#writeblurble

[hoochieblues]

100 Days of Writing: Day 67

How do you get through the fire swamp?

for @the-wip-project

Honestly, I'll tell you when I know...? I haven't really had any experiences like in the original post, where it's a repeated experience that I hated every book when I was doing it (apart from some forays into genres or house styles I did not like doing) ... generally if there was an issue where a story was hard to write, something was up with it, either because I screwed up somewhere, or due to personal reasons.

Personal under cut; some mild abuse mentions?

If I've ever had a really hard time working through something, either the characters were off, the plot had a problem, or I had what I've seen referred to as a 'writing injury' - either burnout or negative associations with the process of writing that had become untenable for any number of reasons (in my case, ranging from financial issues and pressure, abuse at home, massive disconnect between what I was writing and what I was comfortable producing/marketing, and so on...) to a degree so extreme that I felt horrible about something I'd once been proud of and enthused by.

There are also challenges in terms of health and fatigue but, generally, if I was having such negative patterns every time, that would be really abnormal for me. That's something that occurs with, for example, regular editing jobs where I proof books in genres I really don't jive with.

What I do get most often is less a fire swamp and more a cold and desolate desert of indecision.

Like, rn I have (under a separate pen name) a series of fetish romances on the back boiler. The first one went great and got a lovely reception from the six people out there who actively read femdom. I was so delighted.

I'm currently completely goddamn stuck on the start of the series I was testing the water for, partly due to - TMI incoming - some gnarly shit in my personal life around relationships that affected how I see myself and my confidence in myself (kinky or otherwise) , partly due to Hooch's Continuing Adventures in Therapy (woop woop), and partly - probably most significantly - due to plotting myself into a corner with a macguffin that just stubbornly won't work.

I've been stuck on it for months, largely thanks to a depressive episode over the summer, and while that's a fabulous thing about self-publishing - you're fucking up no one's timetable but your own - it's still frustrating, and it's very lonely when you are doing it all alone.

I have very few writing buddies to start with, and literally nobody for the very classy plot-heavy I swear femdom smut so it's a real challenge. And I say that as the same person currently wading back into fandom to revamp about 500k of years-old fics for fun (why yes, I question myself often) after being stuck in a ~7year fire swamp of not being able to write either at all or 'for fun' because of ill health, work, other obligations/complete breakdown and processing all the nonsense I've cheese-and-whined about here before.

So, in short.... I don't know? I know what I'm trying to do, which is a) not be annoyed by or envious of people (no shade on the original post that was referenced in today prompt, this is my baggage entirely) who say 'I get through things thanks to my great support network!' - that's wonderful and I'm pleased for you, just slightly frustrated - and b) trying to be more compassionate to myself and allow that yes, sometimes I need time off. I need to heal, relax, breathe, and refill the creative well, to borrow @barbex's excellent phrase.

And that's okay. That's not something to be ashamed of or feel guilt or pressure over. I've had a lot going on, as anyone who's followed even a few of my long, rambling, and over-sharing posts will attest to. (I owe you all cookies. :) )

If it takes me a week, a month, a year, or longer, I will make it out of the swamp and/or desert on my own time. It's not unfamiliar terrain. I've lived here before and I packed rations and a teflon tent. I'm not worried.

Just... maybe this time I'll make notes on the map about what works and what doesn't, and aim for a shorter path.

#100daysofwriting #writeblurble #personal #long post #i had three hours sleep and when i tried to nap i woke up to the smell of burning hair and thought i was having a stronk #but it turned out the farrier had arrived and was hot shoeing directly outside my front door #sooo.... behold my word salad #sorry about that

[hoochieblues]

100 Days of Writing: Day 20

Make a moodboard.

for @the-wip-project​ 

Ooooh, the junction between inspiration and procrastination! 

My day went to hell today, so here’s a moodboard (or something) I made a couple weeks ago to experiment with whether making moodboards for characters was a good way to get into the right headspace for writing specific WIPs or not. Spoiler: not especially, but I learned something from it and would probably do moodboards again at some infrequent point.

Now the word ‘moodboard’ has reached full semantic satiation, see if you can guess which OC this could ~possibly~ be. (cw: blood)

#100daysofwriting #writeblurble

[hoochieblues]

100 Days of Writing: Day 51

Do you use tools for plotting and what are they?

for @the-wip-project

I'm going to pimp Scrivener again! I used to just longhand all my notes for continuity, plotting etc., and scribble out my lil freytag pyramids which I didn't use, but a couple of years ago I moved and sold and/or threw out pretty much everything I owned... like, everything. Including most of my mountains of paperwork.

So I moved purely to digital. And I didn't really plot much, just lumped everything into different folders - which I absolutely think you can do rather than investing in a tool like Scrivener, Plottr or whatever - but, since having so many issues with concentration (and, let's be real, since upgrading to Scrivener 3 and getting excited about the new options because novelty value) I've started playing with the corkboard and layout options to beat my subplots into submission, control word counts etc... and it's pretty neat.

A combination of visual aids and line by line layout really helps - though whether it will actually help me structure workflow better in the long run, who knows?

#100daysofwriting #writeblurble #scrivener

[hoochieblues]

100 Days of Writing: Day 44

Share a cool phrase from a WIP.

for @the-wip-project

I was up till 5am (yay me, good job) so my judgement is squiffy, and and I'm sitting here trying to pick something good from Feasting on Dreams, which probably has the most lyrical prose (ah, self-indulgence!).

In celebration of me getting close to starting the reuploads, here's a snippet from a forthcoming chapter of Part 4, in Bann Telmen's estate. Meri never wanted to be a hero, and much less a symbol for elven revolution (context under cut?):

My mouth turned dry, and I remembered those notices on the Chanters’ boards, the bounties that spoke of sedition, treason, and murder. I remembered what Zev had told me of the climate in the capital when he’d arrived there and, most of all, I remembered the silence and the smell of ash, and the wall I couldn’t climb, skinning my palms against guilt and failure as Alistair pulled me down from my foothold.

“That’s not true,” I said hoarsely. “I… I defended myself, that’s all. W—I—I acted alone, and I never meant… he attacked me, that’s all. I killed him in self-defence.”

Beline looked at me with a strange kind of light in her eyes; like something shy but hungry was in her heart, something she didn’t dare speak aloud. She leaned forward, a pair of delicate leather slippers in her hands, and bowed lightly to me as she handed them over.

“Forgive me, ser, but I heard you gutted him like a fish. Him and twenty other men besides. Good riddance, I say. There’s nothing that says elves shouldn’t fight back. They can call it an uprising, but I call it freedom.”

That familiar welter of guilt and unease roiled in my belly, and I looked down at the beautiful dress hanging over my arm. I didn’t understand these people. They had lodging and good jobs, a village with no walls and no armed guards… there was food and fresh air, and no one had said a single bad word about Bann Telmen in my hearing. Why were they all so eager to tear their own stability to shreds?

#my sweet bbygirl #still so blinkered #100daysofwriting #writeblurble #inveterate scribbler #tag: merien tabris #da fanfic #dragon age fanfiction

[hoochieblues]

100 Days of Writing: Day 37

Post your favorite line of dialogue that you’ve written recently.

for @the-wip-project 

Uh, well there are a series of smutty electricity-related puns from another prompt fill that’s gotten totally away from me, so ‘Care to ride the lightning, Captain?’ has to be a contender. (Pre-DA2 Anders/Isabela coming soon....)

Otherwise I’m going to say this line from a (very) heavily reworked section in the Feasting on Dreams series, which deals with in-universe speculation on Alistair’s mother, and whether or not Maric was actually a “good” man:

“I don’t know. Even heroes aren’t perfect.” I frowned at the flames, watching sparks soar into the darkness drawing close around us. “Especially heroes, if you think about it. When people build them up, make them into stories, they only want the shiny parts. The bits that reflect all the things they need to believe in, the best of what they want to make real. It’s never the whole truth of anything, though. Maker, nothing really is. Why beat yourself bloody over what you can’t know?”

under the cut - cw: sexual assault mention etc.

I like this line because, in the context of the scene, Alistair and Meri are dissecting the disastrous visit to Goldanna. He’s been brooding for some time over the fact she believes Maric raped their mother, having grown up used to thinking of himself as an accident, a mistake born of a drunken tryst or a woman other boys in the village/monastery/etc. called a whore, but never - sweet summer child - considering that Maric might have assaulted her. He was Maric the Saviour, etc. etc. - a hero and a good man - an impossible ideal for an unwanted bastard and potential embarrassment to live up to.

Meri doesn’t do a great job at comforting him as her first thought is well, yeah... that happens a lot. Shem men do that. Doesn’t matter to her whether Alistair’s mother was elven or human - she was a servant, and it happens. It’s reason #32 on her list of Why Nobles Are Assholes, but her lukewarm condemnation comes across almost like apologism. 

By the end of the scene, both characters have shifted their positions a bit, and the groundwork is laid in to look more at Eamon’s behaviour and motives. Why didn’t he offer a place in the castle to Goldanna too? Why separate the siblings, or send her to Denerim but keep Alistair at Redcliffe, unless it was about control?

Alistair’s left to ponder this, and the question of whether anyone ever does anything without an ulterior motive, while Meri has another brick in her wall of assumptions about humans knocked loose. It leads to some interesting thoughts about injustice, which eventually pays off in beginning to erode the worst of her crippling guilt over Vaughan and the purge his murder caused.

...That’s the plan, anyway. 

#100daysofwriting #writeblurble

[hoochieblues]

100 Days of Writing: Day 47

What kind is your favorite character to write?

for @the-wip-project

This a great question, bc it made me question whether my faves are the types of characters I find most comfortable/familiar to write - snarky assholes, characters grappling with trauma and using humour to cover it, or quiet, introspective types - or the ones who best facilitate the kind of psychological tropes I like.

I think bc the characters I find hardest/least fun to do are the arrogant, self-assured antihero types, it's probably a little of both.

I value the same things in characters as I do in people: kindness (even if it's not the same as lawfulness or 'goodness'), humour, and complexity, so as long as there's some of that going on - and ideally a whole lot of issues to work through(!) - I'm good.

Recently, as well as the reduxing of my ongoing WIPs, I've written a couple of DADWC prompts that I really liked, and which reminded me of the commonalities a lot of my OCs have and the bits of myself that I repeatedly give them. F'rex, one of the things that I've used a lot with my DA characters is the outsider/underdog perspective.

It shows up in different ways - Meri is othered in the alienage by her family 'putting on airs' and outside the alienage by being elven; she's never good enough for anyone until she defines her identity her own way, while my mage!Hawkes are loners for safety purposes, and my Broscas and Cadashes (and some Tabrises) are all gleeful outlaws who didn't want to be part of the system anyway.

I don't think I've ever (successfully) written a character who comes from a position of untrammelled privilege and stability. I'm all about the hardscrabble... mainly because The Author Is Working Through Some Shit(tm) probably, but I also just think it provides more interesting potential for character backstory and development.

Again, it's also about where I feel comfortable, which may or may not say... a thing?

#100daysofwriting #writeblurble #short answer today #bc i have no spoons left #but it feels like a cop out

[hoochieblues]

100 Days of Writing: Day 55

Share a funny bit you wrote recently.

for @the-wip-project.

Ah, absolutely nothing like someone asking "what have you written recently that's funny?" to make you decide you've never been less entertaining in your life.... either that or I've just been writing a lot of angsty stuff recently.

But! While digging in the draft folder, I did find this from a future chapter of FoD (once I catch up with the POV switches and uploads), so p sure it counts?

I give you DAO fic with Zevran, tattoos, and mild heckling. <3

“Why not? Let’s do it.”

“Oh, honestly….” Wynne shook her head, looking up from her darning only long enough to roll her eyes. “You’d think you all bleed enough without voluntarily inflicting pain on yourselves. Well, I’m not healing anything that gets infected.”

Alistair looked momentarily worried. “Er, it’s not going to get infected, is it?”

“Not with the proper care, no,” Zevran said, reaching for his pack. “I have some salve somewhere…. Ah, yes.”

Merien watched him take out his tools: a leather roll filled with needles and little bottles of pigment, more colours than she’d thought possible. The men you saw on the docks back home usually had tattoos in blurry shades of blue or black, not that she’d seen many of them. Father’s opinions on sailors had been pretty firm.

“Soo-ooo,” Alistair began, head tilted as he eyed the array of pointy objects, “you just travel with all these things, because…?”

Zevran gave him a look of dry amusement. “You really want to know, my friend?”

“I’m just saying, it seems odd.”

Leliana smiled. “You don’t know much about the Crows, do you, Alistair?”

She glanced at Zevran, brows raised in enquiry, and he gave her a flowery smile, fingers spread in a gesture of ‘go ahead’ welcome as he continued to arrange his supplies on the ground.

Leliana inclined her head. “Their marks are a record of achievement, of a sort. Many Crows like to add to them after a, uh, a job well done, so to speak.”

“Oh. I see. So… the job of—”

“Killing you,” Zevran said amiably, not looking up from his kit. “Yes. Are we really going to keep bringing this up?”

Alistair sat back heavily on the tree stump. “No, no. Never mind. Forget I mentioned it. It’s just a little… well… you know. Isn’t it?”

“Nah.” Meri grinned as she rolled up the sleeve of her shirt. “It’s sort of poetic, don’t you think? Reversal of fortunes and all that?”

“Sure. If you say so.”

“Can you do a mabari?” she asked, turning to Zevran. “Or, no, wait… yes! A vhenadahl? I’d like that. Here.”

Her fingers spread over the top of her arm, up to her shoulder, arcing a pattern across her skin. He nodded, and patted the ground beside him. Her grin widened and, buoyed up with the impulse of what had seemed like a fantastic idea even before the brandy, she skirted the fire and knelt beside him.

“You’re sure?” he asked, uncorking one of the small bottles. “I would hate to be the reason anyone woke up with regrets.”

Leliana chuckled dryly. “Oh, I’m sure that’s never happened before.”

“Not if they woke up dead after,” Alistair put in, before frowning. “Merien, you’re not really going to…?”

“I’m sure. A vhenadahl, right here.” She slapped the top of her arm. “One that’ll never burn. One nobody can take away from me.”

The fire crackled, and the silence got a little heavier, but there were no more questions.

Zevran regarded her arm with a cool, critical look, his fingers dancing briefly over her skin to pick out a design with a smear of black pigment. His touch was light, like a warm breeze, and she could smell the perfume oil on his hair, and the rich, polished odour of leather, together with the astringent scent of the ink. Meri bit her lip and twisted, craning to look properly at what he’d drawn.

The spreading boughs of a stylised vhenadahl reached up toward her shoulder, the tree’s trunk carving a line down the outside of her bicep, to where its roots echoed the curve of the branches, sweeping up to meet the dip of them in almost a perfect circle.

“Maker… that’s perfect. I love it! Let’s do this.”

Alistair looked mildly alarmed. Meri arched a brow at him.

“What?”

He shrugged. “Nothing. You don’t think that’s kind of… big?”

“Why?” she teased. “Are you too chicken to get one this size?”

“No! I just… I was thinking of something small. Tasteful. Like a griffon, or—”

“Oh, I see. A tiny griffon,” she said, nodding slowly. “Right. Like a griffon chick, basically?”

“No, a—”

“A tiny griffon chick. So small. Vulnerable.”

“Go fall in the Void.”

#100daysofwriting #writeblurble #inveterate scribbler #da fanfic #tag: merien tabris #alistair theirin #zevran arainai #dao fic

[hoochieblues]

100 Days of Writing: Day 50

What fic/story made you?

for @the-wip-project

50? 50! ....50? That's wild. Shoutout to @barbex for so many great questions and all the continued support.

I'm interpreting this as 'stories I wrote', rather than read, so I think there are three here to waffle ceaselessly about. I'm not going to officially name/link two of them but I am putting everything under the cut because ~mature themes~ (cw: discussion of violence/abuse)

Also, it got long, and I beeped my own horn a bit. Cathartic writing about it, though? Beep.

I.

So, one would be the first novel I got published (~professionally~... it was a very small press; second run of the book was picked up by a bigger one, but I think my earnings from both runs capped out at a few grand inc advance, over a few years, that's how teeny tiny we're talking).

I think I've talked about it before in this challenge, but it was also the book that launched me into being a romance writer(??).... which is a lil odd, as it was a novel about two kids who fall in love after high school in a racist, homophobic, podunk country town; one's a nice, comfortably-off white boy about to go to college, the other's broke, mixed race/tribal enrolled, with an abusive and highly dysfunctional family.

Ultimately, he has a psych break, shoots his father and serves times for it, while his bf gives up his whole life to support him. They score a plea deal, and their deeply codependent/sunk-cost-fallacy love story continues during the incarceration and beyond, covering a bunch of stuff about institutionalization, 'coming home' as a violent offender, how hard it is to get out of the culture that you needed to be part of inside, and so on. I swear it has a happy ending; they get their own apartment, his mother moves on with her life, his brother gets married and our heroes get to slow dance at the wedding without anyone's family being overly shitty about it.

It was important to me because I was proud of the story, and it was the first time I got something full-length published, especially without my abusive mother controlling/sabotaging me.

It was also the first time I put much of my own background into anything I wrote (for the abusive/dysfunctional shit;* I was/am heavily indebted to friends and research for the race elements, which honestly I felt were important to the character(s) but sure, not my story to tell, so I'd handle that differently today. This was like fifteen(???) years ago and I privileged everywhere.).

Most of all, though - beyond anything - I got some of the best feedback I've ever received on that book. I won't quote directly, but a guy in his early 20s from rural MT (the location I set the book in) emailed me to say how much he resonated with it, and that reading it gave him the courage to come out to his family, who were surprisingly supportive. It gave him, he said, hope.

I was fucking floored. In the best way.

I often think about reworking the book (and its sequel; they were originally one ms but got cut in two for publication reasons) and rereleasing it somewhere, but I'm not sure.

*Disclosure: my dad was a violent psychopath with an extensive history of abuse, and once tried to run me over outside Family Court, which I continue to find hilariously ridiculous. I have never shot or attempted to kill him, though my brother did shoot him in the ass with an air rifle once. He had it coming.

II.

The second would be the first novel I self-published as a 'fuck you' to publishers wanting me to shoehorn conventional romance into it.

By this point, I was hardscrabble trying to make money writing in a way much more immediate than "send thing to publisher. wait in slush pile for six months. get told you're 'not commercial enough'. rinse and repeat, with occasional breaks for $25 antho contributions".

I did cover a lot of living costs doing stuff I didn't really like - lots of generic M/f smut and mommy porn with highly restrictive house style (blech), plus freelance - alongside another couple of novels where I started to get traction writing queer lit smut, but I was burning out and also struggling to put in the hours due to illness, exacerbated by how much I was being exploited to fuck / abused at home.

This book was my 'go fuck yourself' reaction: a comedic fantasy mystery in which a grad student finds herself haunted by a dead 1970s pop star, who won't shut up until she helps him solve his own murder. This involves tracking down his former bandmate/best friend, who's now in his sixties and only barely out of therapy from the whole episode. They have strong 'weird throuple' vibes and the story falls apart at the end, but I wrote some great descriptions of quaaludes and failing marriages, even if I say so myself, and it was the first time someone reached out to me to be a part of another project based on something I'd done.

That was how I met one of my longer term ed/collab friends (who subsequently got too fancy for me; she's now a Tor author and Hugo Award finalist, good for her, she deserves it), but I worked on some fabulous horror projects thanks to her that I enjoyed tremendously and would have helped me get out of the restrictive romance rut, if only any small horror publisher of the 2010s had stayed around for longer than about 18 months. Ack.

It was shortly after that that the romance publishers I was working with imploded (one went bankrupt, one I can't talk about still bc NDA but there was a clusterfuck involving embezzlement and a class action lawsuit) and my disability benefit rules were changed (again) meaning I had to pull down a lot of content or risk losing the money I relied on for my rent bc I was "earning too much and should go full time". Okay. Yeah, just spontaneously selling ten times the amount of books on demand is possible. Awesome. I hate the DWP.

III.

So - if you're still with me, please get a drink, hydration is important - thirdly and perhaps most significant in some ways, I'm going to say my Dragon Age fanfic series Feasting on Dreams.

I started writing FoD as a love letter to Origins not long after I started playing it (seriously, like, in late 2010, I think?) bc I was having a rough time and wanted to unwind.

I had recently come out of being (technically) unhoused, the disability people were putting me through hoops (again) and I was hating getting my first notes on work like 'Pls fix male character: men cannot be less than 6' tall or show too much vulnerability - that's not sexy! Also can fem MC be blonde so she's not too plain? Ty! :) ' (*screams in queer enby*)

So imagine how it felt to sit down and play something that was packed full of political intrigue and let me be a hero that came from nowhere, kick ass, romance at least one character clearly - imho - coded as a snarky sub *swoon* and save the world.

I met amazing people in the DA fandom, got feedback and validation on my work that reminded me of why I love writing, and no one could tell me that my protagonist couldn't be 5'5" with the self-esteem of a damp flannel, blotchy freckles, missing teeth, and a nose you could crack walnuts on. HAH.

Working on that series over the next couple of years took me through some rough periods, until everything fell the hell apart in life and I took a hiatus from fandom for a long time.

What's amazing, though, is that when I tried to come back a couple of years later, it was all still there. I had continued getting intermittent notes on the stories, people still read it, still said wonderful things... even if at that point it just gave me anxiety bc it was unfinished.

But I saw there was a sense of permanence to things I'd created and was proud of, and that was so helpful and meaningful.

My return didn't go well - life went boom again (ultimately in good ways; family steals a five figure inheritance from you, but you get away from an abuser... moitié-moitié, right?) - but, after another few years, I'm at a much more stable place, I'm taking joy in life again, and I'm... going to be okay, probably.

And I don't think there's anything that could symbolise that better than returning to the first fandom I was actually active in, to pick up the first fanfic I wrote and breathe new life into it, and finish it after all this time.

Especially because, in FoD, I let myself have all the fantasy lit tropes I love - lush descriptions of food, places, moments of intimacy on the road, visceral battle scenes - so it's like coming back to a whole set of sensory experiences to revisit, and to carry further, with a whole lot more that I've learned.

And I think that the growth I can put into that story now also says a lot about me, and ways I can grow (and heal) too. Something something truly "transformative". Heh.

#100daysofwriting #writeblurble #long post #personal

[hoochieblues]

100 Days of Writing: Day 68

Tell us about hacks and tricks that help you with your writing.

for @the-wip-project

I'm trying to be a bit more open-minded about things like writing rituals (pre-writing routines especially), hacks and things, including prompts - wc have always been my kryptonite - asks and stuff that encourage me to think outside the box.

The biggest ones, though, would be things like

write scenes/snippets out of order, however it works, no pressure

when stuck, change the POV/freewrite from a different POV with no expectation

something wrong? look for the problem 10 lines - 2 chapters back

white noise or specific playlists and more general attempts to think about the comfort of my environment, instead of castigating myself for not being able to concentrate in crappy circumstances

These are probably more basic principles than hacks or tricks, but it's part of an ongoing process of restructuring how I write and what I expect from myself and - so far - it's working pretty well.

#100daysofwriting #writeblurble

[hoochieblues]

100 Days of Writing: Day 25

What have you learned recently, about yourself, about your writing, about your story?

for @the-wip-project  

Woo! 25 days in! This challenge lasted longer than my resolution to build up to a 3 minute plank! Thanks to @barbex for all the hard work and motivation. <3

Frivolous answer and personal ramblings beneath the cut. 

Proper answer: I think I’m embracing that discovery writing is more integral to me emotionally than I thought - I’d always assumed it was about laziness or lack of commitment but it’s just how my brain works. I’m also accepting a lot of things about self-compassion and (not) comparing myself to anyone else/struggling with impostery feelings. It’s just so nice to come off a hiatus and fall into a community. Makes me think I can actually meet some of the standards I shoot for. 

cw: long ass personal post. abuse/weirdness mentions? tl;dr: I love you all and want to thank the Academy... *ugly cry*

To get a lil heavy for a minute, I have always had issues with imposter feelings and self-sabotage. I do this all the gd time. Blame it on a combination of Gifted Kid(TM) Syndrome and millennial burnout, or coming out of 30+ years abusive family shenanigans and straight into 3 years of questionable therapy, or a column A + column B situation, but I am never good enough for me. Ever. 

When I sold work, I was pissed it wasn’t selling well enough, fast enough, or getting enough reviews. Whenever I got rejections, I had The Big Sad and - perhaps childishly - stopped doing anything for a month. Any success would always be met with ‘yeah, but....’

My ‘process’ wasn’t acceptable. I had to be a machine. As Gurney Halleck taught us, “Mood’s a thing for cattle and loveplay.”

About eight years ago, when I was actually on the verge of making a living writing, albeit not in my chosen genre (I wrote so. much. cishet. porn. To my lovelies who are all about that, I adore and respect you, and I get it. I even like the occasional buff Manly McManpants myself if they’re adorkable enough, but - possibly TMI - 90% of the time I’m a big bi queer who prefers their dick of the gnc or genderfuck variety, preferably with a cute collar), I was doing my hackfraud thing and churning out a book a month... and seeing approximately 12% of the proceeds. 

It sucked. What sucked worse was then a combination of disability rules changing and me being told I had to stop earning or lose the money I needed to bridge the gap between being able to support myself and being in penury, and two separate publishers I worked with going under in a blazing shit-in-a-dumpster-fire NDA-restricted situation involving (respectively) embezzlement and administration. 

It destroyed everything and hit very hard, especially as anything I’d ever wanted to do that wasn’t Kindle-based romance/smut sank without trace or got declined as “not commercial enough”. 

I lost a lot of confidence, and punished myself a lot for - honestly - things that were beyond my control, and for bad decisions I’d made that I didn’t make with clear vision. I was supporting someone I thought needed my help, who I later found out was stealing from me as well as being an abusive asshat, and I just felt like I wasn’t capable of making a good choice about anything, from life stuff to how to navigate the inciting incident of a story. 

About 14 months ago, partway through all my acceptance and therapy stuff, and with my disability appeal safely in my pocket, I decided to just do what the fuck I want. I’d write the things I wanted to write, with no pressure. 

So I went back to it after that long, gory time away... and it went okay. I got a couple of pieces in mags, got paid, got a thing on a podcast... didn’t celebrate any success because ‘yeah, but...’ - and didn’t see how entitled and shitty I was being. It was an achievement, and it was something to be proud of... but I wasn’t looking at myself that way. I was only looking at the impossible expectations I had for myself. You can’t start running on a half-healed broken leg, no matter how many track meets you once did. 

I tried to set myself challenges. I tried to plan ahead... and got repeatedly disheartened because I wasn’t meeting self-imposed deadlines. I was ‘failing’ again, even though I was trying to go back to a level of output that had been unsustainable the first time around. 

So I tried something different. At the start of this year, I joined an international short story challenge thingy. You get very specific prompts and short word limits (quelle horreur! My two traditional kryptonites!) and the top 5 writers from each group go through to the next round. The top prize was $6k and - because I am the way that I am - my immediate thought was ‘shit, that’s enough for the gf’s dental surgery!’ so I jumped in, even though I have a personal rule about fee-paying contests. I figured it would be about challenging myself. And it was. 

There were four rounds in total, spread out from January to June, with an original field of over six thousand writers. I made it through the first round and was like ‘yeah, but....’ and ‘well, at least I didn’t wash out at the first fence, or I’d have had to commit harakiri’. I made it through the second round too, and got some nice feedback. And again I was all ‘yeah, but.... only the top 25% of any slush pile is readable’ (note: I sound horribly arrogant, I know, but if you’ve ever done reading for agents or publishers, this is usually true. The other 75% is frequently illegible and/or impossible, and may include any irl examples such as: squashed Coke cans, snuff poems, dick pics, lovingly described scenes of things that would get you banned from Fetlife, and assorted paranoid ramblings/threats. I once rejected a guy’s submission on grounds of it not being the right genre for the sub call and ended up with 3 weeks of the mf sending me links to extreme breathplay videos/stories/pics with mildly threatening captions. People are fun.)

Anyway, long story short: I made it through to the penultimate round of the competition, equivalent to being long-listed prior to the grand final. 

I got my feedback on my last story this week, the first engagement with the competition I’d had since starting this 100 Days challenge, and being back on tumblr/allowing myself to indulge in fandom and other hobbies. And you know what? 

I didn’t get through to the final. No prize money for me. No bragging rights. The judges said some really complimentary stuff, but ultimately I think felt my story leaned too far outside the genre boundary of the prompt (I like to blend genres, so I got smart and went fantasy-horror instead of straight horror). A year ago, I would be kicking myself and calling myself names right now. I’d have convinced myself that the compliments in the feedback were just platitudes, and I’d be royally pissed at my own “stupidity.”

...But I’m not. 

I’m looking at it, and at the fact I made it to the top 250 or whatever out of the original field, and I’m happy. I’m happy I went with what I wanted to write, I still love the story I wrote, and I’m working it up from the 1200 prompt fill to a full novella, because it deserves it and so do I. 

Not to sound melodramatic, but I think I truly credit @barbex and this challenge with a lot of that. Because, for the first time probably in my life, y’all are giving me a place to allow myself to be happy with doing things my own way, with giving myself the space and compassion to breathe, to fall back in love with the thing that’s always been my greatest passion, and to build up the confidence that the past decade or so of my life had been systematically beating down with a baseball bat. 

I’m going to shut up now, as this is so very long and very personal, but if you made it this far, I owe you cookies and/or dim sum. 

Thank you. I mean that.  

#100daysofwriting #writeblurble #personal #confessional blogging is confessional #long post

[hoochieblues]

100 Days of Writing: Day 49

How do you get yourself in the mood to write? Do you have a ritual?

for @the-wip-project

I live in hope of one day being someone who has a nice little writing nook, maybe with a good PC set up and a pretty mechanical keyboard, my reference bookcase close by and a nice window to the side of my desk where rain pitter patters as my scented candles burn.

In reality... that is unlikely. I write whenever, wherever, and in whatever capacity I can. I've lived through a big handful of years where I couldn't write at all - 0/10, do not recommend - and I'm still not back to capacity, but I'm getting a lot better.

It's not what I want and I still don't have the luxury of doing things really as I'd like, especially not in terms of pleasant habits or rituals, but... given that conditions under which I write/have written include:

while on the phone/on hold/in live chat for medical and/or work-related purposes

on public transport/in waiting rooms

at 1-3am, 5-7am - the times between waking and blacking out - or 'the time i get to myself'

with a chicken on my head (she was being bullied; I was her emotional support human)*

spare minutes between panic attacks/illness/blackouts

literally any chunk of time not spent looking after someone else (used to be a lot less of this than you'd think)

...I think I'm doing okay.

personal crap under cut; cw: abuse mention

Realistically, I'm no longer in the horrifically abusive situation I was three years ago, where I was simultaneously being "given" time to write (bc I earned money; I still had to have the genres I was writing mocked and my actual work belittled; also, boundaries? I don't know her...) but also emotionally/verbally/psychologically and sometimes physically abused for stupid shit like not having Assface's coffee ready quickly enough, and so on. It's amazing what you can normalise. I'm still identifying things I thought that were 'normal' that definitely weren't.

I'm recovering from a fuckoff great big breakdown in my mental health and the general condition of my chronic illness, and I'm trying to improve a lot about myself and my life that is less than stellar. It's a process, and a wobbly one.

So I do try to make time for 'me' things. And it's okay that, right now, my writing ritual extends to a vat of coffee and a playlist and/or rainymood loop... but it has a lot of room to improve.

The thing is, it can. And who knows? Maybe I'll get those scented candles next.

*Also - before anyone asks.....

Dottie was different to the other chickens. She hatched by a duck. The main flock held this against her, apparently. She showed up in my yard one evening and demanded in, so.... yeah. Turned out to be highly affectionate and lived on my head/shoulder for a few days until she found a new home. (I foster/rehab traumatised dogs, sooo... not the best environment for a house chicken. She's much happier now.)

#100daysofwriting #writeblurble #personal #in my defense #i do live in a converted shed on a farm #the house chicken is only like the third weirdest thing that's shown up so far

[hoochieblues]

100 Days of Writing: Day 72

Do you have filler scenes in your WIPs? How do you fill them?

for @the-wip-project

I completely agree with the addended version of the quote: scenes should move the plot or character forward. There are too many genres of media (slice of life, kitchen sink drama, for two) that inherently treat character as equally or more important vs. plot for me to think that's a minority opinion... or maybe we're just a really productive minority?

I also agree that 'character' scenes are less filler than natural rest points in the story, opportunities to build world, cast dynamics etc., and without all of that a can easily lack depth. To use a comparison I always bring up around the holidays: Die Hard never tries to make its hero invincible. You suffer with John, experience his doubt and fear... and that makes it way more compelling than, say, Skyscraper. And if action movies - which depend so heavily on plot and explosions - can make time for character beats, everyone can.

I have a ton of character and world building 'filler' in my WIPs. In Justice in Surrender, everything's pretty much built around the Handers romance, though there is a lot of character based stuff there that allows the leads to develop separately from each other. (aka: things we learn from Hawke's smut-with-feelings interludes in brothels.... or something.)

In Feasting on Dreams, because it's so unduly self-indulgent wide-ranging, a lot of those rest beats are about building the world (literally, given I filled in the rather bare Origins map of Ferelden with a bunch of stuff from other DA media) or character/bonding scenes. Also, as this series is basically 'The Fifth Blight: A Roadtrip Adventure' there's a fair amount of character and near-slice of life stuff in camp, including interludes where festivals are celebrated, tattoos get given, and I get to indulge in that fantasy genre thing of describing food in ways that provide halcyon little memories later (one of my fave tropes from classic sff, sue me).

One of my fave bits of that so far, though, has been Meri's first glimpse of the world outside the alienage, and the wider confines of Denerim. Is it filler to see the spread of castles and villages that bleed down to the bannorn and the flatlands? Yes, probably. Does it move her characterisation forward? I think so.

As the first fingers of sunlight climbed over the treetops, they were already on the road. The horses were feeling fresher, which presented Meri with a new challenge: Iron Neck disliked following Duncan’s horse and kept trying to show his displeasure by nipping at the gelding’s broad piebald rump. She bundled the reins awkwardly, her hands cold and numb with the morning chill, and tried to toe her mount to the side without risking being in the way of traffic. There were fewer carts and trade wagons than there had been near the city and, as the dawn swelled out into a fan of pink and gold, Duncan reined his horse back, allowing Meri to ride level to his left.

The Imperial Highway curved south from Foskyle and, a mile or two ahead of the village, she saw for the first time the sweep of farmland falling away to the southwest of the hill country. Patchworks of green and brown, hedgerows frothing with spring growth, and the calls of goats and sheep drifting on the air… it was all so wide, so big, so… pretty. No city-bred drovers, no young lambs caged for market. No dung trodden into the cobbles. Just the smells of grass and jack-by-the-hedge, mud and wild thyme, and horsehair and leather polish. The air was sweet and the breeze cold and, for a moment, she thought it was the sharpness of the chill stinging her cheeks that had her eyes watering.

She looked to the south, to the road curving away ahead of them, vast and unending, winding into a world of green fields and open sky—so open, unmarked by buildings or wash lines, or any of the familiar transections of home—and it was beautiful and terrifying in equal measure. The tears gathered and trembled on her eyelids, blurring the wide, dawn-touched world, and she tried to raise a hand surreptitiously to her face, scrubbing them away before Duncan noticed.

#100daysofwriting #writeblurble

[hoochieblues]

100 Days of Writing: Day 43

How often to you switch WIPs and do you think that’s a good thing to do?

for @the-wip-project

This is 100% one of those 'do as I say not as I do' things for me. I know I'm more productive when I focus on a single project beginning to end. That's how I used to function. It's easier to hold all the relevant bits of information and ideas in my head, but I also live with worsening chronic illness that impacts my concentration and memory (plus depression/anxiety, wc do the same, and... are either also mimicking ADHD symptoms, or that's an undiagnosed issue that's flared up, idk. Would welcome advice/experience, honestly; it's been a weird couple of years.).

So, I inevitably have a bunch of WIPs at once and I jump around all over the place, dependent on where my brain is at on any given day. I try to have vague schedules, and to help myself focus with different desktop set ups, playlists, inspo boards etc, but it doesn't always work. And I try to accept that, given that I'm trying hard to accept my limitations and show more self-compassion.

On the one hand, it's a very freeing way to work creatively. It's motivated by ideas and inspirations, so I don't write that much filler. On the other, it's erratic af, so I am striving for a more organised workflow. Two or three concurrent WIPs would be fine, leaving room to switch out throughout the week when something's stuck or needs time to breathe, instead of the - checks folder, cries - number I currently have, across fic and original projects.

As always, it's a process.

#100daysofwriting #writeblurble

[hoochieblues]

100 Days of Writing: Day 66

What's the thing that you find super annoying about writing?

for @the-wip-project

We probably all have that frustration in common with visual artists where we see what we want in our heads but don't quite replicate it on the page. There's a word for it, I think? The phrase I usually use is ah, damn it. The same thing applies with not being able to find the exact word you want, or not being able to use it bc a) it doesn't exist in your language or b) you used it halfway up the page already, you can't change that usage, and this one would be an echo too many. I hate that.

Otherwise, as with everything for me, it's the eternal struggle to block time without interruptions, or to switch headspaces seamlessly. When I can get into my flow, writing is my happy place. When I'm getting distracted or I can't focus, or someone's bugging me, I would happily maim and dismember.

I suppose that's an adjunct of putting too much pressure on oneself - one of the key areas I've been trying to focus on thinking about over this challenge - and I'm still not sure whether it's more to do with frustration over Things That Get In My Way (illness, time constraints, health problems and other people/commitments/whatever) or frustration over Not Doing Everything Simultaneously, which I'm still trying to train my brain to accept as impossible.

Either way, as close as it veers to boomer humour, I think there should probably be a writer's version of the serenity prayer. It would involve a line about the wisdom to use an online forensics atlas and some writing forums to work out how to safely dispose of the bodies of those you had to kill bc they cut into your writing time.....

The only thing I'd say gets on my nerves regularly is my issues with plotting and being stuck in the mindset of not having enough good ideas to dig myself out of plotholes. Again, it's less to do with annoyance about writing and more about annoyance with myself... which probably means it's time to go have an ice cream and be kind to myself...? Huh, you really do learn something new every day.

#100daysofwriting #writeblurble

[hoochieblues]

100 Days of Writing: Day 36

The relationships you write, what kind of power-dynamics do they tend to have?

for @the-wip-project  

Good question! I’m going to say they vary from squishy-soft and angsty codependency to married-my-best-friend, probably because of my hackfraud years background in writing wilfully trashy commercial romance, which often involved being asked to write very specific dynamics that really didn’t reflect my personal preferences. There’s also a bunch of stuff here that relates to identity and self-confidence, and how I see or utilise those aspects of my characters.

...I am also taking ‘power dynamics’ dangerously literally in some places. 

Bitching, complaining, mature themes and personal under the cut

Note: I know lots of people love M/f tropes/dynamics that I don’t, and that’s utterly valid. Especially where writers write for their own joy and passion, and the things that are unquestionably ours. Whatever you’re into, from sensual cishet romance featuring commanding and chivalric buff dudes to villainous ‘dead dove - don’t eat’ cnc, you do you and don’t let anyone shame you for it, ever. Especially me. 

When I (probably too frequently) bitch about the normalisation of M/f dynamics, I tend to be referring to my commercial experiences, and pressure to make everything very stereotypically cishetnorm; ‘men shouldn’t express emotions/be under 6′4″/be vulnerable sexually or emotionally’ and so on, and heaven forefend you tried to write a woman who wasn’t basically a lifestyle submissive presented as vanilla. 

You could go the other way, and have an emotionally and/or physically abusive heroine who bullied her male LI mercilessly and got called a ‘badass’ or ‘passionate’... but if the male character reacted badly, he was a weenie. 

That’s not my feminism, yo. It’s sexist and inauthentic. 

I’m interested in relationship dynamics between two people, not two roles of masc/fem dynamics that have agreed upon boundaries of responsibility. 

I was typing this while on hold to my doctor’s office, and got through a whole screed about the normalisation of sexist and gender essentialist power dynamics in mass media via things like 50SoG/almost every Hollywood movie ever, and how gd sick I am of editing/ghostwriting questionable romance novels where the male characters are large to the point of disability and the women are so physically powerless that they use emotional abuse/threats to get their way, before I realised I probably don’t need to say any of it. 

I will say that my fave moments from last year’s intake included these two gems:

1) Man tries to undress unconscious woman, gets mad bc his “massive” fingers can’t handle knots, so he “sexily” breaks her shoelaces and rips her shoe off, destroying it in the process. (Mmm, impulse control/anger issues and destruction of property without consent. Hot. If you do vibe with the principle, I get it, but it’s not for me.)

2) Woman “forces” her husband to stop being emotionally distant to her by following him into his study after he walks away from an argument and starts smashing all of his stuff while he backs away, aghast. This is narratively framed as her “passionate” nature which he should no longer deny. There were no consequences for her literal fucking abuse. Not a one. All she got was orgasms. It was - imho - sick and horrifying.

Anyway, I have a real thing about that. I love flawed characters - I think “unhealthy” relationships can be great to mine in fiction, because it’s a safe space that has no consequences - but I do believe there’s at least some imperative for the narrative to acknowledge when something is unhealthy. 

So that’s a thing I try to do. 

I wrote a story once where two people fall in love fresh out of high school. It’s the very late 90s/early 00s, they’re closeted and in a rural, homophobic town. One boy’s got a shitty manual job and a highly abusive family. The other’s from a nice background, planning to go premed, be a doctor, everyone’s very proud. When his bf ends up going to jail, he throws over his future - more than a decade of it - to stay with him, and the story is ultimately a happy ending in that they do love each other, the relationship is the best thing in both their lives... but it’s not an entirely healthy one. It’s supportive and genuine, but also codependent af and riven with complicated issues... and it’s shown to come at a cost, with a lot of doubt and soul-searching. I still love that story, and those characters, as fucked up as they were, because their message was ultimately: this is our choice, and we made it ourselves.

I love relationship dynamics in stories that further the reader’s own relationship with the character, that let us see them in new lights, new kinds of vulnerability and states of undress (hurr... I meant psychologically, but that too) that wouldn’t be achievable without putting a romance on the page. Otherwise - imho - that romance is filler, unless you’re writing specifically for the smut, in which case I feel emotional vulnerability is even more important. (contrary to what I used to get told about writing M/f......)

I realise I’m only talking about romantic power dynamics here, rather than relationships to authority, familial dynamics etc., but my posts get long enough. You all have lives. Won’t someone think of the eyestrain??

So, rambling slowly back to the point and looking at my major current (fic) WIPs, I’ve got a variety of dynamics going on, but specifically:

The Tobias Hawke/Anders dynamic is pure codependency and melodrama... bc Tobias is kind of a mess, in the most relatable way. It’s two people with a fuckton of unresolved trauma, finding strength and fulfilment in their shared love and desire, their  shared goals and dreams, and a stability and familiarity neither of them have ever had elsewhere. Anders is (I hc) undone by people who let him be soft, give him a space to trust and breathe, and who listen to him; Tobias melts into a puddle of mush the moment he actually feels someone wants him, instead of what he can do for them, and he’s a completely hopeless romantic. Together, their future holds a lot of very emotional sex, and raining fiery destruction on Kirkwall, probably while kissing about it. 

No one’s ‘in control’ per se - there’s a lot of taking turns caretaking, a lot of wonky communication and second-guessing, but from places of uncertainty and the desire to protect. Though, it has to be said, Tobias is totally the type to be led around by the dick and have zero control over himself; it’s, uh, part of his arc? 

I love writing the Merien Tabris/Alistair romance, because it’s one that comes out of closeness born from support, respect, and both parties learning to see each other in new lights. To Alistair, Meri was a hopeless recruit whose tenacity surprised him, but what he falls for is her kindness (come on... it’s Alistair “my love language is words of affirmation” Theirin). To Meri, he’s the person that challenges her views of humans, her ideals and expectations of human society and nobility, among other things. She falls for him when she sees who he is, not what he’s been raised to be, and because of his loyalty and idealism. 

In terms of power dynamics, ofc he nudges her to lead and it falls very much into that lovely “badass woman supported by incredibly enthusiastic LI” trope, but so many scenes between them involve them soliciting each other’s opinions, talking out trauma and spitballing plans and oh my gods where do i get one. They’re experiencing so much for the first time - so many horriblethings, but also this sweet, tentative, adorkable romance - and doing it together, and that equality and supportive yet awkward stumbling is the kind of tooth-rotting fluff I love to include in between dark and grimy battlefield scenes and jokes about pickled eggs. 

So, in short, what I love above all else is a goofily sweet kind of dynamic that is supportive, equal, and pure... right up until it’s clear the characters have wrapped themselves up in each other so tightly that someone taking a trip to the bathroom is going to be like and amputation. 

The codependency and imperative to learn self-reliance adds spice!

i don’t think I’m even half-kidding at this point. 

#100daysofwriting #writeblurble #personal #long post

[hoochieblues]

100 Days of Writing: Day 35

How do you describe sounds?

for @the-wip-project 

Much as perfume commercials get weird because it’s hard to translate scent into visuals, I feel like I get hinky with sound. Textures, physical effects, sometimes straight up personification are all things I do... maybe with questionable success? idk, I like to get a little lyrical, what can I say... 

I’m working on the Vast Rewrite Project atm, so a brief excerpt from Meri’s unfortunate ogre incident atop Ishal below the cut: 

The four of us scudded to a halt in the doorway, staring as the creature turned to face us, bloody chunks of flesh dropping from its jaws. The lips of its short, broad muzzle peeled back, revealing gore-soaked fangs at least half as long as my arm, and—still hunched protectively over its meal—it roared. At least, I saw its mouth open and the tendons in its massive neck flex. After that, the stones seemed to shake, my bones knocked together, and anything still in my bladder wasn’t any longer. The chamber was about forty some feet across, but the ogre shrank it to the size of a drum, leaving us to knock about like dried peas on its skin, the sound of that guttural bellow scraping right over every nerve, harsh with violent, deafening rage.

My ears rang, and the little breath I had left in me caught, high and thin in my throat. We didn’t stand a bloody chance. 

The future Warden-Commander of Ferelden, pissing herself in the present of darkspawn since 9:30 Dragon. Heroes are truly not born, but made.

#100daysofwriting #writeblurble #inveterate scribbler #tag: merien tabris