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This is number ninety-eight in the blog series, “My Life in Erotica.” I encourage you to join my Patreon community to support my writing.
“ARE YOU STUPID?” she asked the cabinet nominee fiercely. Then, struck by contrition, she whispered, “I’m sorry. That was brutal, rude, and unkind. I shouldn’t have said it. You must get tired of people always asking that.”
I absolutely love this scene! And I have yet to use it in a story, though I’ve tried some variation or another several times. It’s clever, biting, witty… and wholly borrowed from an anime I once saw. I keep cutting it, even though it is one of my favorite lines of all time.
That’s what happens when I start rewriting and using my head instead of my heart. I have to ask if this is right for what I want to accomplish in the story. I could write another book with the scenes I’ve cut.
Sadly, it wouldn’t be a very good book.
In 1979, I started writing A Touch of Magic. I took my finished 120-page manuscript to another writer to read and he set it aside in about an hour. “Wow!” he said. “That’s really freeze-dried.” His assessment was that if I just added a little hot water to the story, it would be a whole novel.
I walked home, about two and a half miles in Minneapolis, thinking about what was going to happen in this story and how I could add some hot water. At a traffic light, a voice surprised me by saying, “If you’d just be quiet for a minute, I could tell you what it was like.” I almost stepped off the curb with the feeling of how close the voice was, only to see no one near me.
It was the first time a character talked to me. “Everything that exists has being only because someone has remembered it,” said J. Wesley Allen in my head. “Imagine all the things that have never existed because no one has remembered them. Yet.”
I’ve used that often as an example of a character becoming real enough for me to hear his voice in my head. But what it really resulted in was the prequel volume, Behind the Ivory Veil.
It was also the realization that writing the first draft was the easy part. My 120-page first draft flowed from my heart, just after the dissolution of my first marriage. I rewrote Behind the Ivory Veil thirteen times over the next ten years, then put it aside until after I’d published Ritual Reality in 2013. Then, like I’d done years before, I went back to Behind the Ivory Veil and rewrote it three more times before it was ready for editing and publishing in 2017. It took three more years before I was ready to finally edit and release A Touch of Magic, the story I thought I had written in 1979.
If you think I didn’t cut some of my favorite scenes in that process, you are sadly mistaken. I literally cut up the manuscript and pasted it back together in the days before computers. I pasted sections of the manuscript onto a yellow legal pad and wrote the new material between. Many of those cut-up portions of the manuscript never got pasted onto the yellow pad.
The entire Props Master series is available as either a collection or individual eBooks at Bookapy.
The ultimate cut: When I moved from a 2600 sq ft house to my 140 sq ft trailer, I had to reduce my life to less than 750 pounds. All those old drafts as well as countless others were on paper, and I recycled them all!
How does that relate to my current work in progress? As far as the timeline is concerned, after six chapters of Forever Yours, I’m at about the same place as I was in the first draft of “Sisyphus.” But I estimate that over fifty percent of the content is new. That means, of course, that I’ve cut half of what I originally wrote.
My favorite bits?
My original idea was to parallel the Sisyphus myth with occasional appearances by Greek gods, especially Aphrodite, the goddess of love. That in itself should inspire some pretty good love scenes between the goddess and my hero.
I decided the real story wasn’t the parallel with Sisyphus, but was the success story of a character and group working from high school forward to create a unique use and development of AI. The story really had nothing to do with Sisyphus.
Damn!
I really love working from myths to modern stories. The entire Props Master series, mentioned above, was based on creating a myth that would fit seamlessly with the existing body of Greek mythology.
I wrote an entire book of short works based on the myth of Pygmalion Revisited.
Bob’s Memoir is all about a demon named Bob who has lived for 4,000 years, and exposes his relationship to the gods of Greece, Mesopotamia, Israel, India, Indonesia, and China. Oh, with a stop at Easter Island, the Aztecs, and the Incas. I love working with mythology for my novels.
And I cut all that mythology from my rewrite of Forever Yours.
Some of the most notable and enjoyable parts I had to eliminate were the interaction with Greek gods, including the sexual dynamic of the goddess Aphrodite. I loved that stuff.
On an unrelated note, I have launched a project that will affect no one but myself. Next week, “Vanity, Thy Name is Author.”
This is number ninety-seven in the blog series, “My Life in Erotica.” I encourage you to join my Patreon community to support my writing.
“WRITE YOUR FIRST DRAFT with your heart. Rewrite with your head.”—Finding Forrester, 2000 film starring Rob Brown and Sean Connery.
Oh. Red Grange once said, “Writing is easy. You just sit at a typewriter and open a vein.” That is writing with your heart. And, in much of the best work, it is what makes it flow and pulse with emotion. It is what I do when I sit down to write a new story draft in thirty or forty-five days. I bleed all over the page.
And then, I have this unholy mess to clean up!
Rewriting with my head is a bitch.
Traditional advice on rewriting a manuscript, I believe, doesn’t account for the complete change in focus of the story. You might find the following advice on any writing site or class.
1. Take time away.
2. Break your work and put it back together.
3. Pretend to be someone else.
4. Get feedback from an editor or writing partner.
5. Spend a limited amount of time working on problem areas.
6. Look for passages that need rephrasing.
7. Try color coding.
8. Ask lots of questions.
9. Read your manuscript aloud.
10. Print and read a hard copy.
From “How to Master the Rewriting Process” at "masterclass" online.
These are all really good steps that any manuscript should go through some form of. But they barely scratch the surface of what my rewriting process is.
My process starts with a blank sheet of paper (or Word document) and an outline of the high points of my new story. I find that the biggest problem most authors have is starting from the previous draft and trying to correct it. This assumes the basic structure and story are solid. Mine aren’t!
By starting with a blank document and literally typing in every new word I want in the new story, I have shed the skin of the first draft. I will read what I had before and write what I want now. Typically, the wording will be clearer, the draft will be shorter, and massive sections will be cut because they are suddenly irrelevant.
That includes my wonderful scenes of the goddess Aphrodite coming to Henry in the night to teach him about love and about the condition of the ancient gods. As Lyndsy told me in her notes: “I can see what you mean about removing the Goddess storyline. It may just be cluttering things up.”
I’ve removed it.
This rewriting with my head is hard work. It requires not getting caught up in side-trips I took in the original manuscript. It won’t be as fast a process as writing the first draft. I actually have to think about things pretty thoroughly.
Here’s hoping!
Of course, my Sausage Grinder patrons get weekly updates on the manuscript process, reading along and commenting as I write it.
Since I’m so heavily focused at the moment on the rewrite of Forever Yours, and just finished the rewrite and publication of Soulmates, I’ll continue with this topic next week, this time focusing on “Cutting Your Favorite Scene.”
This is number ninety-six in the blog series, “My Life in Erotica.” Apparently, I failed to post this last week! Not sure how. So there will be two today. I encourage you to join my Patreon community to support my writing.
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“I HAVE NEVER HAD a failure. I have discovered 10,000 ways something doesn’t work.” That quote or one very like it is usually credited to Thomas A. Edison, but like most of his inventions probably originated elsewhere.
I don’t claim to be a failure, but I have become quite an expert at failing.
Most frequently, I fail to meet my own standards. And I fail to try harder to avoid failing.
"Am I perfect? No. But am I trying to be a better person? Also no."
I do try to not make this popular meme my byword, but it’s harder than it sounds. And I understand people who believe in one thing and then act like another. I won’t mention a specific religion and its adherents because the phenomenon isn’t limited to one religion. People profess to believe one way but act a different way. That doesn’t even bother me. It’s when they make a habitual practice of behaving contrary to their beliefs and professing that God understands they are fallible that I get a little upset. Making a religion out of breaking your religion means that I don’t see the actual value in your religion.
So, I have frequent disagreements with pretty much every religion I’ve ever encountered. If I am to conquer the self and purge myself of the self, for example, that just sounds really self-centered.
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When I wrote Devon Layne’s Model Student series and reached the final volume, The Prodigal, I faced up directly to my difficulties with the church. While this particular example was a Catholic Archbishop, it summed up a lot of what I had grown frustrated with over the years.
Tony has been working on a series of murals for the transept of a new church. The archbishop comes in to review the art and is offended by one of the pieces. Tony argues that the archbishop should be more concerned about a list of offenses by priests and the church.
“And who are you to criticize the church?” the archbishop joined.
“I’m an atheist, thank God! Who are you to criticize art?”
Well, perhaps Tony was hiding behind his religion as much as the archbishop was hiding behind the church. When the archbishop threatened to have not only Tony’s art but Kate’s as well removed from the church, Tony didn’t respond well.
Was he morally right in getting a hacker friend to dig into the archbishop’s affairs, uncovering pedophilia by his vicar and moving funds from the archbishop’s account to donate to causes that would harm his standing in the church if they were revealed? No. Even if it saved the art and got rid of an actual bad guy, we’d have to ask if the end really justified the means.
I failed.
I failed to find a solution to the situation that preserved Tony’s morals while giving him the needed victory.
Did I do better next time? Just reading my current draft of Forever Yours (Sisyphus) tells me I still have a long way to go if I want to preserve my morals in my characters.
The Prodigal and the entire Model Student collection are available as eBooks at Bookapy and in paperback online.
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I guess failing to live up to my own moral code keeps me from judging others. As Nate’s mother in Follow Focus was fond of saying, “I was called to minister, not to judge.”
I failed, in fact, this week.
I failed to support a friend in the way she needed and, in fact, treated her in a way that I now recognize as abhorrent to my own moral standards. In a text exchange on the last day of our association with each other, I wrote, “Okay. Thanks. I mean that sincerely. For everything.”
Her response was, “Sure thing I’m sure you’re glad you and everyone else getting what they want from me”
It was our last correspondence. If I had been living up to my own ethics and had treated her the way she deserved, she might have found me a support instead of one of the ‘everyone’ who mistreated her.
Am I going to do better tomorrow?
I hope so, but this is Las Vegas and I’m not placing any big bets. I don’t know if I will ever have a friend like her again. I highly doubt it.
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You might think that my understanding of ‘failing’ would make me a highly tolerant man. When people are acting irrationally and endangering the lives, health, and happiness of others, I find myself extremely angry and intolerant. My social media feeds are filled with the most vicious and nasty comments and I am paring back my “friends” list.
As I have stated before and continue to profess,
There is nothing about my religion or politics that requires me to convince you that I am right and you are wrong. There is also nothing that requires me to listen to your bullshit.
When I have the ability, I will continue to support the unalienable rights promised in the Declaration of Independence: Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. There is no person who needs to “earn” those rights. As the Declaration says, they are “endowed by their creator.” That’s why they don’t show up in the first ten amendments to the constitution referred to as the “Bill of Rights.” They are not constitutional rights. They are above that.
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In my writing, you will continue to find people of all races, religions, sexual preferences, sexual identities, and ability or disabilities. I will continue to explore ethical issues and treat as honestly as I can the issues of individual and social injustice that are around us. I will always be ‘on the side’ of the weak and underrepresented. I will always try to find their strengths and support them.
Will I always be successful? Hardly!
My newest work, Soulmates, begins posting for the public on SOL today (Sunday 1/26/2025). My Sneak Peek patrons are weeks ahead of the public in their reading of the serial. The eBook will be available in mid-February.
This is the story of telepaths and includes their struggle with the ethics of hearing other people’s thoughts. Is it ethical to be a voyeur, even when no one is hurt by it? If they can mentally order someone to stop a harmful action, does that make it ethical for them to do so? How harmful? ‘Don’t kidnap that person,’ or ‘Stop smoking!’?
I may resolve that issue before you actually read about it. On the other hand, I might find no resolution.
But, of course, there will be sex!
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Next week, I will have started full out working on my next work in progress, Forever Yours. I’ll talk about some of the issues I’m facing in writing a story about a young man and his work with artificial intelligence.
In case you hadn't noticed, I failed to get it up today. Lots of work this week and I just didn't get to the blog. Here's to next week!
This is number ninety-five in the blog series, “My Life in Erotica.” I encourage you to join my Patreon community to support my writing.
A LOVELY STRIPPER friend of mine was talking with me a few weeks ago and said, “I didn’t go to work or on my date last night because I thought I had strep. Because morals, you know?” It turned out she was especially concerned about exposing me to her germs because of my age and my recent heart condition. What a sweetheart!
Morals!
According to Merriam-Webster—as good a source for definitions as I need—morals describe one’s particular values concerning what is right and what is wrong.
This is another case in which I find society has twisted a meaning to its own convenience. People seldom evaluate their own thoughts and actions based on their morals. Morals have instead become what we judge others by. “She’s a stripper. That’s immoral!” No, it’s not. She’s a fine young woman with a healthy understanding of what is right and wrong that is not based on a bunch of archaic rules that certain people attempt to wield over others. Her morals are based on care and concern for others, and rule her own personal conduct.
While that’s a good object lesson regarding what I mean when I say "morals," it doesn’t really focus on why I think fiction has some kind of moral obligation. So, I’ll clarify the title.
My Moral Obligation when Writing Fiction—Even Erotica.
There, now you can breathe a sigh of relief because I am not holding all written fiction to the standard of my morals, as some people would do. (Like my ex.) I would suggest that all writers should abide by their own morals when writing fiction because as a reader, I attempt to decipher the writer’s morals from what he or she has written. Fiction tells a lot about the author.
Last week, I cited my sister complaining that the father in a story was not like our father. I said, “It’s fiction. Not our father.” The problem was that I described an event and some physical characteristics of our father. But I then went on to describe the father I wished I had rather than the one I had. And in fact, I described the father I wanted to be.
That’s true in several of my stories that have a father figure. The father in Soulmates, hopefully releasing at the end of the month, is based on what I would want to do if I was in the position of being a single father of a five-year-old with a disability. Even as I was writing, I constantly questioned whether David was doing enough and whether that was the best I could hope to do. As in real life, I had too much opportunity to not live up to my own morals.
In Devon Layne’s Erotic Paranormal Romance Western Adventures, published in 2013-2017, I dealt with some touchy issues of incest. In Redtail, Cole is in love with his cousin Mary Beth. When he time travels, he falls in love with a woman who turns out to be his great grandmother. But when they meet, they are the same age and not related. My morals say intergenerational incest is not right. It is voided by the situational ethics of their meeting.
On the other hand, Ramie and Kyle in Blackfeather are half-siblings. When there is no issue of power of one party over the other, I don’t have a difficulty with sibling or cousin incest. Note, however, that I won’t cross the line into incest if there is an issue of one party having power over the other. That is against my morals. I believe in informed consent among equals.
In Yelloweye, half-siblings Phile and Caitlin share a bond with each other over centuries as they live two lifetimes simultaneously. In one they are not related, but in both they share a mystical connection that overrides their kinship.
But will you ever see a parent-child incest story from my pen? Let all the powers that be strike me down before I cross that moral line.
The Erotic Paranormal Romance Western Adventures are available as both a collection and individual eBooks on Bookapy. Paperbacks are available online.
I think that the primary moral obligation I have in fiction is honesty. I can create a new universe and establish the rules that govern it. 1+1=3? Okay, as long as I’ve developed a mathematical system for that universe that is consistent with that rule and I honestly follow it. Obviously, there are easier things to create in a universe. In the Soulmates universe, there are people who can hear others’ thoughts. But those people need to deal with the ethics of voyeurism! Maybe it’s okay and even unavoidable in some instances, but in others, people have a right to privacy. Much of the story revolves around finding that moral divide.
In the Model Student series, I created a character who was depressed. I felt morally obligated to honestly deal with depression. Having Tony cured because he has sex and awards for his paintings isn’t honest. That’s not how depression works.
Whatever construct around which I build a universe, I need to honestly fit my characters and action into. The most difficult aspect I deal with is creating a universe that doesn’t cross my own moral boundaries.
For example, I believe that all sexual encounters need to be consensual. If there is a rape, it is evil—no questions asked. I do not differentiate between ‘rape’ and ‘non-consensual.’ One is the definition of the other. Therefore, I consider all the mind-control stories I’ve read to be stories of rape.
So, how could I justify my Demon Bob taking possession of five women who will do anything for him? First of all, he's a demon! However, in each of those cases, the women were given the opportunity to opt out. Each of the five asked to be possessed. Five in 4,000 years was pretty good because Bob actively attempted to avoid possessing people.
I mentioned last week that I wrote a story in 2012 that was a mind-control story. The woman was helpless to disobey the voice of command she heard in her head. But the voice of command proves to be her own split personality giving her commands, not an outside person. Reconciling her multiple personalities is the real crux of the story.
Whatever the issue, I believe I have to deal with it honestly, even if I’ve written a character who does not conform to my morals.
You will find that I deal with social issues like rich vs. poor, gay rights, women’s rights, transgender rights, depression, injury, autism, and Asperger’s, among others, as honestly and straight-forwardly as possible. I owe it to those characters to not take shortcuts with them or provide miracles.
And I owe it to my readers, whether I’m writing a literary fiction about a man with no memory, or an erotic figure who equates pleasure with pain. It would be immoral of me not to treat them honestly.
Pretty bold statements, right? Well, you might as well know now that I fail as often as I succeed. When you set a high standard for yourself, it’s really easy not to live up to it. Next week: “Failing.”
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