T. MaskedWriter: Blog

I won't deny that living in a Legal Pot State has been a positive boon to me. Yesterday, I felt like I was on a roll and didn't want to stop, but was on my last bud, so managed to make a couple calls and get some delivered.

I was able to write the "Helen starts putting it all together" scene yesterday because of it. A large portion of the puzzle got solved and I ended up exceeding my usual target pages for an entire chapter; so was going post to the Garden and call it a day when it hit me:

If I break this into a couple smaller scenes, the next 2-3 chapters would be half-finished; I'd just need to add the other characters' scenes in-between.

I found it a hopeful sign. Getting far enough ahead to go twice a week for this one like Paw Writer suggested becomes more possible.

Currently starting chapter nine. How long each chapter takes me is hard to say because I don't do drafts and outlines and such, but rather, subscribe to the Hemingway "sit at the typewriter and bleed" school of writing.

I try to get at least one chapter written every week. Since 6 will drop Saturday, right now I'm about two weeks ahead of schedule, and that's because of how I post them to the various sites, so I thought I'd show how to find them here.

The first place I post a new chapter is the Garden of MC's Vineyard subforum. When you post a story or chapter there, they encourage starting a second post immediately after for comments. Since only two or three people ever comment on them, I use those posts as a sort of "commentary track," where I talk about the chapter, what went into it, etc. I freely admit that I'm basically wanking off onto the monitor when I do these, however, at the same time, I've gotten some good ideas from having a place to talk about the stories, so those posts are going to continue.

Next comes the submission to Simon at the EMCSA. He updates on Saturdays, so the second place it shows up is there. This is where the words "become real" to me. (I can't edit without re-writing the whole damn thing and submitting it again because I recognize that Simon's too busy for me to go "I used 'a' instead of 'an' there, can you change that?") After it posts there is when I upload to Stories Online. I do the plain text so I can catch and correct any errors that made it through onto the EMCSA version.

Since this place is pretty good about posting my updates, the next stop is Literotica. They take a couple days to post a new chapter, and again, I go over it to see what I missed here. (I've said before that I write these things in a week, then I spend the rest of my life editing them.)

The last stop is my tumblr page. tmaskedwriter is my main blog, but it's sort of become a catch-all for liking/reposting other stuff. tmaskedwritersworks is the page that's exclusively my own work, so it gets reposted to that page as well. The "FINAL Final Version" can be read there. Usually any changes at that stage will be something like the song quote I chose at the beginning no longer sitting right with me. (For example, in "Night Brings The Hunter," the Rush quote I used to start an early chapter no longer felt like it fit with the Warren Zevon tribute the story became, so I found a passage from one of his songs that I thought fit. I kept the Doors quote because I thought it still worked.)

Also, since it's been a while since I mentioned this, and don't know if I said it in this blog, there's a sort-of code to my titles that says who the story will be about.

"Amongst Equals" stories are about Troy & Julie's love story, so they'll be the focus.

"Day" means it'll be Troy & Julie along with their group of friends playing major roles.

"Night" indicates a tale of Contessa Helena de San Finzione.

"Pink Zone," when I can get to writing another of those, will be part of the upcoming "Tales From The Pink Zone" world and have nothing to do with Troy & Julie's universe.

Susan gets title billing. (She's got a great agent. Her role in the current story took a bit of negotiation.)

It was missing from her last story because of the lack of opportunity.

The Sun shone through the open balcony doors into the bedroom of the castle. It cast its beam across the marbled floor, onto the Persian rug, across the king-sized bed, and onto the face of Contessa Helena de San Finzione. She opened one eye slightly and the light entered it as well.

Had a new story idea whilst sick and had to get that out. Part 3 drops next week, then we'll get back to Susan's story, and I know I need to do something with Helen after that. Somewhere in there, I'd like to get a second Pink Zone story in. (Judging by the response, I think that's going to become a universe as well.)

One of the big complaints I've always gotten about my first three stories ("A Conversation Amongst Equals," "Great Day For It," and "How My Day Was.") is that they were done entirely in dialogue. "A Conversation Amongst Equals" was the very first thing I wrote after a 20-year depression-induced writer's block. Both as an exercise and because I wasn't confident in my ability to describe a sex scene well, I decided to make it entirely dialogue.

When I decided to do "Great Day For It," I had another problem in that now I had to do a lesbian scene, so figured I'd solve that problem by doing the same thing and have it turn out to be Julie telling Troy the story of how she met the new friend she'd brought home, Claire, while he went down on her.

Then it was Troy's turn to receive while he told her the story of how he met Susan, and I realized that because I'd done "Great Day For It" in dialogue and "How My Day Was" happened immediately after it, I was forced to do the same thing again.

Something that's kind of been on my "to do" list since has been to go back and rewrite those three stories and flesh them out. However, there's other stuff I want to do as well, so I decided to use my own horrible ear infection as inspiration here and tell the story of the events leading up to "A Conversation Amongst Equals" instead. Part 3 will end right before it begins, with a little epilogue.

Incidentally, if it's of interest to people, the first place I usually post everything is on the Garden of MC (mcgarden.com), because that's been the best place for me to get feedback thus far. I follow up each chapter with a sort of "commentary" post as well. Some people like them. I mean, I'm not full of myself enough to think anyone's interested in "My Process" or anything, (Incidentally, if I ever use the phrase "My Process" without the quotes, someone kindly come up behind me and put me out of my misery as quickly and painlessly as possible. I'll be too far gone to do it myself.) however, I thought it might interest people to know what was going on in my head at certain points.

As I wrote the end of this story, I realized "If I were to decide I was done writing Troy and Julie, this WOULD be a good note to go out on," however, I'm not done with them. They still have more stories to tell and more new friends to meet.

And, as always, they'd probably like you.

The next chapter of "The Continuing Education of Susan" will not be available this week due to health issues.