Being An Author Is Weird

 Originally posted on July 23, 2020 at https://ailovestogrow.wixsite.com/mysite/post/being-an-author-is-weird

I never wish to offend. Forgive me, I never wish to be offensive. Whether I offend you is impossible to control on my end, your offense is not something in my hands. You can be offended by anything I do: Honoka’s suggestive political leanings, the multicultural approach I’ve taken with the wives, my choice to not have profanity or blasphemy, how I part my hair, how I breathe.

You know what I mean.

In a world where there are so many offended people, I hope you realize that nothing I do can offend you: only you have the ability to be offended. If you and I have a disagreement, I hope we can agree to disagree without being disagreeable.

In my own life, being an author has become a strain on living up to my own philosophy outlined above. SO many of you are loving and kind and say the absolute best things about me and my story. Then there are the more critical reviews. I pray I have been able to remain cordial with those of you who have expressed your dislike of what I have done, but I plainly see it hasn’t always worked out that way. I only ask that you forgive me for any slights and passive-aggressiveness I have passed on your way. I’m only human, no matter how much my story says I want otherwise.

Which has led me to what has been weighing on my mind recently: Honoka is me. A lot of it is metaphor and there is a healthy dose of wish fulfillment, but all the strange quirks aren’t unrealistic to me because it is who I am. Yes, Honoka has a large cock and I don’t, but I have a complicated and even contradictory sexual outlook that I both love and loathe. Just as Honoka is, I am at war with myself and sitting in a room alone with my thoughts is usually enough to turn towards having to repress doing something about it. In many ways, writing BM has been liberating because I finally have an outlet for my fantasies.

Honoka talks like an IMDB quote machine because - when I work up the nerve to talk to anyone - I make the same corny references. It is a coping mechanism to help me get through a conversation and sound like a sentient life form instead of literally staring silently for an incredibly awkward couple of minutes before I flee in terror. I’m really not trying to be super clever, I actually talk like that.

Honoka doesn’t like profanity because I don’t like it. It isn’t some literary device to seem avant-garde, I once stormed (more like slunk unobserved) out of a college lecture because of the foul mouthedness of a particular professor and filed a complaint with the dean. I have spent hundreds of dollars for professionals to cut out bad language in Marvel Movies so I can enjoy them in my own way.

Honoka is a Christian because I believe in God. And just like every real Christian instead of Hallmark Channel Christian, I’m conflicted over my life choices and whether or not I’m doing the right thing. I write smut! I can tell you all honestly, I’m conflicted over that. Is it any surprise that Honoka has a similar up and down rollercoaster between being self-assured about doing the right thing and then turning around the next minute and wondering what she should do?

All the Race and expansion and growth stuff is because I have body image issues. My teen suicide attempt was because I felt small and ugly. Yes, it is wish fulfillment, but it is also a way to work through my issues in an over-the-top, cathartic way. Every allocation is there because I find it therapeutic!

Honoka isn’t a perfect protagonist. She often makes the wrong decisions because I don’t know if, faced with the same decisions, I wouldn’t make the same mistakes. Even as I cry out that I believe, I beg in the next moment to help mine unbelief! Every paragraph of the story, I often don’t ask what would Honoka do? I ask what would I do? The answers are what you’ve read.

Becoming Monsters, to me, isn’t about Honoka wanting to be human or wanting to be something else (she jumps between the two often enough I thought it was obvious). It is about accepting herself for who and what she is without reservation and the journey she takes to gain that personal acceptance. She craves others to accept her, but that is a deflection from her own problems of how she perceives herself.

So whenever I see a new copy of a book sold or a hundred pages read on KU or a review telling me how you love the characters or got a laugh, all I feel is that someone else accepts me and my weirdness. Little by little, you all are encouraging me to accept myself.

Thank you for helping me step a little closer to the peace someone can only find with acceptance.

Ahem.

Next on the agenda is my family problems. It’s the summer and that means family gatherings. Which means...fighting! My siblings, whom I rarely see eye to eye with on politics and philosophy, have teamed up to convince my mother she is a terrible person and that my parents' marriage of 44 years should come to an end. This is the last I will say anything about it, but it is a lot of drama and I’m getting pulled into it. Hopefully, I’ll just be able to duck my head and the entire thing will blow over soon, but I’m sure many of you can relate: family anxiety is the worst anxiety.

To compensate and prevent any fratricide, I spent an inordinate amount of time re-reading and self-editing previous chapters. I just started at the beginning of Book 2 and worked my way up through Chapter 20. It didn't get a lot of major stuff done, just tweaked a sentence here or put in the correct word there. That isn't to say what I did was insignificant, I estimate I changed or added around 4000 words. I did catch a huge plot hole (really a pothole, but it looked huge at the time) where Honoka missed doing something in a previous chapter and then I referenced it in a later chapter. This is one of those problems of outlines, if you don't follow it then you can create some strange paradox that messes with reader minds. So no progress this week, probably none this weekend either as I have the finale of this particular round of familyness on Friday and Saturday.

One interesting thing I noted was there were a few holes missing in the story: particularly, a few wives weren't getting their's filled as much as I felt was needed. This is the challenge with having a harem as large as Honoka's, so many wives, not enough pages to give everyone their equal opportunity for orgasms. I've made some notes of who I think needs an extra scene in Parts 1&2 and will fit those in after I finish off the major part of the story, probably after Editor-kun decimates my first draft so I can know where the pacing needs a proper smutting.

Thank you Jossei, Dan, Marc and Igor Zlatkov from Goodreads! Happy to see so many new fans!

Keep harmonizing!

#ailovestogrow #stopbeingoffended #tosmutornottosmut #family