Greetings,
When things become a bit hectic in your life, you look for a way to make changes. Recently, my life has given many reasons to focus on a new path. That's annoyingly vague, but this is the first post. I've found that it's best to be brief when stating the reason why any of this is here.
In short: This is my professional writing blog. Here, I will provide excerpts and short stories along with bits of information I pick up along the way. There will probably be posts about my experiences and reviews, because I am naturally a catty person.
You like that word? Catty. It's a nice way of saying 'bitchy, but funny'. It's a manner of social skill that I aspire to. In such, expect references to Golden Girls and Designing Women. My dream is to be an author, the skill of being a writer, the wit of a comic, with the presence of a lovable Diva. When people simply call you 'that bitch', it's generally a good sign that you need to work at.
This blog post is dedicated to Elaine Stritch and James Garner. Old Hollywood and all class. Who needs gold when you got brassy old broads and silver-tongued devils?
Now, comes the boring part. After the jump, my mini-biography. Click it, don't, I promise that you won't hurt my feelings. It's hardly important when the point of your being here is to read my stories. Personally, one of the things I detest are biographies. My real life is boring enough, why should I care to read about a complete stranger's?
My career path has never been certain. Try imagining being over 400lbs with no adult job history and you'll get the idea of what my life has been like for the past 14 years. When you do get a call for an interview, there's always a convenient excuse of why they can't hire you 'at this time'. It's all very discouraging and I became more introverted with each rejection.
In all this time, as an outlet, I've been writing. Most of my works were fanfiction, a not-for-profit story based upon an existing creation. These were created to continue my enjoyment of the movies, television shows, and books I had enjoyed with the hope that others might like my work as well. This helped me to refine my skills, while regaining my lost self-confidence.
I had started out with original fiction in 1996. A house fire in 2000 took my entire catalog of work. After that, it felt easiest to indulge my fantasies with fanfic. Then, three years ago, several big losses and a brush with MRSA took the joy out of life. The infection made even basic exercise like walking impossible thanks to the sores on my feet and legs, making my weight balloon to over 550lbs.
I decided it was time to make a switch, or just die. Turns out, dying is a lot harder than one thinks when you're not motivated.
The first move I made was getting rid of the MRSA. Next was starting a writing journal for my original works. Once I was healed and satisfied with the idea of what my writing journal would pertain, the next step was making the change over to original works. That's a lot harder than one might think. Creating my exercise regimen and starting a healthier diet was far easier.
Over 200lbs and 2 years later, I am stretching out what should be a brief post. Who cares, my ego is bruised and I can fit in 2X clothes, there needs to be a little indulgence here. At six-two, 350lbs, I am in a better place now physically. Emotionally, I've recently been dealt a bad hand, hence the new blog.
For 10 years, my entire creative effort had been focused on the works of others. Coming up with my own original ideas was damn difficult. I only had the ideas for 3 novels that were originally to be fanfic, but were never started for the level of details was insane for fanfic. When you start to rewrite the canon of an established piece of work to suit your 100k long AU, it's best to just set it aside and rework it into something original. To fix this, I joined a couple writing prompt communities for inspiration.I got a couple shorts out of it, but they really didn't help much.
What ended up inspiring me was reading other people's works and getting upset with what they did wrong. Believe me, knowing you can do it better and then acting it out in your head is great motivation. It started me wondering how someone would get into these situations and eventually, I had an entire plot without realizing it. Don't get me wrong, these are not rewrites of the plots of others (mostly, as there is hardly anything original left to write), but an entirely new plot based upon a poorly done scene/kink.
Oh, yeah, a lot of what inspires me are seeing my kinks poorly done. You never know how kinky you can get until you're angrily listing everything that they did wrong. Bondage is not about sex, it's about control. That sex is involved is only because this is perhaps the easiest form of expression of our desires. Violence and control are reoccurring themes in our lives, it motivates many forms of creation and drives many of our acts. This understanding is key to a lot of my writing.
Once I had the ideas and the motivation to write, it was only getting my works out there that remained. Offering up my works to the public has always been a challenge. I thought the best way to do this, since I lack the connections and the resources (IE: Money) to pay for notoriety, was to offer my works up for free on a number of different popular sites. This way, I could not only get readers, I could still get the wonderful side of writing fanfiction, the all-mighty review. When you've had a taste of popularity, it becomes an addiction.
You can expect this to take a while. There can't always be a takeoff, mega hit, especially if you're not writing in a popular genre. Most of my works are gay/slash based. My first few shorts were well received for their content. It took a month before I had the idea for my first novel series.
A first-person detective novel where the main character works for the detective as his leg-man, investigating a new case each book. Sub-plots revolved around proving the death of his first client was actually murder. He's haunted in his dreams by ghosts of victims. The overall arcing plot would be the hunt for a serial killer that had made the main character's fiance his third victim.
I finished the first novel over 5 month period that saw me revise the plot, the characters, the style, the length, even the POV style of writing. At the end of the first novel, I was ready to quit. Things were so bad, I hated the idea of even writing anymore. Needing a break, I wrote my first short story, almost a novella.
A robot wakes up to the fact that his routine life is actually a drugged prison sentence.
I wrote this over a three month period. It took me far too long, but in that time: we moved, I suffered a gallbladder infection that nearly killed me and requiring emergency surgery, my family declared war on each other, my nephew left, and I considered what it would take to leave everything behind and live on the streets just to get away from it. Things settled down, though, and I finished the short story.
No one noticed. The only copies I sold were to my beloved friends. Apparently, I made it too difficult to get into at the beginning, and no one can read my mind to know what is going on. So, it's a bomb that I leave up for sale as a reminder to myself what I am. I am a writer. I will always be a writer. To assume the mantle of Author is to put on false airs and prove you know nothing of being a writer. This settled, I had time to think more thoroughly about what I would do next. My next project came to me two months later. I would post a series of novels for free to gain followers over a year's time.
A young man who lives in the world where Earth's first alien superhero is a cult figure that's power is mostly left unchecked thanks to his legitimatized status; he's a member of the local police force.
Even with my terrible summary, by the third chapter I was getting twenty hits on the day of posting. There were several of my sacred reviews as well. By the fifth week, I was getting 40 hits on the day of posting, but no more reviews. It was a terrible blow to my ego. I had started to think I might be working and then this. By the 10th week, I simply asked if anyone was reading or if I was getting hits from search engines. It had happened to the blog I created for my first novel series. All the hits were from Russian search engines. I got 7 reviews telling me they were reading, but leaving reviews left them tongued tied.
Confounded, I continued on for another 3 weeks or so. No more reviews. When you are fanfic writer, reviews are the only payment you can receive. I was doing all this work on an original novel series, people were reading, but I wasn't receiving any form of compensation. I asked other people in my life about it, and you can tell who has never had to work for a damn thing in their life when they tell you "shouldn't the fact people are reading be reward enough?"
No, hunty, no, it's not. Not by a longshot!
With that revelation, I decided to hell with it and moved on. I switched back to my writing journal and started work on new projects. A month later, my main reviewer came to me and asked if I was abandoning the work. She loved my writing and wanted me to continue it if I would. Swayed, I started it up again as I had nothing started by then. For another two months, I posted almost regularly, leaving only one or two weeks with nothing due to my brother moving in with us.
Again, plenty of hits. There were two new reviews, and a couple of those damn lazy-ass kudos. I hate kudos, they take away from the need to leave a review and I hate the person who created them. "Kudos to you, Lisa, kudos!" They meant as much on the Simpsons as they mean now. Jack shit! To get my name out there, I even started a couple new stories and some fanfic on the same writing account. I used a Tumblr account and a twitter account. All of it, every damn thing, meant nothing. I would get hits, but no reviews.
I'm doing all this work, killing myself to stick to a schedule, producing a set-minimum of words and quality. Reviews are the only reward you get and I wasn't getting paid. If I want to write for myself, I can act out my fantasies in my mind. This is my chosen profession. I have no other options as no one is willing to hire someone with a job history, forget someone who hasn't worked at a legitimate profession since Burger King at the age of 17.
Driven by self-doubt over whether my work really was any good, and the need to punish the readers who favorited my work by never left a damn review, I stopped posting publicly. I took my novels to my writing journal and posted them so only my friends could read them. The fanfiction on my professional writing account was deleted forever.
I continued writing the story for my first reviewer and for another who came in just under the wire as I was shutting shit down. This series would now be edited and posted for sale. I left the original works out there for people to read and let them know what could have been. If they wanted to read the finished, edited product, they had to wait for it to come out and pay for it then. That way, they don't have to leave feedback if they don't want to, and I still get incentivized to continue working. Win-win, as it were.
This led me to a boom in creativity. There were 10 new projects I started in a couple months, 40 new ideas overall. It was a great time to be alive. Then my computer died. I had backed my files and transferred everything over to my parent's computer. I had hoped to keep my schedule then and get a computer at the soonest convenience.
My brother's alcoholism, his son, and his friend being here put a dampener on this, and eventually, killed my will to write. Even getting a new computer didn't fix the problems. Eventually, I decided it was time to rewrite the series, post it for sale, and get the hell out. The situation wasn't as easy as I thought, and it came to a violent head a couple days ago. While I spent Friday night in a motel room, it made me think on the fact that I had been considering closing down my writing journal for a while. In fact, just hours before the fight, I had posted that I might be doing just that, and starting a blogger account because my friend was proving a success with her own.
This will never rival her future and financial advice blog as they are two different creatures. But, she has inspired me to pursue this avenue again. If something comes of this, fantastic. I will have at least give it a chance.
In the mean time, I am going to switch my focus from my novels to my novellas and short stories. May I be successful this time.
This was just supposed to be a short bit about how I have experience in writing and that I'm going to provide quality works in the hopes of gaining attention. At least you now have evidence of my writing skill if you read nothing else, and this was only a stream of conscious exercise.
Still interested? Stick around. Hit me up.
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