CWatson: Blog

I've had a chance to do a retrospective recently.

In 2018, I made a concerted effort to get off of Facebook as a platform. Instead, I shifted to Reddit. One could claim that this isn't an improvement, and obviously there's an argument to be made, but I like that it harkens back to the older days of the internet, when all you had was a screen name and a body of work with which to make your point or build your reputation. It was more of a meritocracy that way, the same way this site is. And, honestly, I've never had problems with a meritocracy; I'm good at figuring out what makes you stand out, both in a good way and a bad way. I digress.

I spend most of my time at the r/relationship_advice subreddit, handing out what knowledge or wisdom I have. (That's the other reason Reddit appeals to me more than Facebook: I'm a natural showoff -- always have been -- and anonymity lets me express that more.) Recently, someone showed up with a question: "My girlfriend wants me to get a job, whereas I want to focus on getting back to my literary pursuits." There are a lot of people who know about relationships, and there are a lot of people who know about writing, but not quite as many who can speak with confidence on both. I dashed off a quick comment reminding him that, if he really loves writing, he'll love it even when he comes home after his 8-hour shift (and that, if he doesn't love it that much, maybe this novel isn't very important to him), and that was that.

Until I got curious and started looking at his actual body of work. Currently he's self-serializing his work, about 2,000 words per chapter, and while he's convinced he knows what he's doing, I'm not sure I agree.

Part of it is just egotism: the post immediately prior to the question of how to get his girlfriend to support him was a screed about how he's a literary genius being failed by the system: how come he, with his high-and-mighty Master of Fine Arts degree, is getting no applause when uneducated losers have thousands of followers? The ones afterward were him bringing his get-my-girlfriend-to-support-me question to the r/AmIWrong and r/AmITheAsshole communities, where he was roundly dismissed as, yes, being the asshole -- especially after someone did an even deeper dive into his posting history and noted that he and the girlfriend have a child together, whom he never mentions in any of his questions about what he thinks his girlfriend owes him. Einstein never said, "Insanity is trying the same thing twice and expecting completely different results the second time" -- it was actually a mystery novelist -- and calling it "insanity" is a little unfair; it's insecurity that drives such behavior. But, given the behavior of this Redditor guy, I think we can safely infer the existence of the insecurity. We can even make guesses as to what it is.

But the other part is that his writing just isn't very good. He's writing it like a gritty hard-boiled murder mystery, but the title and plot seem to suggest it's a romance. Now, obviously, one could combine the two -- I myself arguably did in A Love for the Ages -- but this is hampered by the narrative tone, which is, simply put, also egotistical: the narrator clearly believes himself superior to everyone around him. The narrative itself also doesn't disagree, refusing to puncture the bubble of his ego by highlighting his flaws or even admit that he has any. Unreliable narrators aren't the easiest thing in the world to write, but I've done it, so a literary genius ought to be able to do the same. From a technical standpoint, the story is very good -- this writer does, factually speaking, have command of the English language; I'm sorry to be unkind, but, in terms of actually constructing sentences and following the rules of formal English, he's better than 90% of the people here. But somewhere along the way this guy got the idea that having command of the rules of formal English somehow makes him a genius. He got a lot of feedback, basically universal, that his story isn't very good, but I was the first to write a substantive reply with actual literary analysis of his work. I sincerely doubt he'll take it seriously -- cf the insecurity -- but if he ever gets over himself, he'll have a place to start.

But the reason I'm bringing that here is not because I want to pat myself on the back. (I mean, I do -- I'm still a showoff -- but that's not the only reason.) I'm bringing it here because it got me thinking about my own journey as a writer.

For me, like for this Reddit guy, it started with ego: I was 7 years old and my grade school teacher told me that I was pretty good at writing, and because I have a perfectionist mother, that was the first time anyone had ever told me I was good at anything, so I kept doing it. But, since my mother is a perfectionist, I became one myself; I started pushing myself to not just write beyond my grade level but with actual skill and ability. Additionally, I've identified myself as an otrovert -- a recently invented term for people who feel like outsiders no matter where they are and no matter what community they are surrounded with. Perhaps this is why I have always kept to the fringes of organized art. In terms of writing, I started off hanging out with the fanfic types. In terms of my other major creative life, music, I gravitated to contemporary a cappella, which has a hard time achieving much legitimacy because, at least in the years before Pentatonix, it revolves around covers -- musical fanfic, in other words. In both places, there are structural barriers to achieving financial recognition for your work. In writing I've since moved on to this world, erotica, but that also has structural barriers in terms of pornography's dismal reputation as art. In other words, I have spent my entire creative life in places that are considered illegitimate in various ways.

And, honestly, I think I had the better creative upbringing than he did.

First off, the margins are where the real creativity lives. The mere act of creation is already a copyright violation, so I'm already breaking rules; I might as well break some more while I'm at it. People start doing whatever they feel like, creatively speaking. Now, sure, most of what they write turns out to be crap -- Sturgeon's Law will never be false -- but when you're starting out, your objective isn't to produce salable fiction, your objective is to learn to produce salable fiction, and you learn more from mistakes than successes. Having freedom to make them is crucial.

Second off, the margins are where real creativity lives, because -- to quote Mark Rosewater -- restriction breeds creativity. The more rules you have to follow, not because they're imposed by your teacher (whom you don't respect) but by the intellectual property itself (which you do), the more you have to flex your creative muscles to get the story where you want it to be.

Fanfic is also helpful because it takes away the burden of that most terrifying thing to any creative: the blank page. A blank page is terrifying because the empty spaces are interlocked: "I can't decide on my theme until I understand my characters, but I can't decide on my characters until I understand the setting, but I can't decide on the setting until I understand my plot, but I can't decide on my plot until I understand my theme." "Do I dare / Disturb the universe?" T. S. Eliot asks: "In a minute there is time / For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse." Such it is when contemplating the blank page: it's nothing but ripple effects for days on end. But if you're working in an established IP with its own rules and conventions; part of the blank page is already filled in for you. This lets you study those ripples in isolation, learning how everything interlocks, and gradually learn how to set them in stone yourself when it's just you and an actually blank page.

And finally... Well, some of this might just be the otroversion talking. But all of this, at least for me, combined to make a sense of humility. I can -- I'm not trying to brag here, this is a statement of fact -- I can write. I can produce stories with interesting characters, resonant themes, reasonable plots and reasonable settings. (Those latter two are rarely inspired, but then I don't really go for big dramatic swings anyhow.) I've written comedy, drama and tragedy; I've written romance, mystery, science-fiction and fantasy; I've written short stories and longer novels. I have a fairly thorough command of the medium... And, because I largely developed that command in these "illegitimate" places, I don't believe that entitles me to anything at all. I believe I still need to prove myself to the world at large. I assume I'm a bad writer until proven otherwise. (I assume I can prove otherwise, but not necessarily that I have.) And that's why, when I look over at ZBookStore and see that I have sold a whopping $98 USD in ebooks... I'm over the moon! It implies that maybe I am a good writer. It implies that maybe I'm not wrong about my self-assessment. It implies that hundreds of hours of effort may have been successful.

Because I don't charge in and assume that I'm a good writer. And, perhaps more importantly, I have enough self-esteem to accept that some people disagree.

That's the thing about the Reddit guy. He isn't insisting his work is good because he has a big image of himself. He's doing that because he has a small one. He's one voice yelling against a crowd, trying to insist that up is down and the sky is orange, because he doesn't have enough self-esteem to accept he might be wrong. And, maybe I'm talking out of my ass here -- it's not like I'll ever have the chance to go back and try it the other way -- but I think it's easier to avoid that pitfall if you start by internalizing the idea that you are bad, at least until proven otherwise, and that your goal is to prove otherwise. I don't know whether Reddit Guy's attitude is healthier than mine -- there's an obvious bias at play -- but all I'm saying is that it's possible to have a different attitude than his.

And all I'm saying is, between him and me, only one of us is happy with his life's work.

https://zbookstore.com/a/408/cwatson

Due partially to the content scare poor Lazeez went through in March, I have started an account to sell my fiction. This way you can have a copy to take around with you wherever you go.

I will not be taking down my stories here. I have always strived to produce work of salable quality, something that a reader could purchase without feeling that they have been unfairly charged. I dare say I have succeeded. That being said, I also released these works with the implicit understanding that I never would be paid for them, due to a combination of the chosen subject matter and a lack of venue. The former has been tweaked; the latter is ZBookStore. So here I am. Would I like to be paid for my efforts? Obviously. But I do not demand it. If you should choose to spend your hard-earned cash on my efforts, I will take it for what it is: an enormous, incredible compliment. And if you don't think me worth that compliment, well, don't pay me. I've gotten along without payment for two decades; I can continue that way some more. =)

Thanks for reading, and thanks for reading!

I've been alerted to the situation on Amazon and am working on resolving the matter. Thank you to aroslav for publicizing the situation, and to all the individual SOL members who have contacted me. (Good to know that people still remember me even though I haven't published here in close to a decade!)

I received a feedback from someone on this site today. I thought I'd just share our dialogue.

Message from: [thisdude's@email.com] :

I've avoided correcting you so far, but this is a
major issue.

"No, that's not how it works," Jenny said, combing
hair from her eyes, that old familiar gesture.
"The Female Pill works by altering a woman's
hormonal balance right before ovulation so that
she doesn't release an egg. You know this, you had
Sex Ed class same as I did."

The female pill is not contraceptive.
It causes a ABORTION.

The uterus (womb) is not allowed to prepare for a
fertilized egg. The egg can be successfully
fertilized in the fallopian tube. Life begins with
cell division. However without the supportive
environment of the uterus, the zygote (fertilized
ovum) is aborted and sloughed off with the menses.

What's the difference, you may ask?
The difference is in propagating ignorance.
All ignorance can and does lead to bad choices.

[dude] - father of 5 and grandfather of 8


Mr. [dude],

I thank you for your feedback. However, I'm concerned for your confidence, as I'm fairly sure you have many of your facts wrong.

First off, you failed to provide sources for your claim that hormone-based contraception changes the conditions of the uterus. To be honest, it would not surprise me if your claim was true, as altering uterine conditions (essentially, encouraging menstruation on the spot) would indeed be an effective method of pregnancy prevention... But a quick check of Wikipedia suggests that this is not the action at all. Both the standard Pill (estrogen/progestogen) and its alternative (progestogen only) are listed as inhibiting ovulation. And yes, you could claim that Wikipedia is wrong... But if you plan to do this, I want to see your facts. Wikipedia prides itself on having citations so that you can track down why it claims the things it does. You need to do the same.

Secondly, I would like your facts on how life begins at cell division. The same is true of plants and animals, but we harvest them at our own whims. Obviously, it is believed that human beings have a soul... But where is it contained? When is it gifted to the body? The first thing that develops of a human embryo is actually its anus; am I to believe that my soul resides in my butt? Especially since electrical brain activity, the surest sign of developing sentience, only begins in the fifth or sixth week? Where are your rebuttals?

The answer lies in the tone of your message, which is in itself the third thing I need to address. You see, you are here to evangelize. You call upon the moral authority of your five children and eight grandchildren... even though you are aware (since you've read my stories) that I do not believe that parenthood is an automatic guarantor of wisdom. There's also your slogan, "Life begins at cell division" - a well-known and well-publicized catchphrase for the crowd who call themselves "pro-life". I am mistrustful of such people because, as you yourself have said, "All ignorance can and does lead to bad choices"... And the Pro-Life crowd seems insistent on maintaining ignorance, and thus bad choices, in their followers. The alternatives to abortion are things like easily-accessible contraception and sex education--things Pro-lifers oppose. The result is a world where everyone has no choice, except to bear whatever children they happen to conceive. And what of that child's fate?--A child (let's call him "Brandon Chambers") born to parents who don't want him and have little interest in raising him well. The Pro-Lifer says, "I don't care. But, as it happens, I mostly oppose welfare and the Dole and free public education - you know, the sort of things that might help him make a life for himself." When he is in the womb, Brandon is their responsibility, but for the sixty or eighty years after, he's on his own. And, as Sister Joan Chittister put it, "That's not pro-life. That's pro-birth." Like you, like any sane person, I want to see abortion relegated to the dustbin of history... But I believe the road to that happy future lies not in making it illegal, but in making it unnecessary. And to make it unnecessary we need birth control and sex education and children who can make wise choices because they know their options. The day a pro-lifer advocates those things, I will gladly join his cause... But I don't know if it will ever happen any time soon.

Finally, I would like you to be aware that I am blocking your e-mail address forthwith. I am always happy to discuss fiction as a craft with readers, or talk about my stories, and even - if you're feeling particularly brave - discuss politics. But you are not here for discussion. You are here to evangelize, with no intention of taking "No" for an answer. You are here to push your politics into my story. And sir, let me tell you a secret: Your politics do not belong in my story. Hell, my politics don't belong in my story. Nobody's do. And your attempt to twist my work to your own ends shows a gross lack of respect for me as a person, and for my work - whether you call it art, entertainment or even just a handy fantasy to jack off to.

Ignorance can and does lead to bad choices. So please, for your own sake, remember what a very wise man once said: take the plank of ignorance out of your own eye first, before trying to tackle that speck of sawdust in your brother's.

good-bye,
~CWatson

I'm not posting this to pat myself on the back. I'm posting this to make something clear: Don't try to tell me what to think. In the past I have resisted people attempting to shape my stories artistically, and this is me fending off the politicians too. I do ask for help with my work, and if I want it I will talk to you about it. (If you want to be part of that crowd, friending me on Facebook is a good bet.) Other than that, please - for the love of God - let me do my work in peace.

No, that's not the name of my next story, though I do have one in the works that hopefully will show up here. Not any time soon, though; I currently work for a small video-games company and we are amidst a major push to get our next product out the door. It's exciting: we're trying to make the first hardcore RTS for iPad. E-mail me for details if you so desire. But no, that's not what I came to talk about here.

If you're on this website, you probably have, you know, needs--or, as I like to call them, "manly urges," because 'manly' is an inherently funny word. Also, if you are at thi swebsite, you may have difficulty fulfilling your manly urges: for optimum fulfilment, one desires womanly co-operation, and womenfolk are sometimes uninterested in aiding a man in this quest. So, one turns to alternative, sometimes artificial, means.

All of which is simply a fancy way of saying, This is a post about sex toys.

Most sex toys designed for men are tacky, absurd, occasionally frightening, and--most importantly--some combination of "awkward", "unsatisfying" and "expensive". Since the seventeenth century man has struggled to make himself an artificial sex partner, generally succeeding in some ways but failing on others. The most basic ones for sale today are hand-held and typically made of rubber, silicone gel or some other semi-stretchy material. They range upward from there to full-blown silicone dolls, five feet or more in height and close to 100 pounds in weight, and costing thousands of dollars. All in the search of something to boink when you can't find someone to boink.

Almost all of these products have serious shortcomings. Smaller ones are portable but sacrifice almost all of the "simulation" parts of the toy; you move the thing up and down and it feels like you're jacking off. Additionally, unless you're using a Japanese "meiki" toy (see toydemon.com), the inside of the object might not bear any resemblance whatsoever to an actual vagina. For a more realistic feel, you have to scale up into larger and larger toys... which gets more expensive and more unwieldy. There's the Fleshlight, which is about as good as the handheld ones get; there are larger products designed to resemble the hips and rear end of a woman, typically a porn star; there are larger pieces like Pipedream Products' "Fuck Me Silly" line; and finally the sex dolls, which are full-body silicone instead of inflatable transparent vinyl. The RealDoll, generally accepted to be THE best sex doll around, may give you a full-size fake woman to actually fuck, but how easy is it to manipulate "her" (it) into the positions you want? And how do you clean it up when you're done? And how do you store it?, in an economy where roommates (or--gasp!--living with parents) have become the norm rather than the exception.

And let's not even talk about temperature. These things cool to room temperature--I mean, duh--and that's not necessarily fun to stick your dick in. You can warm them, sure, but the larger the object is, the harder it is to heat. Most toy manufacturers advocate submerging their products in warm water, but that can take ages depending on the size of the object (RealDoll anyone?), and it almost never works anyway: they float. Besides, the moment you take it out, it acts like any wet object does in open air and begins to cool down--especially on the inside, the one place you want it stay warm but also the one place you can't towel off.

All these problems apply, in greater or lesser amounts, to all the products listed. Simply put, the bigger a toy is, the more fun it is to do, but the harder it is to clean, hide and (in some cases) use.

And that's where we finally get round to the title of this post: the Soloflesh. It's the best of both worlds.

Most products are made with pure silicone rubber, but Soloflesh takes it in a different direction by being, essentially, a water balloon crossed with a double-walled drinking cup. The outside curves inwards to create the, well, vagina, creating a semi-hollow object which can be filled with water. It gets up to remarkably life-size proportions; if you use warm water, it also heats up to body temperature, without any of the mess described above. The resulting object does have a water balloon's fragile, unwieldy nature, and the instruction manual (it has an instruction manual) warns not to rest full body weight on it, but you don't have to fill it up to full capacity, and it's arguably easier to use if it isn't.

The water makes it heavy, but also lifelike--the object has pretty realistic physics (which is understandable when you consider that humans are about 60% water by weight) and is fun to spank, if you're into that. Additionally, water changes the sensation of the toy. Most fake pussies create stimulation either through tightness of diameter (some vaginal "openings" are too small to even stick a pinky finger into), really silly interior textures (see: Fleshlight) or by just giving up and providing you with something motorized, like a vacuum pump or a bullet vibrator. The Soloflesh, instead, does it with water: it pushes on the inside passageway, causing it to tighten but also allowing it to expand when penetrated. It's an excellent sensation.

Finally, because of the physics of water, you can lie on your back, stick the thing on facing whatever direction you like, set it rocking... and then go hands-free. There's no other toy on the market which can do this.

No toy is without flaws, and the Soloflesh is no exception. One big one is that it's hard to inflate--you have to create a seal on the faucet with your hand and "overcharge" the object with water to achieve intended functionality. It is fragile and heavy, limiting the ways it can be used, and if it pops you're going to have a disaster area. It's not discreet, since you have to take it to and from the bathroom both before and after use; it can be filled with air, or even used empty, but given that warm water is so much of the device's charm, I can't imagine it would be nearly as satisfying. It does not have an anal opening; I suppose they might create an alternate version which does, but an all-in-one-der is unlikely, given the interior engineering. The texture of the vaginal canal is... well, there isn't one; it's basically perfectly smooth. That isn't a downside per se, but a good interior texture can elevate a toy from "good" to "great" (the Cyberskin Intimates Virtual Sweetheart is nothing but interior texture, but is the most lifelike product I've found) and I feel like an opportunity was lost. And finally, it's rather realistic in visual design, down to the pussy lips, which can be a turn-on for some but a turn-off for others, depending on how you handle the uncanny valley.

I've gone through hundreds of dollars in the past on a quest to find something that works and works well. I think the search is over. The Soloflesh is unlike any other product available, achieving an excellent compromise between practicality and satisfaction. I hope this company goes far, and I'm doing my bit to help them. And for everyone out there who's looking for a different angle on a sex life that is rather more lonely and desperate than they'd like to admit; this is for you too. I've been there, and it sucks. But while we're stuck in this pity party, we might as well have some fun, right?