially at my slow pace. By the time I get to the end, the beginning has aged long enough for me to see the flaws and come up with solutions. New ideas have had a chance to develop and can be folded into the plot to the betterment of everything. This sucker’s gonna be good.

One of those ideas surprised even me. My subconscious and I aren’t always on the best of terms, but this time it gave me a bonus. Towards the end of the first draft, written last year, I decided to include reference to the detective’s girlfriend, who he’d loved and lost two years before the story opens. It only occurred to me recently (I’m talking within the last month) that her name is an almost-perfect anagram of the name of another character who’s vital to the resolution of the current story. I can’t go into detail without divulging the plot and wrecking the ending, but it’s totally logical in context and makes perfect sense to the story. It had to be that way. I didn’t even see it and I’m the damn writer. Some readers are liable to pick up on it and figure out the twist, but I’m confident a lot of them won’t. Hell, I figured out the twist of The Sixth Sense from reading a non-spoilery review. Didn’t stop me from enjoying the movie. Wish I dared congratulate myself for being so clever, but then my subconscious would start grumbling and plotting what kind of a writer’s block to throw at me next. We really need to learn how to work together. And on that note, back to the grind. Enjoy your day.

  

Here's Where the Fun Begins

 

I might as well admit it now: the series has officially gone on the back burner. It’s not dead, it’s just resting. The side project is now the main project. I’ve been typing up the longhand in between paid assignments, doing spot research as I go along. Eventually I’ll reach the point where I’ll need to go to Philadelphia to scout locations. Sure, I could do that through Google Maps and websites, but where’s the fun in that? I deliberately chose Philly as my location because it’s within driving distance. Any excuse to get out of the house and not work.

Currently I’ve hit a bit of a snag. I read over the longhand before I type it up, in case I need to fix, add, subtract or otherwise change something. Well, Chapter 5 is going to need to be entirely rewritten. It introduces a main cast member, who I didn’t know when I created her. I discovered who she was as I went along. Now that I’m on the second draft, I need to make her match up with what I learned about her in the first draft. For instance, I’d originally intended for her and the PI main character to hook up. That isn’t how it turned out. She ended up hooking up with the caveman and the PI found love elsewhere, with a character I hadn’t even conceived of when I started writing. Hence the need for a new Chapter 5.

Because that’s both the joy and the bane of being a pantser: there’s no road map. You sit down and you find out what happens. You may not even have a plot when you begin; I didn’t with this book. I started with two characters and a premise: a caveman, claiming to be a fictional character, hires a private investigator to track down his author and find out why he’s been pulled into the real world. Plot, characters, incidents, ending and themes all popped up as I went along. When I was done I had a contradictory mess, but at least it had a linear plot and a satisfactory ending. And both my protags found true love. Who could ask for anything more?

That was the first draft. Now I’m on the second draft, where I have to make it all make sense. The second draft is for actual writing. Here’s where the fun begins.

For example: the woman in Chapter 5. She’s another fictional character, a ripoff of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. (The publisher specialized in pulp-style knockoff series.) She was pretty generic when I started writing her. Then a chapter or so later, out of nowhere, she started speaking with a New England accent, surprising both me and my PI protag. Not a problem; far from it, in fact. It helped me develop her background. She’s a descendant of Puritans, trained to hunt and destroy supernatural monsters that threaten humanity. As the story went along, I discovered she’s also part demon and can talk to ghosts. For her intro, all I needed was to establish the accent, and show a flash of demon red in her eyes to convince the PI that a) she wasn’t just into cosplay, and b) there might just be something to the caveman’s outrageous story after all. She clinches it with another bit I’d originally introduced later on: she has a magic wad of cash that never runs out, so she can handle expenses when she’s on a case. Proof she’s not from around here. It also explains how fictional characters eat and have homes when they never appear to work at paying jobs. It helps the PI accept the Twilight Zone episode he’s now living in, and he allows her to join their hunt for the missing writer. And now we’re on our way.

Sounds like a pain in the ass, doesn’t it? Yeah, it can be at times. It can also be a lot of fun. Because this is primarily a mystery story, it allows me to play with the readers. The search for the missing writer is just the surface plot. One of the characters isn’t who he appears to be. This leads to a major twist at the climax, which I need to set up so readers won’t throw the book across the room. That means sprinkling in the kinds of clues that don’t look like clues but make sense when you get to the end. A great one hit me out of nowhere as I was nearing the end of the book. I decided to leave that aspect in, and have started laying the groundwork all the way back in Chapter 1. It also ties in to a side note I included that came from the original flash scene, where the caveman complains about retcons—how his writer gave him a sister and killed her off all in the space of a page, and he’s left to deal with memories and emotions for a person who never existed until that moment. That’s a clue now. Wonder if M. Night Shyamalan had as much fun writing The Sixth Sense as I am with this?

That picture up top is a clue too. It’s the scene in Star Wars where Han Solo says, “Here’s where the fun begins.” Mr. Ford never personally appears in my story, but his influence is felt. Indirectly, he’s the reason the writer ends up living where the characters finally find him. Personally, I’m more in the Indiana Jones camp, wandering around a jungle of words looking for hidden treasures. Not to mention my favorite Indy line: “I’m making this up as I go.” If that’s not a pantser, I don’t know what is. For you other pantsers out there, have a blast!

You Snooze, You Lose

 

I’m a slow writer. I admit it. Procrastination’s only part of the problem. Even when I’m hot on something, can’t wait to get to the keyboard, I still have problems getting the words down, even when I’m on a streak. I’ll have a good day or two, then go blank for weeks at a stretch. I’m currently writing an eight-book series all at once because it’s the only way I can guarantee the books will come out on a regular schedule. I’m not even going to market the first one until I’ve got at least the first five completed in draft form. Even that may not be good enough. My subconscious has a nasty habit of throwing blocks in my way at the worst possible time. Better go back to the original plan and draft all eight of them first.

Back in the ancient days of BI (Before Internet) this never used to be a problem. People expected writers to take a year, even two, between books. The audience was willing to wait. No longer. The Internet has spoiled us. A couple of clicks and you’ve got books, movies, information, porn, anything you could ask for right in front of you, instantly. We’re not willing to wait any more. We want what we want when we want it, and we want it right freakin’ NOW. And if you can’t produce fast enough to supply that impatient demand, your audience will desert you, maybe never to return. There are plenty of other books in the electronic sea, from writers willing and able to churn out a story a month. Or more.

I am in awe of those writers, because I’ll probably never be among their number. I’m just not fast enough for current market conditions. Even giving up on housework didn’t increase my production. I’ve often wondered who does the laundry and cooks the meals in those writers’ households. Or, for those writing erotic romance, when they find time to do “research.”

The moral of the story is, not being fast can cost you your customers. And sometimes even more than that, as I was reminded recently.

Years upon years ago, maybe the ‘90s, maybe early 2000s, I toyed with the idea of writing horror novels. Stephen King wasn’t writing the type of books that had made him famous any more. If someone could slip into that vacated niche, they might do pretty well. I had a couple of plots in mind, including one inspired by the King himself. Back in the day he wrote two related novels, published almost back to back, Desperation and The Regulators. Different stories, but the same cast…sort of. The characters’ names were the same, but the roles they played varied from one book to the other. A bad guy in one was a good guy in the other, a child had become an adult, things like that. Like a couple of parallel universes. And what, I thought, might happen if the universes intersected, and those characters, the same only different, ran into each other?

Having grown up as a science fiction fan, I had no problems with the concept of infinite “what if” worlds. Or of characters meeting their counterparts. Remember the “Mirror, Mirror” episode of Star Trek? Spock with the beard? Oh yeah. Ahem. I came up with a plot about a parallel universe that opened up into ours, allowing characters to pass back and forth, and the hijinks that ensued.

It came out pretty good, in my humble opinion. The main character, a cop, was alive in our world but had committed suicide in the other. There was a woman who had no counterpart in any other universe. There was a bad guy—oh, the bad guy. He was male in the other world, but female in ours. The two of them met. And hooked up. Yes, exactly how you’re thinking.

I thought that was one hell of a daring concept, for its time. They’re the same person, just different bodies. Different genders. Is it love? Incest? Masturbation? Or the ultimate in narcissism? I couldn’t recall ever reading anything like that before, not even in science fiction. Maybe it happened in Star Trek fanfic. I have no doubt Captain Kirk would have gleefully banged his female other self, and vice versa. Kirk was always something of a slut.

It’s all hypothetical, because while I started the book, I never finished it. I suspect my subconscious knew it was beyond my then-skills. Plus I started having trouble recalling which versions of the characters had done what where and when. This was a book for a plotter to writer, and I’m an irredeemable pantser. Probably the reason I abandon a lot of ideas. Too much trouble figuring out what happens next.

So the book never got written, and I let the concept sit. It probably wouldn’t have gotten published anyway, not back then. Maybe not now. Depends on the execution, and the author. I am not now, have never been, and never will be Stephen King.

Skip ahead to earlier this year. Disney starts a streaming service and creates programs featuring its Marvel Comics properties. One of these shows is Loki, from the Thor franchise. Due to events in Avengers: Endgame, Loki has effed up the time stream. He’s now charged with setting things right. Over the course of the show he meets parallel universe versions of himself. One of them is a woman. They hook up.

Those sounds you hear are me screaming “Oh shit!” and kicking myself in the ass. Because I didn’t write that book, and now I never can. Because anybody reading it will immediately think, “She ripped that off from the Marvel show.” No, I didn’t. I had that idea decades ago, but I never wrote or published it, so there’s no way I can prove it. That’s the price a writer pays for not striking while the iron is hot. Now somebody else gets to be praised for being daring and original, and I’m relegated to an also-ran’s parallel universe.

Somewhere out there, some Trekkie fanfic writer may also be screaming and kicking herself. I hear you, honey. Loud and clear.

The lesson I’m taking from this is to speed up my production, pronto. I have what I feel is a marketable concept for my series, with characters, story twists and ideas I believe in. Now I just have to get it done and out there. Because somewhere in the multiverse some other writer could have those same ideas. Someone who’s never heard of me and has no clue I even exist, but who’s faster at writing than I am.

Thank you, Disney. You just gave me the kick I needed. Now, if you’ll all excuse me, I have a lot of writing to do.

Troubleshooting

In our last installment I talked about my decision to write a closed series with an overarcing story, which, for a pantser like me, amounts to hell on earth. I’ve mentioned some of the plot problems that have arisen already. Since I just started writing, I’m still at a stage where I can catch and correct these little glitches before they grow into plot holes. The one I’m going to talk about here was relatively easy to fix, and actually ended up solving a concern I had in regards to Book 7. Because it deals with breaking, or maybe just bending, the rules, I thought you other writers out there might want to hear about it.

Book 3 is going to feature a ménage—one woman, three men. That is, it was supposed to. Two of the brothers are fine, upstanding romance heroes, but the third is a total asshat. He’s what’s become known in the genre as an “alpha-hole.”

There’s no way my heroine, as I conceived her, is going to fall in love with this dickhead in the time allowed by the story. There’s no way that he, total jerk that he is, is going to change that fast, either.

At the same time I had what I thought was an unrelated problem looming in Book 7, the series finale. Books 1 through 6 are all the characters pairing off (or tripling or quadrupling off) with their respective destined lovers. Book 7 is the showdown with the bad guy, the culmination of the overarcing plot. No romance happens in that book; therefore, there’s no sex. The publisher requires sex. I thought I’d have to run a spate of scenes between all my established pairings the night before the big battle. Cliché plotting, but necessary.

Until I realized I could tie off two plots with one twist. All I have to do is bend the rules a bit.

Most romance books end with an HEA (happily ever after), with all participants committed to a lifetime together. But the HEA isn’t mandatory. There’s the alternative of the HFN (happily for now), where the lovers hang out but nobody gets married. In fact, I’ve got a Book 8 in the back of my mind, a stand-alone unrelated in plot to the rest of the series, that would absolutely have to have an HFN because neither party is ready to commit. It’s a Batman/Catwoman thing. HFN is acceptable, but the HEA is preferred.

A mix of the two settles everything. In Book 3, my FMC enters into a HFN ménage with the two decent brothers. Brother Asshat is left out in the cold. Over the next four books his story arc will play out as a subplot as he works to redeem himself in the woman’s eyes. He succeeds and is welcomed into the ménage in Book 7, before the final battle, in a scene I hope will satisfy the publisher. I can still have snapshot scenes with the other characters, but Brother Asshat’s story fills the requirement of a romance plot and makes the relationship an HEA. I can give him a scene alone with the woman, then add his brothers in, and it’ll all work thanks to the setup. Damn, I’m good.

I still don’t recommend pantsers try to write a series this way. This is plotter territory. On the other hand, it never hurts to stretch your writing muscles. Good luck.

Give the People What They Want

What follows is a tale of why being a pantser isn’t always a good thing.

I’m handling edits right now, for a story that, if all goes well, should come out sometime in January. It’s futuristic MM, set on a distant planet with aliens and stuff. Our Hero finds himself in possession of a man from a species whose entire focus is on sex. They end up falling in love, of course. It’s a romance.

Here’s where my pantserness tripped me up. As I was writing the scene where they dispense with their clothes, it suddenly occurred to me why these alien males are so popular. It’s because they’re hermaphrodites. AC/DC in both body and temperament. Whatever you’re in the mood for, even if it’s both at once, they can accommodate you. Tell this guy to go screw himself and he’ll say, “Be back in ten minutes.”

My lusty heroes consummate their budding relationship, using the guy’s lady parts. That’s where I left it.

Not good.

My editor wasn’t overjoyed. I was expecting that. I anticipated there might be some flak over the twist my pantser half threw in. She didn’t tell me to excise it, though. Instead she pointed out, “This is MM. The readers come to this genre for a certain experience and you’ve given them something else. You can fix it by adding some butt sex.” Not her exact words, of course, but that was the gist of her assessment.

And you know what? She’s absolutely right.

Every genre and sub-genre has its own conventions. Science fiction generally has some kind of tech. You can spot fantasy by the elves and the dragons. Put the elves and dragons in modern-day New York City and now it’s urban fantasy. Westerns have cowboys, horses and shoot-‘em-ups. Horror novels have monsters. If the woman falls in love with the monster, then it’s paranormal romance. Crime novels have killings or kidnappings or anything that would bring in the cops. Mysteries have, well, a mystery. Romances are about two people falling in love and working their way toward a Happily Ever After. Take away the HEA and it becomes women’s fiction with a romantic bent.

These are all valid genres, with their own particular audiences. People come to them with certain expectations. That mystery novel better include a mystery, and it damn well better be mysterious. Don’t give your orc a ray gun and try to tell people it’s SF. It’s still fantasy. Readers who expected the orcs to wield swords will give you a half star on Amazon.

For MM, it’s man love. Guy-on-guy relations. Not guy on pseudo-woman, which is what I did. If you’re writing MM, especially MM erotic romance, then somebody’s dick better find its way into somebody else’s butthole, or the readers are going to come after you with torches and pitchforks. And they’ll never buy a book from you again.

I knew this when I wrote it. I even considered adding a more conventional MM sex scene but didn’t know where to put it. I almost made the worst mistake a writer can fall victim to: misleading the readers. The audience for MM books is ponying up its cash for the guy/guy romantic experience. Either give them what they expect to get or suffer the consequences.

That’ll teach these e-book publishers to accept manuscripts without reading them first. It taught me not to screw around (no pun intended) with my audience. Mea culpa, folks. Your butt sex is on its way. And it’s gonna be hawt. I’ve thought of a way to make that original scene the prelude to the good stuff, the real MM sex scene, involving guys slamming guys into walls. That should wash the taste of girl cooties out of everyone’s mouth.

Writers, listen to your editors. They know what they’re doing. They know what’s good for the book. My next MM will be between two Earth guys, and butts will definitely get penetrated. One of the guys turns into a horse, so I suppose it’s paranormal. Just so you know that up front.