Week One at The Undisclosed Location is almost over. I’ve learned to adjust quickly, though this crazy working thing . . . yeah, it pays the bills, but it ain’t a working model for giving a person what they need out of life. Ah, this isn’t permanent; in time, I’ll evolve into something else.
Despite a rough start at the beginning of the week, I feel better now. The Muse is back, and I was writing, writing, writing the last few days. 1,400 or so words Wednesday, and maybe another 1,400 yesterday. Last night, while hanging at Panara, I finished Chapter 7, and it finished on a very dark note. I don’t know how you like your erotica, but it defiantly went sideways by the time the climax arrived. (Ha, ha: he said climax when talking about erotica. Yeah, I know. Funny like a clown.)
I know I can show this story to someone, but to be honest, this sucker is strange. I won’t say I’ve never written anything like this before, ’cause back when I was doing fetish fiction I went in every sort of direction. The funny thing is, when I was doing fetish fiction, the emphasis was on “fetish” and not so much on “sex”. It was all about latex and leather and turning people into inanimate objects and the like–but the sex was really more implied than written out in any detail.
With Couples Dance, the sex is there; it’s in your face–and some of you like it that way. But it’s also a story that, to me, is a little troubling. The two main characters are going through some screwed up changes, and you can see it affecting them in ways that some would say were startling, and others would say were sick.
The hell with it. I’ll finish it and shop it. Because the truth is, I like the story, strangeness and all.
There was a time when I might not go with a story the way I’m going with this. When I began writing, maybe 25 years ago, I was into horror and science fiction. My horror sucked, and my science fiction was pretty passable. Once I got on the Internet, however, I started doing erotic fantasy, and that helped me develop, believe it or not.
I was able to develop because I could compare what I was writing to the styling of others, and make improvements in my own writing. Yes, a lot of that stuff was pure crap, but you could see what people were trying to write, and seeing their mistakes meant not making the same ones.
There were a couple of stories that I wrote that . . . well, they were so out there they were actually rejected by the owners of the websites. I actually had one story where the owner of the site pretty much told me, “I like your stories, but this one was sick”. Yeah, that happens. It was because of that one rejection that I started to play it safe. I stayed away from things that I thought might offend someone’s sensibilities.
I mean, when you’re doing stories about women being turned into blow up dolls so their husbands can use them only for sex, you gotta be careful not to tread on anyone’s delicate sensibilities.
Couples Dance is a return; I’m pushing this envelop just a little, mostly to see what I can do. I’m almost 20,000 words into the story, and I’ve a bit to go, but I’m enjoying the ride.
The funny thing is, the story came together all because of a chat I had with someone, where they told me, “You know what I’d like?”–and then they told me. And that started me thinking . . . and later started me writing.
That Muse: she be a crazy girl sometimes.
