Yes, I am back

Where were you?

Many different places. In the span of the two years since my last consistent activity I’ve had to move 4 times. For many different reasons. Some not as happy as the others.

Life got in my way. And, to say the least, the tragedies of living did as well. I’ll spare the details, but in this time I’ve been gone I have lost several people that were either important to me, or otherwise affected my life. I spent months in an almost comatose state, trying to recover. And it felt as if one loss was replaced very quickly by another.

My mental health worsened. I’ve developed anxiety, and depression from my experiences. Also; I have struggled financially for the last while and to be very blunt I wasn’t making profits from these stories. Therefore they became secondary. I apologize if this sounds harsh, but I had-and still have, bills that cannot be paid with stories.

It all reached a breaking point a year ago and I ended up in a sad state of affairs that required me to spend months humiliatingly sleeping in a family members guest room and unable to reach out to other people. It’s hard to write when you loathe everything you do. I’m afraid I ended up giving up my stories for awhile, convinced that nothing good came from them.

Are you back for good?

I hope so.

When will you be updating again?

When I can. I am trying to do this slowly. To ease the transition back into regular updates.

When is (x story) going to get finished?

Unbound and A Kiss of Frost are my two priorities at the moment. I would also like to go back and fully rewrite my old work. I don’t like the sad state of my previous stories. I feel I could improve them greatly by giving them a literary “facelift”.

 

Unbound Update Coming soon

I am tirelessly trying to finish up the next chapter for Unbound. If things go as planned, it should be posted by the end of the week.

UPDATE

So I guess you’re all wondering what happened.

Here’s the short list of the mess I’ve been in:

1. The day I scheduled repairs on my comp it started working fine. I closed it, went about my day, and hoped to get back to writing in the evening. Come evening, after turning it on, it began to smoke and shoot sparks from it’s fan. After switching it off I learned a fire had ignited within the computer as a result of lint getting caught in there. The computer was fritzed.

2. At the time I was broke. No money = no new computer. At least until I rounded up the cash. In the meantime I managed to recover some (but not all) of my data from the smoking inferno that is my old laptop.

3. My depression hit me like a ton of bricks around this time. Worse than before. I became crippled by my own emotions. Writing became impossible for me because I simply could not get myself out of this black void I was in. For weeks…

4. I also started working at a new job with long, strenuous hours. I come home tired and usually don’t want to think about anything besides sleep.

5. I graduated from post-secondary school (hooray right?) but dealt with another depressive blow when all of the job prospects I’d lined up fell through my fingers. I’m now struggling to pay my bills and sadly it’s been stressful. Needless to say it was not a good summer. I am now broke, struggling with my mental health, and in a constant gloom that has turned me off writing. I know I said I don’t want to get personal, but I really did hate myself for awhile. It’s disheartening that I can no longer find joy in what I love because I’m now crippled by financial and medical woes that are blocking out any enjoyment I found in the hobby. I thought about leaving a note here, but I didn’t think any of you would understand.

Where that leaves me now:

– I’m still planning to return.

– I am trying to get the newest chapters done.

– I am sorry for vanishing without a word. If this ever happens again I will try to post here sooner.

UPDATES On hold

My computer decided to throw its guts up and had to be sent in for repairs. Until then I’m afraid I won’t be able to do much writing.

Stuff that really needs to stop.

As a follow up to my last post I decided to compile a list of the various things that I wish I didn’t have to see on submission sites. Keep in mind that these are all my own opinions, based on observations I have made by participating in several different submission communities. These are not meant to be a personal attack on any single individual but are peculiar “habits” I’ve noticed that tend to annoy me.

1. Entitlement (on both sides)

Just because a person clicks on a story and reads it doesn’t mean they are obligated to give it a review. That is how reviews should work in my opinion. They are not a fee a reader must pay for accessing a story. Yes, I do know the frustration of posting a story and receiving no comments for months at a time (if any at all). That is the unfortunate risk every author takes when they submit their work online. That being said, I’m strongly opposed to the way that many authors attempt to blackmail their readers. The worse tactic I have personally seen is deliberately withholding content until a certain quota is met (EG: If ten reviews are given one chapter will be posted. And so on). This kind of behavior is childish and provides a breeding ground for empty, meaningless comments like “Good job” and “I liked it”. I’m glad that Aff.net does not tolerate it as much anymore, but many other sites still do.

On the same hand an author is not obligated to keep updating if they do not want to. One of the things that many readers seem to forget when they demand updates is that most of the content on sites like Aff.net is being posted for free. With a few rare exceptions, most of the authors are uploading content for free. In the past I have disclosed on this blog that I suffer from depression in my offline life. It’s a crippling illness that comes and goes in waves. When it flares up it makes it difficult for me to perform basic tasks in my daily life (EG: Getting to work, eating, getting enough sleep). Needless to say, I didn’t enjoy my last flare up when I was receiving daily comments on work that consisted of nothing but outright demands for new chapters.

 

2. Crying “troll” at the drop of a hat

A troll is a reviewer who intentionally leaves feedback that is negative in order to provoke the author (or in some cases fellow readers). They are malicious and a bane to every single submission site. However, the hyper-sensitivity that prevails lately has caused too many authors to become trigger happy about their accusations. The last time I ever commented on a story on Fanfiction.net the author immediately deleted my review and threatened to report me for “trolling”. Her justification for this stemmed from the fact that my review contained less than stellar commentary about her main character. I have been told many things about my characters over the years. Some readers have (and still do) loathe the characters I have created and it is their right to express this if they choose.

While I defend the right an author has to weed out the troublemakers, the lack of tolerance for opposing views on these sites is becoming ridiculous. There are places I no longer review anymore because I know anything other than praise will get deleted and chalked up as trolling. The line between a critic and a antagonist has grayed so much over the years that many new authors panic at the hint of negativity. It has transformed many stories into dull echo chambers where the only thing that gets through is material telling the author how great they are, even at times when it’s obvious they don’t deserve it. I have said this before but I’ll say it again: I learned from the critique I got. Sometimes being blunt is the only way a critic will get the message across and if you blockade yourself in a padded little bubble where you never hear the truth you’ll never go anywhere. You don’t improve by staying in one spot.

 

3. Poaching content you don’t like.

Want to know why I’ve never posted any fanfiction? It’s because I’m terrified. Fangirls and fanboys scare the living crap out of me. Believe it or not I have several fanfic’s sitting on my desktop right now that are almost two years old. They sit in a folder because I just don’t want to deal with the side effect of zealous fans or their vendetta’s against certain characters or themes.

There are too many community members who deliberately seek out content they already know they don’t like just so they can leave a comment expressing their disgust and it’s aggravating when an author has done nothing to provoke them. I don’t care how much you hate content, if you seek it out you are knowingly exposing yourself to something you don’t care for and have no right to blame the author. Fandoms are as diverse as any other community and just because someone else doesn’t agree with you does not entitle you to leave snide comments on their work. Whenever I go into the popular fandoms I often find myself exhausted by the sheer amount of trolling that goes unchecked within them. It feels like you’re moving through a landmine at times and it makes the experience unnerving. The same thing goes for the people who find themes they don’t like but still take the time to get pissy in the comment section. If you don’t like something then stay the fuck away from it.

 

4. Using fictional stories to slander real people.

Some people like to base their characters off of the people they know or have encountered in their life. Nothing is wrong with this, it’s a good way to familiarize yourself with the behaviors and personality of a character. However, there is a fine line between being inspired by someone and using your writing to mock them. I’ve seen it pop up more times than I’d care to recall and even when the author tries to be slick by changing names or switching up a few features it is always painfully clear when a character is just a strawman for the author to desecrate. Even when the author tries to get sneaky and avoid names it’s always painfully obvious when a character is just a stand in for the hatred they feel towards an actual person. If you don’t make any effort to explain WHY a character is evil or instantaneously call them a “bitch/whore/asshole” (or any other derogatory insult) without actually providing me with a reason why I can’t help but wonder about your intentions… Throwing your real life enemies (or just celebrities you don’t like) into your work may sound like a clever idea at first but it can make an otherwise interesting story seem spiteful and childish. I don’t want to read about your vendetta against the girl who sits next to you in math class or how much you hate that one actress whose dating your idol. There are better ways for you to air out your dirty laundry.

 

5. Pissing contests between different sites.

There are dozens of places on the internet where you can make an account and submit stories. Each one has it’s own upsides and downsides. I refuse to accept the deluded belief that any single site is “better” than all the rest. I’m tired of hearing authors smack talk one site because they don’t use it or needlessly praise another. I like Aff.net over AO3 because I find the uploading system easier to operate. In infuriates me when my reasons are met with condescending little remarks about being part of a “lesser” or “inferior” site. This petty rivalry is everywhere. It turned me off of social media for a long time because I was sick of listening to people rant and rave about which site was full of flakes and which site was for “genuine” people (tumblr and facebook have this rivalry down to an art). This is not a war. I’m sick of seeing people treat memberships like an oath of allegiance to a certain way of being. At the end of the day we’re all still doing the same thing. Grow up and let people submit their stories where they want to.

Just WRITE

I’m going to talk about something that has been bothering me for a long time.

 

So you have a story that you want to submit. You’ve got it planned out. You’ve sketched out a few characters in your head. You know what will happen at the end. That’s all fine and dandy. So what is keeping you from actually writing this story?

 

Years ago I used to post all of my submissions of two different sites: FictionPress and Fanfiction.net. These websites were a safe haven for new writers because they have a reliable and recognizable upload system. Now I won’t say it was perfect. Fanfiction.net did have it’s drawbacks(spam, troll stories, flame wars, etc) but it was the first place I went to post my work online. It was also where I learned the joys and horror of getting honest feedback.

My writing back then was terrible. It was awkwardly written. Every other word had a mistake. I slopped together chapters without editing them or adding grammar. I’m not ashamed to say this now. It’s true. I wasn’t posting anything ground breaking back then. I was young, and still learning how to form a story from beginning to end.

One of the most helpful things I ever did was read the reviews that I got and edit my work in response to them. Reviews were an important part of my creative process. It stung at first to hear people tell me that parts of my stories weren’t working, or that others were absurd, or how I misspelled too many words. That bubble of delusion that made me think my stories were genius got burst the minute the feedback rolled it. This is a tough but necessary part of the learning process. I will not say it was always nice getting reviews. Like most young authors, I received my share of trolls and flames. But for every snide little toad telling me I was a worthless sack of shitty there were fifty who were telling me “I see some potential here.”

I hate the way that so many submission sites operate nowadays. They parade themselves under a banner of equal opportunity while simultaneously harboring aggressive or toxic communities. One of the big reasons why I left FictionPress and Fanfiction.net for good was because it got overrun by hordes of unsavory members. I got tired of seeing people who were so caught up in the idea of “rules” that they allowed it to dictate who was welcome on the site.

There’s a common belief that a story must be perfect before it is shared. But if this were true then nothing I have written should exist. There is also a strong assumption that writing has a strict set of rules that MUST be followed. You MUST obey all the rules of grammar. You MUST have impeccable spelling. You MUST only use words that can be plucked directly from the dictionary. If you don’t do all of this you are inferior. You are “stupid”. You are “uneducated”. You are not good at writing.

This type of thinking is shit. Pure and utter bullshit.

If every author followed this train od thought we would never have some of our best work. What made authors like Tolkien, Dr. Seuess, or Lewis Carroll so memorable is that they broke the mold. They laughed and the rules and tipped their hats as they sauntered past them. They made up words, they invented their own grammar, they disobeyed common assumptions about story telling or novel writing because they felt like it. And we remember them because of that.

When I hear people say “Oh I’d love to post stories online but I’m not good enough”, I always have to bite my tongue a little. Because my initial reaction is to ask them “And why not?”

Why do you need to be a “good” writer? For that matter, who gets to decide what makes someone “good” or not?

If you have something to say why should it matter if it’s a third revision or a rough draft? Why do we allow snobbery and elitism to control something that should be done for fun?

I often feel like I am alone on this battleground because I refuse to draw a line in the sand that defines what makes a story “good” or not. I don’t care if you spell it as “a lot” or “alot” or if you say “towards’ or “to wards”. It doesn’t bother me if your plot is odd or you’ve made a lot of typos. What matters is whether you’re expressing you creativity, or if you’re just teetering along the safe zone because you’re afraid of getting negative feedback. If you want to write then fucking write.

Just WRITE. Write because you have an idea. Write because it calms you down. Write because it makes you giddy. Write just for shits and giggles. Write because you want to and you have a story to tell. Do not let fear hold you back.

Unbound has an update!

I have posted chapter eleven to aff.net so feel free to go check it out. It’s a bit longer than I originally intended it to be but I’ll pretend that it makes up for me slacking off last month. 🙂

 

I’m now going to work on the next installment of “A Kiss of Frost” because I’m sure you’d all like to see what happens next in that story too. If it’s sunny where you are I hope you go out and enjoy some fresh air.

We’re back!

I have returned and sorted my shit out. Unbound’s next chapter is nearly complete. I should have it posted soon. Possibly even by this weekend if everything goes well. I hope you’re all enjoying your week!

Updates postphoned for April

Although I’m aware of the demands for more updates, I’m going to be celebrating a personal milestone in the next month and will be post-phoning my updates. Go celebrate. Enjoy what spring has to offer you!

Ha ha

The more and more I update “Unbound” the more it feels like I’m forcibly dragging my readers down a gravel road. You’re in pain and I’m not telling you where the hell it’s going, and by God does it hurt!  I’ve never seen such intense reviews before. I’m not sure if that is a good thing or if that means I’m slowly pissing you off. If it’s any condolence, Cianna is my favorite heroine right now and will likely be the most active and assertive female character I’ve ever written. Just hold on while I make the next chapter and try not to swallow too many pebbles. XD