RW chapters 5 - 7, or progress that isn't.

Quite frankly, I'm frustrated right now.

Why?

I hate not making any progress, and right now I'm deleting more words than the word count bar at the side is gaining. And it's not only writer's block I'm talking about.

Fact is, re-orienting the characters has been a lot of fun, to see them all grown up and acting like independent people, live different lives. It gave me a boost that got 20k words written almost by themselves. The stage was set, all is well, things will just go like that until the end!

Yeah, right.

We all knew this was going to happen eventually. Or at least I knew. My usual writing process works in leaps and bounds - 20k in 2-3 days is normal for me, followed by a couple of days of writing downtime. Sometimes that's due to life happening. More often, I get writer's block, as if my brain needed a couple of days to catch up. Maybe it does. I don't know.

Fact is, I've written and re-written the last 3 chapters so often that by now I should be well past the climax of the story. Where I am, actually, is stuck at the downtime after the beginning.

What happens, in-story, compared to what happened, in-fanfic? Well, we're at the first-scene to second-threesome stage. Now, because Erin and Simon are neither star-crossed lovers nor re-discovered soulmates, the bond between them is a very different one than Bella and Edward shared in HBR at this time. No confessions of love, no spending each waking moment together, no sleepovers and sneaky sex in the back of cinemas. Instead, they just resume their lives, for good and for worse, and set out to do more exploring.

Draft 1 of the first playroom scene was painful. Less for Erin to experience, more for me to write. A whole slew of revisions later, and I'm happy with it, and pre-reader feedback is good, very solid, even though I already have a short list of things to re-work there, too. What counts is that the framework fits, and the characters react the way I want them to. Curious, excited, but no one's losing their hearts yet. Firm, confident, with an unexpected twist. They harmonize, finally I've found their balance. Took me almost a week, and that for one lousy chapter! And now 11k words, that's at least good news. Up to 2k of that might get re-arranged into another chapter, but they fit, and will be kept.

Next up, transition to the second threesome - which is, hands down, my favorite scene in HBR. Besides one other scene in ABD, it's the kink part that got the most flak. It got all the "OMG he's not a real Dom!" complaints. It made me want to punch people in the face. It hurt me a lot, personally, because unlike large parts of the story, it cut very close to home.

Naturally, I wanted to keep their little forest adventure in the story. It sounded so good in my head. It worked so well as a plot device to help Erin get more comfortable with her submissive side, and it did a lot to establish the bond between Simon and Jack.

The problem? I can't write it.

Why?

That's been the question I've been pondering for the past week. Normally, I get blocked because I can't settle on the details. I don't "see" what is going on. Here? No problems with the seeing, a couple of insomnia ridden nights have helped me A LOT with streamlining the cinematics inside my head. So why can't I write it?

Last night, thanks to cheerleader #1, I finally pinned it down. The problem is, as usual, the girl.

With Bella, it was easy to get her pretty much everywhere I needed her to be, as long as she was making some kind of progress, got some kind of positive attention, ended up feeling better about herself. The upside of writing a doormat character - you can't do anything wrong. Even a step backward is a step forward, because it gives you another opportunity to push forward.

Erin is not a doormat.

She's a very confident, down to earth character. Chapter 6, the transition, does a great job to establish that she is socially awkward at times, too, that she prefers to let others take the spotlight place when it doesn't concern her domain - the OR. We haven't yet seen her at work, but that will change. Still, she has very different priorities in life - sex, and coming to terms with her sexual desires, is on the bottom of that list. Yes, she's curious to explore with Simon. Yes, if it fits her schedule she's all for another threesome. Yes, if you dangle that carrot in front of her face she will eventually bite. But only if it fits into her work schedule, if it doesn't keep her from doing research, and if she gets her 4 hours of sleep each night.
There are a lot of things that Bella would have jumped on that Erin would barely consider doing. I tried pushing her into the right direction, but she just wouldn't go. She blocked me. A week of tug-o-war later, and I've finally given in.

Scene postponed to book 2!

Now, of course, there's the matter of what to write instead.

The second big issue I'm still fighting with (and now it got twice as annoying as when I set out) is that I really don't want this novel to be just smut. Yes, there is a lot of sex involved, and not just gratuitous sex, it's connected to the plot and character development - but still, it's sex.

I need sex for the BDSM angle - A

I need sex to set up the poly angle - B

I need sex to set up the love angle - C

There's some overlapping, of course, but not that much. Already, there's a lot less sex than in HBR. But I can't do without a limited backbone of:

First time they fuck - AB; first scene - A; 2nd threesome, used to be planned AB, now more firmly B; 2nd scene - A; plot point - C; 3rd threesome - BC; at that point, the B angle gets cut off until book 2, the plot takes over until the very end, with one more AC scene to fluff it all up a little.

If you remember, of that 39/40 chapters of HBR, there were at least twice as many sex-heavy chapters there. And that was okay, because half the scenes were there to give people a more accurate glimpse at what BDSM can be than, well, most fanfic still is. They did a lot to build up Bella's confidence, but really, they weren't essential, and wouldn't fir Erin, at all.

I guess what I want to say is that 6 sex scenes, almost back to back with only a little talk and off-time between them do seem like a lot of sex to me. Can I cut it back? No way. 3 scenes I need to let Erin see that yes, she really is a kinky girl, and liking it. 3 threesomes I need to establish that the three of them connect on a sexual level, and not just E-S or E-J. Having just one no kink, no threesome sex scene between E and S is the minimum to get them hooked up for real - more isn't needed, either, or the plot climax wouldn't work with them.

Why am I still whining? Because we've been watching Leverage with our morning coffee. Now I'm off to re-write chapters 6 and 7 of the re-write. Does that constitute a re-re-write?

Word count? What do you mean, word count?

I don't know if you've noticed, but I've greatly reduced the estimated word count of the first book. I don't know where I got the magic number 350k from, but I've since changed it to 150k. Following the formula that a page are an estimated 250 words, that would make the finished book end up a comfy 600 pages.

Ah, well.

The upside of the reduction is that I'm no longer 9% done, but at a whopping 21%!

If I keep going at this speed, I should be done with book one by mid August.
Now, is this a realistic estimate? No way. But having 1/5 of the book written in under a week feels damn good!

Depending on how things are shaping up, I might write until I'm done - or, more likely, run head-on into a block - but if you end up having to wait longer for book one, book two will be following sooner after that.

Happy Sunday everyone!

Step Two: Meet Erin, Simon, and Jack

Writing fanfic has two advantages - you don't have to obsess over who the characters are, and it usually takes only a quick round of pick-and-rearrange to know where, how, and with whom they will end up.

For me, the expectation readers develop because of that have sometimes led to disappointment. Why? Because along the way I tend to forget that the characters have started out as fanfic characters, and of course people still see them as that even through they've become completely 'mine' by now.

That's one of the fears I still have, for the new project - you know who they were, you remember what I turned them into, and I will have to write against some of those expectations to let you see who I see in them. Because for every, "I knew this would happen, after all, it's Edward!" I know I did a bad job making you forget all about the sparkling vampire.

I think this was also one of the three main reasons that kept me from heading down the road of self-publishing. In the end, the solution presented itself only after I took the plunge.

I have no idea how other writers handle their re-writes. I've only once done something similar, with SuitGuy's POV of BMBM; Because of the many dialogues that are vital for the story, where the direct speech stays the same, I had to resort to a line-by-line rewrite mode - and I hated those parts of the story, while reveling into showing every sordid detail he picked up on that BucketGirl never noticed. One might have thought that it had occurred to me much sooner what to do:

Re-read the original chapter.
Then sit down and freely write what happened again.

Sounds easily enough, right? Too easy?

Well, turns out it's the concept that works well for me, right now. After sitting down, opening a gdoc, and starting to type, the characters started talking to me again. It's a little like coming home - to people I've never met.

World, please meet Erin.
You will spend a lot of time with her, because she is the main, and single POV, character of the story. An ambition doctor in her early thirties, she has spent the last years speeding on the fast track to success - without realizing that, along the way, she forgot what it means to really live life. Now she sets out to find herself, and still has no idea who she will find.

Her best friend, Jack, knows what it means to live, because he's done nothing but live for the past couple of years. He never missed an opportunity, he did it all, and isn't shy to let the world know about it. He sees people for who they are, and isn't afraid to help them along where he thinks they should be going.

Like his roommate since college, Simon, an introverted writer who puts a new meaning to the old phrase that quiet waters run deep. Unlike Erin and Jack, he has long since come to terms with who he is and what he wants, but the problem is that one doesn't make him happy, and the other seems unobtainable.

I can only speak from my own assessment and the comments of one of my pre-readers, but so far it's been smooth sailing. I don't see much of Bella in Erin anymore, and I'm not sure that half of you would fall over yourself to slobber over Simon. But, I hope, that this time around most will see why neither of them can do without Jack for long.

So, what's with the changes?
For the most part, I want to take the sap and unnecessary insecurity out of my characters.
If you take Bella, there was only one reason why she was a lost puppy at the beginning of HBR - I needed her to be weak because I thought that was the way to write her. She had to bumble from mishap to mishap so she could grow, and I could point my finger at her and say, 'Look, don't be that woman forever!'. She was a tool, and I abused her, and I was so damn glad when we finally got to chapter 26 so that she could, if I may paraphrase LotR here, wake up and find that she is strong. In the turn of one day and five chapters she shed her training wheels, took over the helm, and single-handedly established herself as the rock Edward could cling to until he'd managed to re-assemble himself.
There is a lot of appeal in writing a character like her. And I LOVED letting her find her backbone. I just don't think I can ever again write a female character as weak and prone to stereotypical mishaps as her.

Then again, I never got to completely resolve the beef that I've always had with Edward.
Edward was, for lack of a better term, the typical romance novel hero. Don't believe me? Well, you're reading the words of the woman who still insists that TEMC Edward was the closest to original Edward that she ever wrote.
In short, he was lost and needed to be saved by the woman who'd love him unconditionally.
My problems with that? I like my men to be strong. Because they are the men my kick-ass women choose, and why should she choose someone who will inevitably drag her down the moment his foundations are shaken? He was always too soft, too needy. It was a tremendous challenge to explore his character - and one I thoroughly enjoyed, even more from his POV in ABD than through Bella's eyes before. But, like with her, I don't want to write him again.

Now, with Erin and Simon, am I not cutting away the parts that made their previous versions who they were?
To some extend, yes, but I'm not going to leave those wounds open, the empty space unfilled. Instead, I'm trying to rebuild them as more complicated characters with flaws that sit deeper (and are impossible to root out) by anything that will happen to them. You won't sympathize with them because you have pity for their clumsy ways, nor fall for them because they are so dreamy and perfect. They are older than their counterparts, they've had seven additional years that have shaped them, destroyed their illusions, made them realize that sometimes, the small things in life are what we value most.
Will you still care about them? Love them? Scream at them, cry with them, yearn for them to get the ending they deserve? I hope so, and if I have a say in it, more than you did before, because they will feel like real people, not half animated cut-outs.

I'm not sure how much of that is wishful thinking, or mostly noticeable to me because I have to know the characters in and out to write them well, but in the end what I actually write won't be that different.

Except for one thing: There won't be any confessions of undying, never-ending love in chapter 2. Or 3, as it is, right now. Think that might be a dealbreaker? You'll have to read it to find out!

Step One - Changes

I want to make a difference, so I have to change things. 

A good place to start for that is taking what critique my esteemed readers (and now I'm looking at you, guys, who keep cheering me on!) have left me over the years. That includes the following:

• The story was meant to educate and showcase a BDSM relationship in its many levels and facettes. Consequently, the balance between sex and plot was a little lopsided.
• Some character reactions were too predictable, because they weren't based on the part of the character that came from me, but was inspired by the original.
• Some things that were meant as almost inconsequential somehow managed to get blown out of proportions.
• Some incredibly important things were swallowed by the drama
• Because I was writing fanfiction, I built the story around what I figured were my readers' expectations, and only broke that like when necessary.

What does that mean mean for the new project? Less sex, and more talk. Sounds boring? After re-working what was the original 10k one-shot I think it works (although no cuts on sex have yet been made).

The second consequence is that I've decided to re-invent my characters, particularly two of the three main protagonists.

Here's a list of my own 'complaints':

• While I loved writing them all, some of the sex scenes are not fundamental to the plot, and will consequently be cut. Yes, it was fun to play dress-up, but does it in any way reflect on the character's development, on their own or as a couple? Cut.
• Bella and Edward have always rubbed me the wrong way with their whininess. Flaws are what makes a good character great - they both deserve to get pushed out of the 'mediocre' category. Once HBR was over, B was where I wanted her to be, but I never managed with E. Don't get me wrong, I LOVE them the way they are - but if I write a new story, I want to write ht people who will stand in their places differently.
• When I started turning the o/s into a fic, I knew where I wanted to go, but not where I'd end up. Now I know, so I'm going to cut a few corners, and widen a few narrow trails into paved roads.
• I put a lot of thought into what I wanted my readers subjected to in terms of fetishes and practice. Several things made more people uncomfortable than I expected, for many reasons. I'm going to cut some of those scenes completely, defuse most of the rest, and balance the ones I cannot do without so that hopefully people will read them the way I wrote them, without too much ground of misinterpretation that I left the first time around.

And that's my plan.

Besides all the planned changes, a lot of things will stay the same - the dynamic between the characters, the fundamental problems they face, the mistakes the make, the solutions they will find. I still hope I can surprise you in a few places, but my goal is to present you with a more mature version of the story you loved in the first place.

What? Why?

I'd like to start this post with a statement, a statement that incidentally sums up how I'm feeling right now, about this project and in general: I'm really fucking excited!!

To bring everyone up to speed, here's a quick rundown on the 'what'.
A little over three years ago, I started writing a story. It was meant to be a one-shot, for a contest, held by a writer I admired a lot (and that hasn't changed to this day). With 10.000 words restriction, I didn't have much wriggle room around the sex, so I did my best to quickly establish the characters - who they are, where they came from, and what got them together in that room, that very day - so I could do justice to the first ever MMF threesome I've ever written.

Considering those restrictions, and the fact that it was the first explicit kinky smut I wrote for an audience that had shunned me for writing sex at all at one time, I think I did a decently good job.

The story that developed from that one-shot is still what I consider my first 'real' story - plotted from start to finished, and executed in a timely fashion. Others, among them the 2nd part, have followed, but HBR will always have a very special place in my heart.

For two and a half years I've stuck with these characters, I've lived and breathed their emotions, conflicts, doubts, and triumphs, and sending them off into the endless sunset of completed works has been a wonderful, if somewhat sad, moment.

Of course, there's always been the possibility of writing outtakes (I promised. People asked. Nothing happened. I'm still sorry about that!), but they've been through so much, I guess I wanted to let them rest.

Other stories followed, but whenever I thought back to the beginning - and the middle - or the end, I got sentimental. And just a little sad that, in many ways, I always felt like I hadn't written the story to its full potential. I don't know what started that, but I couldn't shut it off after someone asked me what I would have done differently.

What ifs, aren't those the worse haunts?

People have repeatedly asked me if I was going to publish and of my fanfics. The answer has always been a (nice, but still) no. Why? Because part of the characters and story is another person's property, and I don't steal.

But...

Does it still feel like stealing if I try to purge the story of any influence of the original, and see if what comes out at the other end is completely my creation?

In the end, a hateful review is to blame for me making the jump.
And it wasn't even left for HBR or ABD.

For the longest time, I thought that TEMC was a lot more suited for rework than my kinky epic. For one thing, it's shorter. For another, using negative rather than positive attributes of the original characters to create mine made them feel less, well, like fanfic characters to me. It was easier to call them 'my own.'
Then came that review, which I replied to only in my head, but in many scathing, perfectly phrased arguments. Which got me thinking. And thinking.

Just changing some minor details, and maybe re-arranging a couple of things, wouldn't do it for that I had in mind. Call it standards, or being a perfectionist, but if I was going to tackle this behemoth to wrestle it into novel shape, I might as well do the best job I could - and that means a real re-write, not a copy/paste job with a few changed words in the middle.

Welcome to my journey.

p.s. I'm talking entirely about myself, and my story. In no way do I even imply that anyone who went a different way didn't do justice to their work, or stole someone else's property, or is a despicable loser. Unless we're talking about a story where, character names and descriptions included, there are less than 12% difference between the fanfic, and the novel.

15k down (almost), so many more to go

Just a quick first post (so I have something to set the blog up with) - and a little reminder  to myself that I started the whole process of turning two of my most beloved fics - Heartbreak Remedy and A Beautiful Disaster - into fully fleshed-out, original novels at noon, July 18. Two days later, I've roughly covered what has been the initial one-shot that started the whole she-bang, and I'm already running 5k longer. Not much of a surprise, seeing as I've added a lot of the important who-is-who and backstory that the o/s lacked - it was never intended to be more than a titillating piece of kinky smut, after all.