Big Ed's Place

One of my high school English teachers used to argue that the frame defined the art. Take a hammer and use it–it’s just a tool. Put it on a wall and put a frame around it, and it’s art.

Later, I had a teacher explain that the frame was what separated the art from the real world. The art of photography is often the art of selecting that frame–what in the panorama is worth focusing on?

But I eventually came to believe that it’s really the fact that all traditional art starts with the limitations of its form. A painter begins by selecting a canvas, which defines the size of the work. Then he or she picks the paints, which defines the limits of the pallette. Then they pick the style–realistic? Abstract? Impressionist? Styles have rules to hold them together coherently. All these choices and many more are made before the artist begins and therefore are the true definers of the art to come.

I’ve been thinking about this recently with respect to writing. By choosing to write, I immediately accept several limitations. The art is restricted to words alone. Since I’m not doing a podcast, they are written words and not spoken words. A story must be written predominantly in a single language if I want any reasonable audience, even if I wasn’t monolingual.

Then there’s the two kickers–style and length. The style question is the same as for other art forms. There are restrictions to fiction, further restrictions to genre fiction such as erotica, and certain readers’ expectations for pleasurable fiction. I find that I’m forced to write stories with a ‘satisfying’ ending. It doesn’t have to be happy, but it can’t just hang or leave the reader irritated. That bounds my plots.

As for length, I honestly thing that stories that start out with an anticipated length work better than the rambling never-ending morasses on some of the free sites. Stories have a beginning, middle, and end, and it’s a little tricky to actually write a story if you don’t know where the end will be. It’s a good constraint to define the story, even if it’s not a hard one.

For me, length is usually not the challenge. I enjoy writing flash fiction, where I’m forced to tell an entire story in a brevity of words (see my flash fiction page). Similarly, the challenge of writing for a publisher’s word requirements are a matter of setting the scope correctly in the beginning. Basically, I can get 3-4 major scenes in 5000 words, so I scale the plotline accordingly. Or I fix the number of characters, because each major character requires about 1000 words to introduce. I know the tricks.

However, length is biting me on Deep Dish. As a foray into a new art form (graphic novel), I don’t have the tricks up my sleeve, or rules of thumb. So I agonize more about how to hit my desired length target.

Which is what brought me back to this topic. I think more accomplished artists are more aware of the frames they pick, and the implications of those selections. I don’t know how much of that is intuited and how much is learned through experience or instruction, but it does seem to be fundamental. At least to me, right now.

I made no progress on Unmasked this week, leaving me at 3,466 words. The major reason is I took a detour to work on Deep Dish.

Now, for those who haven’t been following, Deep Dish is a graphic novel project. I’m writing the script and plan to have Tzratzk illustrate it. The tricky part is funding it–this isn’t one I can offer for free, unfortunately. Since all Tzratzk does is art as a freelancer, he can’t afford to engage in a major project for free or on speculation that it’ll get picked up and he’ll get paid down the road. I understand that and I’m fine with that. Him doing ‘work for hire’ has a nice side effect that I own all the rights to it when we’re done. The hard part is that a graphic novel is still a big project, and will need more than I can fund out of my pocket right now.

So the first step towards funding it is establishing how long it is. Tzratzk did the first two pages so I could see how much story I could fit onto a page. In parallel, I combined my arc outlines into a single outline. Then I was able to estimate the page count.

Which is unfortunately higher than I’d like. So my writing time this week went into editing and tightening the outline, which allowed me to chop it down by 10%. I’m still looking at whether to make more cuts, because I’m still longer than a publishing house would ideally like. I’m not committed to going to a traditional publishing house, but if I want the option, I need to consider their needs. So there’s more contemplation of the story in my future.

One of the challenges of creative enterprises, I believe, for many artists and writers is the gap between vision and execution. We can see (or hear) what it should look like. We just don’t necessarily have the ability to pull it off. And so the world gets stories of painters destroying canvases they’ve worked months or years on, or writers burning completed manuscripts. I really don’t think those cases are egotistical–”this isn’t up to my standard”–so much as they are “this isn’t what I want it to be” and the destruction is frustration incarnate.

So how do we cope?

In some cases, the answer is obvious–give up. For example, I really appreciate fine art nude photography. I even went so far as to sign up for a general photography class in my mid-twenties at a local community college. My thinking was that I’d get some experience and practice and I could have some female friends pose for me (hence, the source of the photography scenes in Friends and Benefits).

The problem was–I just wasn’t good enough. I could visualize a great pose or shot, but I’d burn a roll of film and still not have the results even qualify as mediocre. Given how expensive film was, it only made sense to continue if I was interested in photography overall and was willing to be the guy who carried the camera everywhere and was always taking shots of families and vacation scenes. I.e., I’d have to learn photography in general in order to get good enough to do nudes.

That was too big of a jump, so I hung up the camera.

Writing, however, offers some different options. There’s no sunk money–just time–in improving one’s skills. For several stories, I know my current ability isn’t up to my vision, so I’m waiting on those projects while I practice with others. Specifically, I want to write some more female POV stories before I tackle The Boys of Summer. There are other examples, which tend to hang around the middle of my queue.

But that leads to the other dilemma of the gap–if it doesn’t meet the artist’s vision, is it still good?

Recently that debate came to the fore in the literary world. Nabokov had requested that his manuscript for Laura be burned if he died before finishing it, which he did. But his son and those who read it thought it was very good. They had to choose whether to follow his wishes and destroy it, because it didn’t measure up to his vision, or publish it, because it was still better than most of the books out there today.

In Nabokov’s case, the decision rested solely in his son’s hands. But for more general cases–who’s to judge? I’ve had more than one author tell me that “oh, that was a piece of fluff that I didn’t think was very good. But it’s my most popular story.”

So writing, especially in the internet era, offers the option of publishing a work that might not quite meet the artist’s vision and seeing if readers appreciate it anyway.

But that doesn’t end the frustration, I’m finding. I want it to be right and sometimes I just can’t find the turn of the phrase that correctly evokes what I see in my mind. So I stall. Or I rewrite and rewrite. Or I start bitching about some constraint (like maximum length) that I think is hampering me. Or maybe I give up and the story goes into the inactive file.

It’s particularly challenging for me because I’m more visual that auditory, and writing is more sound-based. I struggle with translating what my eyes can see into lyrical phrases that do the imagery justice. That’s part of why I’m exploring a graphic novel as one of my current projects. It’s easier to say, “no, that’s not quite right” when I see a scene, even if it was created by another.

Aside–it’s also one of the things that makes me a decent first reader. I just reviewed another first draft this weekend which only suffered from one major flaw–the physical angles for the sex were prohibitive. The words were smoking hot, but I had to say, “ummm, you do realize how hard it is to slide two fingers into a woman when she’s bent over at that angle, right?” I’m seeing the movie play out in my head when I read, and that tends to include where the odd limbs and other body parts have to be to make the scene work…

Second aside–which is something we’re explicitly breaking in Deep Dish. I told Tzratzk that a POV he’d drawn was impossible unless the stage was too low for an upcoming scene. He told me to ‘learn to cope.’ The artistry was better than it’d be if he raised the stage and no one would notice but me anyway. Since he was right on both accounts, I decided to shut up.

So I struggle with this gap between vision and execution regularly. I’m not sure it ever goes away, either, because vision can expand just like talent advances. How common is this struggle? I wish I knew. I do know other artists and authors who face it, but it’s so rarely admitted to, that it’s hard to tell.

This past week, I realized that my major fantasies were no longer sexual, but simply having a chore-free quiet evening to relax. It’s not happening, and it may not happen for some time. There’s just too many things going on.

I wish I could say that all the irons in the fire are by choice. Alas, they’re not. I spent several days straightening out a mess with the IRS, and several evenings dealing with collapsed closet shelves. I also find myself forced to take the car into the shop next week, and then start tracking down repair people for a couple of household appliances. This, of course, does not count the myriad of work projects and problems that are forcing well over a 40 hour work week. When it rains, it pours.

Despite this, or perhaps because of the need to escape this, I managed some work on my writing projects. I added 613 words to Unmasked, bringing the rough draft to 3,466 words. In doing so, I worked out some description details that required consultation from a swinger friend of mine.

I also pushed an ebook project forward. Another person and I are trying to create some ebooks that we can offer on Amazon and in other locales. The first one out of the chute will be a version of The Ugly One, with 14 new Tzratzk illustrations.

Finally, Trzatzk and I did a lot of work on Deep Dish. We have the characters defined and the first page of the graphic novel done. That gives me enough feel for how much I can put on a page, which will allow me to scope the entire length of the story. I’m still not sure what it will take to finish this thing, but I’m very excited by it.

On top of that, I’ve gotten two more review/editing requests. I love doing it, but finding the time is tricky.

So it’s busy busy busy. And maybe someday I’ll rest.

I realized that my recent posts imply a lot of sexual experience may create a different mental image for readers than that created by The Ugly One. Am I the playboy with lots of sexual experience or the unattractive guy who has trouble getting a date?

The truth is, of course, I’ve been both. At different times in my life.

I grew up as a pretty normal kid, albeit with a strong interest in sex. I was busted for stealing my dad’s Playboys to look at when I was 7. The major turning point in my young life was junior high, when I became the target of three bullies and faced social ostracism for a variety of reasons (that part of The Ugly One was true). Nonetheless, I survived, had my first sexual experience with a partner at 17, and lost my virginity at 18.

In doing so, I came of age in the middle of the AIDS hysteria. My peer group engaged in serial monogamy and I spent my entire college career (undergrad and grad) in one of three long term relationships. The middle of these was with a woman I was madly in love with and thought I’d marry, but it didn’t happen. The third of these was with a woman who was in love with me, but I was too busy chasing a ‘friend’ to be emotionally available. Friends and Benefits is loosely based on this period.

Then I entered a dating and sexual desert. My ‘friend’ had made it clear that the only reason she wasn’t sleeping with me is that I was physically unattractive to her (though the “to her” part was hard to remember). Meanwhile the woman I’d wanted to marry in college informed me that, even though she’d loved me, she hadn’t particularly been attracted to me physically or sexually. On top of that, my dating attempts were disastrous. On two occasions, I had women laugh in my face when I asked them out.

I was never particularly handsome. But I felt truly ugly then. I based The Ugly One on my emotional experiences during this time of my life.

That period ended when I turned 30 and two women independently said they wanted to have sex with me. Just for the sex. It took a few years for me to stop calling myself ugly and to truly believe that it was my energy and attitude that mattered more than my actual physical appearance.

During that time, my early 30′s, I ended up going on a tear, like most people tend to do in their early 20′s. I had many partners and explored both tantra and bdsm. That period ended when I met my wife when I was 35. I knew on the first date she was The One(tm) and we’ve been together for seven years now. I started writing again the first year we were together and am obviously still doing so today.

So I know both the pain of loneliness and the heady excitement of sexual experimentation. I know open relationships and deep monogamy. That breadth gives me a lot to draw from for my stories. All I have to do is pick a point in my life and put myself mentally and emotionally there, before I begin to put the words down on the page.

I made very little progress this past week on Unmasked. I managed a whopping 86 words, bringing me to 2,853. The fundamental problem is that I just don’t have the time and energy to write simultaneously. Mostly that’s been an energy problem, as work is particularly draining these days. I often write during lunch, and my few non-working lunch hours have been devoted to staring at the wall waiting for brain cells to start firing again, or reading the newspaper. Which is much the same thing, actually.

Ironically, I did manage to find time to read and critique rough drafts for three other authors. It doesn’t take as much energy as writing does for me, and that led to an interesting observation with the third author.

Plotting is easy for me. I can pretty easily figure out how to put scenes together and what nuances need to be in them. I’m quite good at spotting issues in others’ plots. For example, for one of the stories (a fantasy story) I read this week, I realized that there was a minor inconsistency in how the magic worked. It was subtle–more of a “well, if X works, why didn’t they just do Y?” But it leapt out to my eyes without much work.

Aside–one of the things that drives me crazy about many books and films is exactly that. The plot requires the characters not do something simple. A standard example is the comedy plot where characters go to great lengths to do something (usually involving deception) because they’re afraid of hurting another character’s feelings. You mean lying and deceiving them will hurt less? C’mon. But the plot falls apart if they’re honest up front. Often such plots require their characters to be idiots or the plot twists are clearly contrived in a way that violates my willing suspension of disbelief.

So I was talking with the third author and we quickly pounded through some issues and scenes and straightened out his story flow. When we finished, he said he was all ready to write now, and it’d go smoothly and fast.

I laughed.

Because these weekly status reports show that’s just not true for me. The plotting is easy, but the wordsmithing is hard. I know exactly what the scene is supposed to accomplish. I can see it in my mind. And I’m struggling to find the sentence to start the whole damn thing off.

I don’t know how many other authors fall into this mold. Writing is hard. Coming up with the story… easy as pie. Alas, both are required to produce anything good.

So, in my last musing, I talked about Sex Toys and the Single Guy. I figured I should post a review about my favorites of the toys I owned when I was single.

Now, as I mentioned, these toys weren’t for me, but for female lovers who graced my bedroom. Not using them directly, I’m not really qualified to discuss the quality of the vibrations, the feel of it against a clit, or all the other details that a woman might find relevant. Basically, they’re big, they’re noisy, and they have a very strong vibration.

So why did I like them?

For one, they worked rather well. Every woman who tried one was able to have an orgasm. That wasn’t the case with other toys, such as the standard dildo shaped vibrator. And let’s face it, women having orgasms are good for the single guy.

The other reason is that they worked best for use during intercourse. It did require some careful positioning, though. The way to use a large vibrator during intercourse is to have the woman kneel on the floor next to a bed or couch or chair. She can then lean forward and rest her upper body on the furniture, leaving her hands free to hold the toy. The guy gets behind her and takes her doggystyle. The large head of the vibrator makes it easy for her to hold the toy against her clit. Smaller toys are harder to hold in place, and I have yet to find an effective toy to use in missionary or cowgirl positions. There’s just not a lot of space.

Now, the practical elements–the Magic Wand has two downsides. First, the head is really a bit harder than some ladies liked. Second, it has to be plugged in, which may require an extension cord in order to be able to avoid the cord constraining where you can play.

In contrast, the Accuvibe head is more shaped, with a nub for point massage, and is a bit softer. It also unplugs, making it very portable. I had a very enjoyable bdsm scene once using one. The downside is, frankly, that the rechargable battery doesn’t last forever. I’ve owned four over the years and had two die on me (one while still under warranty, fortunately).

So, in summary, I give them between four and five stars out of five. If I hadn’t had Accuvibe battery failures, it’d be a five star, and if I hadn’t had a couple of experiences where the Magic Wand cord got tangled where it shouldn’t, I’d give it five stars. Both are recommended.

You can get more information (and purchase) the Magic Wand through Good Vibrations. The Acuvibe I purchased has been, unfortunately, discontinued (I got it from The Sharper Image). Good Vibrations does carry a mini-Acuvibe by the same manufacturer.

In a comment to my last post, Fallen Depths said that I owed you a toy after my vacation. Okay… what about a sex toy? Or at least a discussion of them?

I admit, my direct experience with sex toys for men is pretty limited. I long ago established that my own hand was better than anything I could buy. But that said, when I was single, I owned six vibrators. While I don’t live in Texas and therefore wouldn’t have had to deal with the legal problems of owning that many, in many ways it could be considered strange.

Now two of these were more gags than really usable. One was a vibrating rubber duck, that I kept on the edge of my bathtub. It made me smirk to see it, particularly on those few occasions when a lover was soaking in the tub. To the best of my knowledge, none of the women actually used it, but they did laugh when I pushed its back and it began to hum.

The other was a vibrating hairbrush. I bought it at one of those ‘home toy parties’ where the hostess shows off various sex toys for purchase and then goes into a side room to transact the deals. The sales lady at this one was a woman I’d met once at a tantra workshop and was being hosted by the local polyamory support group. A bdsm playmate of mine invited me and I bought the brush simply so I could spank her with it in front of the rest of the crowd. Of course, I was then stuck with an extra vibrator. Still, it made for an amusing, though somewhat surreal scene.

The other four were, well… ‘in stock’ for when I did have female company. One was a powerful waterproof vibe. One was a standard smooth dildo shaped one. One was a Hitachi Magic Wand, and the last was an Accuvibe, which is like a Magic Wand, but rechargeable, allowing one to dispense with the cord. All of them found use in partner play at one point or another.

What was partially surprising to me was that they were new toys to a several of the women. A few had never tried or owned a vibrator. Others had never used more than their standard favorite, which was usually a random purchase rather than one bought after research and possibly personal testing. Several of my own toys ‘wandered away’ when relationships ended, forcing me to purchase replacements.

And yes, there are a lot of good stories in there. And no, I’m not going to put them into a musings post. Instead, I’m going to crib from them for my future fiction. ‘Write what you know’ after all.

As a result of those experiences, I actually became a mini-expert in certain circles. One two occasions, I ended up giving advice to women I was not intimate with about what to look for in a vibrator and what to consider. Of course, they didn’t tell me how it worked out for them, and I didn’t want to get pushy, so I have no idea if my advice was actually good, but it was still amusing to give.

But more importantly, I think it helped with my sex life as a single guy. If a guy is open-minded enough to own toys for his partner’s benefit–what’s not to like? None of the women who entered my bedroom complained or found excuses to leave because I was a pervert. Instead, it became one more fun time to share.

Due to the wonders of Word Press, I’m not really here. Does that mean it’s not a real post?

I’ve prewritten this blog post on Thursday and scheduled it to be posted Sunday morning, because I’m not going to have internet for the weekend. So like Steve Martin prerecording the weather report in L.A. Story, I’m basically hoping storms don’t show up while I’m gone.

Ya see, the family and I are headed for a cabin in the mountains. I will take my laptop and I may write, but I may just take it as pure vacation. After the last couple of weeks, I could use the blow off time. Of course, many of the storms of work aren’t completely gone and there’s still a real chance for problems while I’m out of touch. No way to find out but to see.

Of course, the problems also sapped my emotional energy and time. I put in 40 hours in 3 days, which left little room for writing. I still forced myself to at least break out the notebook and added a whopping 81 words to Unmasked, bringing it to 2,767. It’s not much, but it counts. And it also means that I’m writing. It’s easier to get back to a run from a crawl, then from sitting, after all.

So the break will be good. And when I’m back, the ‘real posts’ will resume.

In a comment on my last post, Steveh11 asked how I defined an alpha male. Well… that’s a bit tough, because I’m using the term sloppily. Therefore, it deserves a full post. It’s long, so more after the break.
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