Q&A – Writing

Thanks for all the questions y’all keep sending.  It’s awesome, and I am collecting them, I promise, I am trying to find categories to fit them into so I can hit several at one post.

Do you still put your old stories (M/M, F/M) online?  Where or why not?

Yeah, this is an interesting question.  My M/M stories are online on this website (not the blog part, the main part) at http://www.sanctumia.com.  For some reason half the time it auto-bumps you out to a new page (discipline partnerships webring) and I’m too lazy to go in and unlink from the webring right now, so it it bumps you off the first page (black page that says Hic sunt dracones in gold letters), then just back button and try again.  It has almost all of my old M/M writing…  it hasn’t been updated since 2016.  Sorry.

F/M stuff.  I took all of it off the web years ago.  And my answer to why is complex and I’m not sure I have a true answer to it yet.  But I honor the question, so here’s my best shot at it.  Partly, I’m embarrassed by that writing.  I wrote a bulk of it before I was 18.  So, of course, I read it and see my own immaturity as a writer and as a mini human.  I really didn’t understand how people interacted and the finesse of writing those interactions when I was… that young.  I question if I even have those skills now, though, undoubtedly I have more than I did as a young teen.

I am also, I think, a little disturbed by some of that writing because… there was sex in a number of those stories and it is strange and slightly disturbing to me both to see how little I understood about sex, and also how much I understood about sex.  Because I know how old I was (or wasn’t) when some of those stories were written, it’s, um… a reminder that I was savvy to things that I shouldn’t have been… because of the poor choices of adults in my life, from a very early age.  And some of those poor choices literally scarred me and have affected my ability to have sex and have positive romantic relationships.

Others of those stories I wrote slightly later (in my late teens/early twenties) and that was a time when, I think in a response to my childhood interactions with men, I became a professional dominant, and I engaged in very high risk behavior with a lot of men, and… I’m quite lucky that nothing horrific happened to me in those years.  I was drinking a lot, I was doing things I didn’t want to do, on a regular basis, because I think, in some way, I thought I could fake it will I made it as a sexual being and that somehow by doing these things, I felt I was showing that the men who hurt me as a child, no longer had a hold on me.

Of course, I was doing those things EXACTLY BECAUSE those men still had a hold on me.  But at the time, I wasn’t self-aware in that way.

So there are associations with a phase of my life that I look back on with very little… light.  It felt like a dark time, it felt like a… different person doing those things…  And so reading writing from that time can feel weirdly dissonant with my current identity.

Thirdly, I wrote mostly female dominant in those stories (F/M, right??) and… I was a top for many years, and played at dominance for men who wanted it.  But it was because men wanted it and looking back, I realize that I was really being submissive by being dominant because I wanted to make them happy and serve their needs.

It was a long and painful process claiming and accepting my identity as a submissive.  And I didn’t change into a submissive, I always was one, but I had layers and layers and layers of shit and shame to peel away to get to that identity.  At this point it no longer feels authentic, and it actually feels kind of icky to post those stories again.

And that may very well be because I’m still a little tender about my identity and about my time spent… not being myself… and in time as that tenderness toughens, maybe I won’t feel so weird about those old stories and someday I may repost them.  But for the moment, I am not putting them on the web.

How do you write X so well?

Well, my first response is… Easy!  I don’t!  I don’t think I write anything well.  It is horrible to go back and look at my old writing because I just find it all incredibly juvenile and immature (in technique) and there are very few pieces I’ve written that I don’t cringe when I go back and re-read them.  This is unfortunate because series like Tem and John and Black Fire really require a solid reread before I add a new episode or chapter because I need to get the feel of the world and characters again to make sure I maintain continuity.

It suddenly occurs to me that may be the reason I have so much trouble writing new stuff!

But, okay, serious answer… even though I don’t think I do X well (for any value of X), I practice.  I have written… umpteen thousand words, and stories, and done it regularly for years (not the last ten years, but there was a time when I did it constantly.)  Practice results in improvement, if only because doing it the same way every time becomes terminally boring, so I improve solely to save myself from boring myself to death with my own writing…

I’d also say (and almost every writer I’ve ever heard speak on the topic agrees) that I read a lot.  I read a LOT, and in vaguely the genre I write (fiction), so I am constantly, constantly exposed to stylistic choices and techniques and I am aware of those as I read and absorb learning from the modeling of other authors.  (I’m also incredibly intolerant of poor writing, and find it horrible frustrating that there are a few wildly popular authors who are not very good craft writers…)

There are some concrete techniques that also really boost writing quality… one I teach is “BaDaBing.”  If you spend any time in writing circles you’ve probably heard the phrase “show, don’t tell” about writing.  As in, don’t TELL me that someone was angry… SHOW me their lips pressed to a thin line, the flush rising up their neck and over their face, their breath coming in short, sharp huffs through their nose… show me their cursing, their inner dialogue, the feel of their fingernails biting into the palms of their clenched fists, the thudding of their heartbeat in their ears…  That’s so much more engaging.  Almost all of the amateur writers I know engage in a lot of telling and not enough showing…  So, Ba Da Bing is a strategy to help with that.  You find a flat sentence, a telling sentence – He went to bed.  You change it to a Ba (action) – He shuffled into the bedroom, stretching his arms wide and yawning. Da (sensory description). The yellow roses in the cut crystal vase by the window were beginning to wilt, but their aroma still perfumed the slight breeze that billowed the thin, white curtains inward.  As he sank down onto the bed, the springs creaked and he sighed heavily. (Sight, smell, sight, sound.)  Bing (dialogue or thoughts) I can’t believe vacation is already over, he thought to himself as he reached for his alarm clock.  Mix and match Bas Das and Bings and avoid TELLING things instead of LIVING them through the character.

BaDaBing!  The secret to my success!  Actually, there’s a lot more to it, but just that technique alone can SIGNIFICANTLY improve most people’s writing.  (And I totally stole the name of the technique from a writing teacher/writer named Grethen Bernabei).

Are the Moments with Sir and SFD stories true?  To what degree?

Well, in very general terms, the Moments with Sir pieces are true life, the SFD are fiction.  The SFD vary in how much inspiration I pull from real life events.  Some of them are quite similar to real conversations, and some are completely made up in my head.

The Moments with Sir pieces are true to life but told in a narrative style, which makes them sound like stories instead of just diary entries.  Here’s an example (watch for BaDaBings!)

Diary:

I had a hard day today.  I was feeling really anxious when I got home (late), so Sir made me do some concrete things like packing my lunch for tomorrow, eating dinner, taking a shower, and putting clean sheets on the bed to get me focused on the here and now.

***

Narrative:

I pull myself out of my car and curse.  The garage smells of stale smoke from the neighbors’ laundry room.  Our shared wall has a gap near the ceiling which allows them to generously share their noxious fumes with my entire lower level.  My dog bounds up to me and rubs his face against my legs, the smoke bothering his eyes, and my lateness upsetting him.  As I dragged myself up the stairs, I could hear Sir and SB moving around in the living room and I sighed.  While I knew they’d have long been home by 6:00 (6:20 if I’m honest with myself), some irrational part of my mind still hoped that they’d be later than me and I could hide my failure to meet my 5 o’clock curfew.

At the top of the stairs, I slung my bag onto the dark, leather seat of the boot bench.  I could see SB in the kitchen.  The reek of smoke is replaced on this level with the smell of frying onions and Mexican spices.  The sizzle of food in a hot pan competes with the sound of the television playing a rerun of ReGenesis.  As I turn, I find myself face to face with Sir.

“I’m sorry,” I say reflexively, then glance down at the wood floor.  I had texted him I was running late.  But I have no good excuse.

Time stretches as he doesn’t answer and the tightness in my belly reaches into my throat.  Then he says, “Get ready for dinner,” and turns back towards the kitchen.

***

Same day, same events, but a completely different style of writing.  Neither is more or less true, one is just significantly more detailed and textured.