Insecure Writers' Support Group November 2019

Image by Jonny Lindner from Pixabay

Hey, People. As usual, I'm a day late and a dollar short. I kind of forgot that yesterday was IWSG day. So, I'm slipping in the back.

The question for this month was: "what's the strangest thing you've ever Googled in researching a story?"

I don't know, but the medieval sex toys question is as good as any.

I'm kind of feeling depressed about my decision to pull the plug on the Carnal Invasion project. I left the characters in that Universe in an eternal cliffhanger, because it's doubtful that I'll be going back to it. I wanted to get back to the kind of writing that I'd been missing out on trying to keep up with the Carnal Invasion serial. I thought about perhaps doing it as a yearly NaNoWriMo project, but I don't know. It would probably turn out to be just bad writing because that's what I tend to get from NaNoWriMo.

Speaking of NaNoWriMo, I have a theory that the people who tend to enjoy writing that way also tend to be the sort of people who use outlines. I hate using outlines. I enjoy word count constraints for flash fiction because they force me to be concise. I dislike word count requirements on longer pieces. I like doing Camp NaNoWriMo because you can choose your own goal. I usually choose chapters. My chapters tend to average about 500 words. Camp NaNoWriMo works for me. NaNoWriMo does not.

The truth is, between writing my own stories, poetry, blog posts, and book reviews, I probably write at least the NaNoWriMo required word count most days. It just doesn't work for me to confine that all to one project. What comes out is garbage and I can't stand to look at it again. I looked at the NaNoWriMo project I did in 2011 to see if I could stomach editing it. No dice, it still sucked. I took a perfectly okay idea and what came out with the forced word count was something that no-one should read, ever.

One thing I've noticed with the advent of e-books is that novelettes and novellas, which had previously fallen into disfavor, are making a comeback, and I couldn't be happier. I could write and edit a novelette or even a short novella in a month. A full-length novel is something else again.

For those of you who are doing NaNoWriMo, power to ya! I had to finally admit that in all honesty, I really and truly hate writing that way. It is very likely that I won't do it again. I may see you at Camp NaNoWriMo, though.

~Cie~

Insecure Writers' Support Group July 2019

Image copyright Mary Gorobchenko

The question for this month's Insecure Writers' Support Group is what personal traits have you written into your characters?

Insecurity, mostly.

I guess there are a lot of people out there who are extremely self-assured, completely mentally stable, have no phobias, no PTSD, and are completely secure in the belief that their partner would surely never leave them because they are that extra swell.

I am not that person.

I don't write about those kinds of people, because I find it impossible to relate to them.

Anyway, such characters are called Mary Sue and Gary Stu, and they're boring.

I found out the hard way that people have a lot of misconceptions about those of us who are insecure and who may have a toy or two in the attic, a red under the bed, and a little yellow man in our head.

My story in the most recent WEP challenge featured a young vampire named Bernie. I'm not sure I ought to be saying the v-word because it might get me piled on again, but I'm feeling contrary, so I'll let my freak flag fly.

Bernie regains consciousness to find himself in a 5 x 5 windowless cell. Now, I guess nobody who read this story is claustrophobic, because many people wondered why Bernie was behaving as if his marbles had been taken away. The way Bernie was acting made perfect sense to me. I hate taking elevators because I'm always afraid the damn thing is going to get stuck, and I'm claustrophobic as anything.

So, Bernie behaved the way I would have behaved if I woke up to find myself in a 5 x 5 cell.

Now all you cool, calm and collected people know how a person who is claustrophobic behaves in a confined space. They freak the hell out.

Bernie's captors torment him psychologically, convincing him that his boyfriend, who is being held prisoner as well, sold him out for his own freedom and went off to be with a love interest from his past. 

The myriad of self-assured individuals who read the story didn't understand when Bernie's doubts overwhelmed him and he broke down, assuming the worst. They assumed that Bernie, who is a character in his mid-twenties, must be a teenager, because, apparently, between the ages of 12 and 19, one is a tightly-wound, neurotic ball of quivering self-doubt, but once a person hits twenty, boom, they are completely secure in themselves and know that no-one would ever betray someone as stellarly flawless as they are.

I guess I must have missed out on this step in my evolution, because I'm thirty-four years beyond twenty, and my insecurities screwed up any relationship I had where I wasn't betrayed first. So, there you have it.

I wrote Bernie as being insecure and naive, but a teenager he isn't. He thinks the world of his boyfriend, a fellow who is actually worthy of his trust, and he tends to find it difficult to believe that he could deserve someone so awesome. He does, in fact, deserve all the awesomeness that comes his way. You see, Bernie is much nicer than I am. I'm kind of a defensive asshole.

Bernie isn't the only character who embodies my insecurities. All of my characters are broken in one way or another. You will never find a Mary Sue or Gary Stu in any of my Universes.

~Cie~

Poems in April: Day 10: In Thrall

Image by prettysleepy1 from Pixabay

Have you ever been in thrall

Of someone who was just so

Bad and so entirely wrong

You walk in heart wide open

Know your heart will be broken

But you can't resist the pull

Though you know that it's a lie

You can kiss your life goodbye

~Pepper Baiij for Kris Rooiakker~

Notes:

This poem has some 'splainin' to do.

First, why would I take on ANOTHER daily challenge when I'm already involved with two of them?

I could blame the bipolar disorder, but I think the truth is, I'm genuinely insane. I'm not referring to the bipolar disorder part. That's mental illness. Mental illness is not insanity. Insanity is knowing something isn't realistic and doing it anyway. I have a proven track record of insanity.

The second factor involved here is my intent to finally publish a book of my poetry at the end of the year. I don't need to worry about publishers who insist that only previously unpublished works appear. The book will be published by Team Netherworld Creations, a seedy little independent press of which I am the Head Buttmunch in Charge. I don't have such rules. With any book I publish, whether it is written by me or someone else, the author retains all rights to do whatever they want with their material at any time.

Now, about the poem.

The poetry form is Jueju. I wrote two quatrains with seven syllables in each line.

Pepper Baiij is the female protagonist in Team Netherworld's long-running WIP, Fetch. The first chapter of this tale emerged in November 2014. The work is nowhere near ready for publication, but new chapters and poems are always emerging. Maybe someday we'll actually have a finished product.

Kris Rooiakker is an actor with whom Pepper became obsessed in her younger days. He is a psychic vampire. He found Pepper on the astral plane and took advantage of her vulnerability and low self-esteem. Pepper's obsession with Kris cooled many years ago, but he doesn't like being ignored. He keeps coming back to pester her.

The prompt asked writers to grab a book and find a sentence, then:

Use all the words of this sentence in a poem

OR

Pick a word or phrase from this sentence for the title of your poem

OR

Use a part or the entirety of this sentence as the first or the last line of your poem

Now, as it happens, I had the manuscript for Carnal Invasion VI: The Dark Delights of Mistress Kali open for reference in working on the forthcoming Carnal Invasion XI: Good Sports. (I am also the Head Buttmunch in Charge of Naughty Netherworld Press, which is Team Netherworld Creations' lust-crazed sibling.) I found a sentence suitable for public consumption and used the words "in thrall" for the title of the poem and in the first line of the poem. Here is the original sentence.

“No, Jefe, she ain’t hurt, but she in thrall of La Jefa,” Krystal whispered. “You can peek in, sí, but don’t say nothin’. Like I say, we don’t wanna end up being prisoners.”

If you are interested in learning more about the series of novels that this book came from, visit the Naughty Netherworld Press blog, where you will find snippets from the stories and links to purchase the books.

~Cie~

Writing Uncomfortable Subjects

Copyright BookBabe

Some thoughts on this post, 

“you’re not entitled to a constant stream of uninspired feel-good pap. not in your music, not in your television, and certainly not in your books. “

A constant stream of feel-good pap is the very petri dish in which odious thought processes are allowed to grow unchecked. This feel-good pap is the Soma of Brave New World. Give the Proletariat their happy drugs, in this case, meaningless media rife with pretty people with petty problems and impeccably whitened teeth, and they won’t question the rising shit-storm of discontent, maltreatment of the lower classes, or other unpleasant subjects like sexism, racism, and homophobia.

Interestingly enough, despite the extreme right-wing assertion (kowtowed to by Bumblr) that erotica is a terrible, no good, awful, and very bad thing, the place where I curtail certain uncomfortable subjects the most stringently is in erotic writing. In spite of the fact that characters in the Naughty Netherworld universe are always banging, group sex is far more common than one-on-one couplings, and much of the action takes place in an arena where wild BDSM play is acted out for an audience, there are a few things that will never be described explicitly in these otherwise uninhibited tales.

These things are:

Any kind of non-consensual sex

Any kind of dub-con encounters. Even though there is no shortage of bondage, the characters are one hundred percent on board, and it’s obvious.

Sex with minors. 

These stories are very inclusive. I hate labeling them as “interracial,” which is a keyword that I do use when publishing on Kindle. I also hate feeling that I need to include a label such as “BBW.” People of all races are just people, and large women are just people. Unfortunately, we don’t yet live in a world that is quite so inclusive, and so I do feel the need to use what I deem fetishizing keywords to promote the Naughty Netherworld brand.

One of my main reasons for using such keywords is to let people know that these stories are for them. I would not be the first person to be sick and tired of trying to find a good romantic or spicy erotic read, only to discover that it’s rife with Barbie and Ken lookalikes with a few department store manikins thrown in as supporting characters. I want a realistic selection of people, even if some of those people happen to be shape-shifting alien sex fiends.

I want to read about the five-foot-tall, 100-pound elf prince falling in love with the six-foot-tall, 400-pound human pastry chef who has lost her belief in magic. (This is one of the few monogamous couplings in the Naughty Netherworld sagas.) 

I want to read about the geeky ginger film fan and the strong, sinewy Japanese vampire (both male) falling wildly in love and enjoying introducing newcomers to their extremely spicy world together. 

I want to read about the powerful, six-foot-tall, dark and intimidatingly beautiful mad scientist and sorceress redeeming herself to her tiny and deceptively strong, smart as a whip Asian wife. 

However, these characters weren’t out there. So Team Netherworld created them.

Do subjects such as racism, sexism, and homophobia make appearances in these stories?

Yes. In Carnal Invasion VI, Kali and Nyx recall their first meeting. Nyx, who is, in reality, one of the shape-shifting extraterrestrials, adopted the form of a badly burned “comfort girl” and she and her fellow extraterrestrials rescued the trafficked women and girls from the “comfort station”. In the same book, Kali recalls allowing herself to be taken prisoner in a death camp where she uses her powers to raise the dead and destroy the place. She suffers abuse at the hands of the guards. 

Due to the explicit erotica inherent to these stories, there were no exact descriptions of the abuse endured by Kali at the guards’ hands. Had this not been an explicitly erotic story, the offenses against Kali would likely have been described in greater detail. However, I wanted to be sure that no-one would be tempted to confuse sexualized abuse with erotic bondage and role-playing.

I like to think that the Naughty Netherworld stories are feel-good stories--very joyful, smutty stories for a mature audience. The characters in these stories are much more accepting of those who are not considered conventionally attractive than real people are. In spite of occasional heavy subject matter, the general spirit of these tales is a fun-filled sexy romp among dirty-minded friends.

However, there are those who would say such stories should not be allowed. Some would frame the work as being “sinful.” Some might postulate that homosexual activity is “unnatural.” Still others might be opposed to the “mixing of the races.” Some might be angered by the idea of women in positions of power. Some might proclaim that describing larger characters as sexy and desirable is “glorification of obesity” or some such rubbish. 

People of various sizes, shapes, nationalities, and races exist. Not everyone looks like a fashion doll or an impossibly thin, heavily Photoshopped model. In fact, the majority of people do not bear any resemblance to the glossy images we have been told we are supposed to resemble. Human sexuality has a spectrum. Not everyone is heterosexual, and being heterosexual is not morally superior to being homosexual, bisexual, or asexual. 

People are not perfectly unblemished. People can have scars, moles, crooked teeth, funny noses, wrinkles, structural anomalies, any number of so-called “imperfections.” Not all people are perfectly able-bodied. Some have lost limbs. Some have conditions which impair their mobility. Many deal with invisible impairments, including psychiatric conditions. A fair number of the characters in the Carnal Invasion series are working through PTSD due to past abuses.

The point being that feel-good stories are all fine and good, but stories are not there just to entertain, they are there to educate. If every story was completely sanitized of any uncomfortable topic, the literary world would be gutted. We would be left with nothing but a bunch of meaningless, watered-down twaddle.

Evil characters who do bad things SHOULD make you angry. They should make you think. 

A world where no-one thinks is a dangerous place indeed.

~Cie~