Big Ed's Place

Remittance Girl recently posted about disclosure, and mused about her own need for emotional privacy, even in blogging and writing. I was touched. As writers, and online bloggers, we tread a fine line between revealing all and maintaining that private space which sustains us and often serves as the wellspring of our best work.

I’ve wondered about it myself quite a bit. Where exactly is the line?

Now many of us maintain online personas that are separate from our daily lives. I try to, though it’s not easy. There are perhaps 20 or 30 people from my daily life who know about this site because I’ve told them. There’s at least one person who found my site first and figured out who I was. Most people I don’t tell, but wouldn’t be too put out if they connected my identities. However, there are probably another dozen people who I absolutely don’t want to connect the two.

That latter list is why I recently did all the legal paperwork so I can do finances and contracts as “Ed Magusson.” It cost me a fair amount of money, but makes me feel a little more secure. I don’t have to worry about someone making a tip jar donation and then realizing that we work together or live in the same neighborhood in exchange.

But that just makes it harder to connect my online persona with the one that drops my son off at daycare, not impossible. A serious investigator could go through my posts and my stories and do a pretty good job of triangulating who I am (that is not a challenge, btw).

So I sometimes wonder what details I should obfuscate and which are okay (note: some are intentionally incorrect specifically to make it difficult for any determined investigators). It’s not always an easy call. Admitting I live in Colorado narrows me down to one of five million people. That’s probably not an issue. Besides, it doesn’t take too many of my stories to figure it out anyway. But my career field? My views on local politics?

The thing is… some of these details are important for stories that contain emotional honesty. I really can’t blog about some of my frustrations in writing without mentioning I have a toddler. It’s just too key–he’s frustrating, wonderful, and exhausting. It drives me nuts that taking care of him cuts into my writing, but there’s absolutely no way I’d want it the other way around, where my writing cut into taking care of him. So if I want to share the part of my soul that’s writhing into knots about not writing–well, I have to share that detail.

Similarly, there’s an emotional honesty in my fiction that can only come from having been there, done that. Now I haven’t done everything I write about–then this would be memoir instead of fiction. But I cull enough real situations to infuse them with honest emotion, as best as my wordsmithing allows.

The Ugly One wouldn’t be the same if I had been born beautiful (as my son seems to have done, but as his Dad, I might not be objective here). Friends and Benefits wouldn’t be the same if I hadn’t had a relationship like the one Joe had with Sharon. My shorter stories have pieces of me in them as well, to varying degrees of depth. I don’t always plumb the emotional depths, after all Dr. Seuss Provides the Girls isn’t exactly Shakespeare or even Theodor Geisel. But there are still pieces of my mind emotional state in even it. Three women at once? Hey, I understand that temptation. It’s real even if it’s light.

But there’s a level of privacy there still. I don’t have to admit which parts are drawn from the depths and which are solely figments of my imagination. I don’t have to even put it there in the first place. But obviously I do put it there, and even admit to it later.

So where’s the line? I think it’s different for every author, so that question is… where is it for me?

I’m still pondering that with just about every story or “my history” post.

A friend of mine, who is also an author, has been having trouble finding the time to write. He’s really really busy, and he fell out of the habit of writing a while back. As a result, he’s finding it very difficult to get started back up. The emotional wall is pretty high.

I can certainly understand that. I’ve got too many projects in my life and when I step back and look at them, they’re intimidatingly huge. It’s only the ‘one bite at a time’ approach that keeps me going.

And part of that is advice I’ve gotten from a couple of different places–it gets easiest if you make the task a habit. For many writers, that means writing every day. It can be at a regular time, or for a regular period. But the key is actually making it something that gets started without much angst or thought. Yeah, the actual writing requires thinking, but opening the notebook or the Word file certainly doesn’t.

Now my life just isn’t structured solidly enough to have a time every day. Mornings can be luxurious or rushed, depending on when the toddler wakes up. Evenings can be good writing time, or periods when I’m just to exhausted from the day. Lunch is my best time, but if I have to run errands or work has already depleted me, it’s hard to be creative.

But I still make it a habit. These Sunday posts are a large part of it. They give me a deadline and accountability, which makes it easy to say, “hmmm, have I written recently”? Maybe that question’s more the habit than the actual writing…

So this week it paid off relatively well, despite a killer week. I managed 877 words on Unmasked, bringing me to 1643. I also submitted In the Style of Rodin for publication and had it accepted (I’ll post here when it’s out) and worked a little on the Deep Dish arcs. The habit just powered me through.

In my last post, I mentioned I was using an arc outline for Deep Dish. I thought I might explain this little trick.

Now, I should be upfront and say I’m all over the map on outlining. For most stories, I have a very very top-level outline in my head before I begin the story. I will often jot it down, but not always. And I do mean top-level. For example, the outline for Fireworks was:

1. Pre-weekend discussions
2. Flashing games first day
3. Guys’ show. Possibility of touching raised.
4. More exhibitionism games.
5. Girls’ show. Cross-couple touching that Will can’t handle.
6. Dave helps Will get over it.
7. End at lakeside having public sex while fireworks go off overhead.

That turned into 30,000 words without much more outlining.

Now sometimes I don’t outline at all. Those stories can be frustrating and slow to write, because I’m feeling my way forward. It’s write a paragraph, wait. Write a paragraph, wait. Maybe the characters tell me what’s happening next, and maybe I wait a while. Love’s Labor Found evolved that way. I had the opening scene clearly in mind, but the rest had to evolve as I wrote.

But sometimes that’s just not enough, particularly if the story has multiple intersecting subplots. I’ve found then that it helps to do a simple bulleted outline of each subplot or story arc, and then see how they interleave.

For example, here’s part of an arc from Deep Dish:

Sal Takes over the Club (arc 1)

• (Backstory) Harry has been running the club since the burlesque days, seeing it as a ‘theatre’.  Because he’s a favored friend of The Chairman of the Board (modeled on Tony Accardo), he’s had a lot of freedom to do what he wants
• (Backstory) Mob has Big Boss (modeled on Joey Aiuppa) who runs things; Chairman of Board is advisory.  Point is, Big Boss has power to overrule COB.
• (Backstory) Sal is an aggressive mobster working his way up in The Outfit.  He’s at a Crew Capo (Underboss) level.  He know Mob finances are being squeezed due to social changes and is trying to regain profitability.
• Arc begins as Sal leans on Harry to increase the club’s profits
  • Harry responds by raising the cover fee, backroom fee, stage fee (arc 2 crossover)
  • Some of the girls respond by offering “extras”
• Sal leans on Harry to hire one of his guys as the bartender
  • The bartender is a bookie; sports betting primarily
• Sal leans on Harry to increase profits again, suggests touring headliners
  • Harry agrees, brings in a porn star.  She fucks a guy in the audience.  Sal loves it.  Wants more.  Suggests that maybe they do something like those Mitchell Brothers in San Francisco and make blue movies.

The outline goes on, of course, but I wanted to call attention to the arc crossover comment.  Another Arc in Deep Dish is:

Brandy and Delilah flee town (arc 2)

• Brandy and Delilah start discussing getting out of dancing
  • Complain about raised fees (arc 1 crossover)
  • Brandy reveals she’d love to teach little kids
  • Delilah talks of going to college
• Delilah explains to Brandy and Malcolm the practicalities of leaving
  • They need money
  • They don’t want to be followed

Again, this arc outline continues, but I’ve now tagged the other arc crossover point where the two arcs intersect.  The raised fees in arc one trigger action in arc two.  This doesn’t look like much from this example, admittedly, but there are four arcs in Deep Dish (so far).  By looking at them individually and then identifying the crossover points, it’s easier to keep the writing tight.

Now I don’t know of any other authors who use this trick.  Maybe some do, maybe it’s just not a good tool for many.  But I thought y’all might find it interesting nonetheless.

One of the things that makes writing satisfying to me is that it’s fundamentally a solo enterprise. Yes, I have a team, and sometimes I need to coordinate with another author if I’m playing in his (or her) universe, but those are pretty minor interactions. The bulk of the enterprise is me by myself.

I like this because it means my schedule is my own. I don’t get hung up waiting for someone, like I do in so many of the other projects in my personal and professional life. Nor do I have to jerk my schedule around to accommodate the whims of others.

This last week was a good example of getting jerked around. I had a business trip that consumed three full days of my life. The meeting itself was only one afternoon and the following morning, but the unavailability of convenient flights forced the two extra days into the trip. It became very clear that my presence, though requested, wasn’t really needed. So I spent a lot of time not getting stuff done. I tried to work remotely with my corporate team, but found myself waiting far too much for inputs. The result was completely frustrating.

I did manage to get some writing done, though not as much as I wanted. I find it difficult to write erotica on airplanes because I’m invariably jammed into a middle seat, making it impossible for my seatmates to avoid seeing what’s on my screen. I’m not embarrassed by what I’m writing–my seatmates will certainly not see me again–but I also don’t believe that it’s fair to force my seatmates into reading something they may not like. I’d certainly be uncomfortable if the guy in the aisle seat started reading a Penthouse, not giving a damn about who would be unavoidably looking over his shoulder.

So I wrote 766 words on Unmasked. That’s respectable, though I wish I’d been able to manage more. Surprisingly, it flowed well once I started. Hopefully I’ll get some uninterrupted time soon to keep that flow going.

I also worked on my arc outlines for Deep Dish–got two of the four in great shape. It’s a bit frustrating, though. Despite me having clear visions in my head, I still haven’t solved the financing issue. Since I can’t do the art myself, it’s an issue. The down sides of it not being a solo enterprise…

In last week’s Musing, I pondered rape vs. ravishment. Well, Remittance Girl took issue with my implied assertions and provided me with the research paper that sparked my musing. In the process of our discussions, it became clear that I hadn’t made my argument very well. Hence this post.

First, let me make it clear that I do believe there are women who have violent rape fantasies. I’ve talked to some and am not trying to deny that these fantasies exist.

That said, I found it difficult to believe that 2 out of 3 women (~62%, the number sited in the research paper) have fantasies about being raped. My last post was a speculation that a significant number of these were really ravishment fantasies.

So there’s a problem in at least one of three places–either my understanding of women’s fantasies, confusions over the definitions of rape fantasies and ravishment fantasies (as I previously speculated), or the 62% number. The short answer is at least the last two, and possibly all three. The actual paper did identify confusions resulting from definitions issues, by me if no one else. The 62% number is also flawed, based on the paper’s own numbers.

More after the jump.

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Last week, I ended up not writing anything that I really expected to. I revised and released “In the Style of Rodin.” After poking around the markets, I decided to just release it here. I did try an experiment–I only announced it on twitter instead of also in the various yahoo story groups, figuring it was just flash and so of less interest to the story groups. It gave me some statistics of my readers.

I also ended up getting side-tracked into writing a very long post as a follow up to my Rape vs. Ravishment post. As of this moment, that post is nearly 4000 words long, which is stunning. I need to make a few more edit passes before it’s ready to release, so I’ll just put it into the standard Wednesday slot.

Part of what’s stunning to me about it, is that I managed to find the time and passion to write 4000 words on a post, when I’ve struggled to find the time and passion to write that much on my fiction. Why did my productivity suddenly jump? Yes, some of it was having more available time (a business trip gave me ‘hotel’ time to write), but I’ve had that time in the past. I can’t say it was because I was more organized or had a better idea where I was going. While it is true that I get more words written when I’m not figuring out the scene as I go, I had similar problems with the blog post. By the time it’s released, I will basically have rewritten it twice because I was stumbling pretty badly on my first draft.

Instead, what makes sense to me is the difference in passion. I was pissed when I first read the paper that my upcoming blog post critiques. I found the writing, the analysis, and conclusions sloppy and I didn’t like being told that I was wrong based on such sloppiness. Now, as I wrote and rewrote, I realized that much of the ‘sloppiness’ was really sloppiness in my reading, and not in their writing. I also made an effort to calm down because a response to an academic paper needs to be level-headed. Hot-heads don’t win logical arguments. So at some point, when the anger and irritation wore off, I still maintained a fair amount of passion to ‘get my arguments right.’

So the passion shoved me through. It was a short burst, and I’m not sure I could have sustained it for much longer. Besides I now have to address the chores etc. that got pushed to the side and I’ve even more tired than I was before. I’ve got the backlash when the adrenaline wears off at work.

But it did get me wondering–what could I be passionate about in my fiction? What in my queue would inspire me to knock out 4000 words in a few days, because by gawd I need to knock it out or I’m going to go crazy?

I’m finding I don’t have much passion for the top story in my queue–Caught Online. The reason I put it up top is that I thought it might fit with a call for submissions. The problem is, it really doesn’t. The call for submissions wants stories that celebrate female sexuality, even if from a male POV. Well… yeah, I could bend it, but it’s a stretch. The premise is a guy realizes that he’s seen a picture of one of his coworkers on a swinger’s site. So the central conflict should be what he does with that knowledge. I think the story would be stronger if I stick with that as the focus and not bend it for a submissions call.

So next will probably be Unmasked. I’m not finding a lot of passion for it at the moment, but I know that’s because it’s going to be heavy at the beginning. The Holiday Series was light and fun when I started, but when I decided to include some real character development, I had no choice but to introduce some drama. Unmasked will wrap most of it up, but I’m not finding the energy to dive into it.

That said, I have had flashes where I really wanted to work on Deep Dish. Seeing as how I still have some issues resolved on publishing a graphic novel, I’m not sure how much I’ll do. Probably enough to keep the juices flowing at least.

In the meantime, I’ll continue letting thoughts about ‘what would I be passionate about’ simmer on the back burner.

Sex: The Annabel Chong story is a documentary produced by Annabel and a director she’d been involved with, Gough Lewis. For those who don’t know her, Annabel Chong is a porn star who, in 1995, set the record for having sex with the most men in a gangbang. She took on 251 men in a 10 hour period for a porn video, which earned her a fair amount of notoriety before the record was subsequently eclipsed.

The documentary is disturbing…

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This past weekend, I managed to be involved in a spontaneous multiparty chat about non-consent. I’ve already blogged about why I won’t write it and don’t feel a need to regurgitate the discussion that occurred in chat here. Those who might be interested can check out Remittance Girl’s post and the links therein.

What I did want to address was the rape fantasy. Remittance Girl posted a link to an abstract that found that 62% of women in their study had had rape fantasies. Getting free access to the actual article is a bit of a pain (i.e., 30 minutes of trying failed and I’m too much a lazy blogger to keep at it), but I do question the results.

For, based on conversations with women about their rape fantasies and in reading fantasies such as those described by Nancy Friday, I can’t help wondering–are they really rape fantasies, or are they ravishment fantasies?

While I’ve never had either (that I can recall at least), I kind of get the latter, particularly for women and submissives (and particularly submissive women). Ravishment is about being so desirable, that someone cannot resist you. They must have you, sexually, and immediately. And of course, they demonstrate it in a way that provides pleasure to the ravishee.

What’s not to like about that fantasy?

It appeals to self-esteem. It appeals to wanting to feel wanted. It allows the fantasizer to not worry have to be the aggressor or the initiator (which is a lot of work, honestly). The submissives I know all pretty much enjoy the part that’s “I don’t have to do anything.” There’s a sense of freedom in just lying back and being pleasured (aside: that’s also one of the reasons that gets cited for some men visiting prostitutes–so they can just lie back and be serviced). A ravishment seems to be a pretty passionate encounter as well–all heat and emotion and not the heady “excuse me, do you have a condom?” stuff that real life tends to require.

Additionally, If I just look at romance novel tropes, I think ravishment is a particularly common fantasy. I can easily imagine 62% of women having a fantasy about being ravished. Harlequin books probably can too.

So are we really talking about “rape” fantasies here?

I think the confusion comes from the ‘token protest.’ A ravishment isn’t going to stop just because the woman being ravished says, “oh, I don’t know.” His passion is too powerful and she’s excited him too much. She might be reluctant and she might say no, but she’s not going to fight him and she’s going to enjoy whatever happens next.

Well, the problem is, the token protest can look a lot like a real no. Only the bdsm community seems to have gotten this communication right–insisting that safe words be words other than “no.” When I’m playing with a sub, she can make token protests of ‘no’ all she wants. It’s when she says ‘red’ that I’ll stop, because I know it’s not a token.

So I have to wonder. I’m not sure that Rape and Ravishment are distinct enough in common usage for the research to necessarily be accurate about exactly what women fantasize about.

I once heard that Robin would caress his subjects before beginning a sculpture. That idea bounced around in my head for a while. Then a few months ago, I saw a Call for Submissions for artistic flash stories that were designed to accompany erotic paintings.

Well, by the time I finished the story, the Call for Submissions had been changed so it accepted work only from women (more on that here). As a result, I’ve released it here.

It’s been one of those weeks where I didn’t quite do what I expected. In many ways, this was because it was a transition week. I did my final edits for Irie no Kaubutsu (Monster Cove) and submitted it. I did a little more work on Deep Dish (the graphic novel), but ran into a serious non-story issue (funding). I knocked off a flash story–Following Rodin, to have my wife point out a serious flaw that I have not yet figured out how to fix. And I started thinking about ‘what next.’ Since I didn’t actually start ‘what next’, it really was a week in transition between projects more than anything.

So part of that thinking was examining Calls for Submission. This was originally in anticipation of submitting the flash story somewhere. It had been written for a Call for Submission that was then amended to only accept stories from female writers (more here) and so I was curious if there were other markets that might be of interest.

But it opened up a larger question–how much do I want to write for markets? There are certain advantages to writing for a market. Mostly it’s the chance to attract new readers and point them toward this site. There’s also the challenge of writing to a specific theme or audience. It’s one thing to write a story just for fun, and another to have to craft it to meet some guidelines. Note that money isn’t really a factor–so few erotica markets pay that it’s just not worth the effort.

But writing for markets is a long way from the ‘golf’ that I started out with. I can’t claim I write purely as a hobby for fun if I’m first perusing submission guidelines. It also encourages queue jumpers. There are still several stories I’m committed to writing and releasing here that seem to get pushed back rather regularly.

So I’m largely still mulling it over.

In the meantime, here’s the current queue status:

Irie no Kaubutsu–the Monster story, submitted.
Following Rodin–flash story, needs a fix.

Next up will most likely be Caught Online. I’ve already got 452 words written, and it’s not too far off from a Call for Submissions that’s due in July. I need to rework the planned plot, however. At least I think this will be next. It’s what I’m musing over right now.

After that, Unmasked, the eighth Holiday Series story. I know I left Love’s Labor Found hanging a little, and I don’t want to push it a long time before I resolve it. Of course, that will also elevate Giving Thanks, the final Holiday Series story, in the queue as well.

I’m still committed to two more:
–The Devil in the Details (SC Universe story)
–The Boys of Summer (third Compassionate Courtesan novel)

I also have a mainstream novel project and the graphic novel that will bump along, but both still require a lot more foundation development before they reach the front of the line.

Then there’s the ones that tug at my imagination still. This category is currently only “The Size of their Toys” (a SC Universe story), which tells me that several of my other ideas have slid to the inactive file. That list of ‘maybe somedays’ just continues to grow and who knows, maybe some day there will be a Call for Submissions that one of them would fit in. Assuming that’s the way I go with my writing.