Happy 4th!

 Originally posted on July 2, 2020 at https://ailovestogrow.wixsite.com/mysite/post/happy-4th

Whether you want to celebrate the birth of national independence from tyranny or just use the excuse to blow something up, I hope your weekend is at least spent with friends, family and a barbeque. Or maybe it's just another Saturday to you, I still wish you well.

Finished Ch22 and it was a complete turnaround from my outline. This was one of those moments where the characters dictated to me what I needed to write instead of the other way around.

Let me back up for those of you who haven't taken a writing class in a while.

The best type of outlines work on creating a world first, a character second then a sequence of events. The world dictates how the character will develop but the sequence of events - the chronology of the story - should be made separate of character and world. For instance, let's say I create a world I'll call Middle Earth. This world has a long and rich history with various nuances and fantastical elements. In it, I'll put a pair of hobbits, Frodo and Sam. I want to write a story about how they take a ring to Mordor to save the world.

If I've done proper world and character building, my outline will read "and the two hobbits enter Mount Doom and cast the ring into the fire." These are important events that have to happen so my story can work properly. But the rich characters dictate what happens while writing it all out, like how another character, Gollum, attempts to take the ring and is serendipitous in its destruction, saving Frodo even as he is trying to stop him.

Another way a writing teacher from Jr High explained it to me is "put your character into an impossible situation, and then get them out of it." The outline should just say "this happens now, then this happens after." Then, when you're writing it all out, if you've done everything right, you should have something emerge organically instead of feel contrived.

So far in this book, I've done that a few times, most notably in Ch 6 - which I've previewed part in a previous post - but Ch22 (and some of Ch21) is this organic, surprising storytelling wall to wall. I'm especially surprised at how Eve acted. I think of her as a bit of a party girl, the one in the group who is ready to get down with anything, and then out of left field she's screaming at Honoka and it was with some insight she had a good point. It was illuminating and might change a few scenes moving forward.

I might have diverged a bit because I'm trying to ignore the elephant in the room. Through no fault that I can see of my own, over the last two weeks my sales and KU pages have completely dropped to nothing. They just suddenly disappeared and I have no real words to describe how disheartening that is. I did run some tests and found Growing Problems is no longer showing up in just about any searches on Amazon using my keywords, despite having more or higher reviews than other works showing up. Heck, typing in the exact title of the book, it didn't show up until the 4th page of search results. If my theory is correct, Amazon has blacklisted my book as part of their erotica shadowbanning policy and there is nothing to be done at this point.

It does have me reassessing this whole writing erotica thing, though. Looking at it now, it is radically depressing to see that no matter how well I write and promote the book, the system is against me. Like the Kobayashi Maru, unless I find some way to cheat, I am doomed to fail.

Now, I'm not doing as badly as I was a few months ago, so unclench your buttocks. I'm sad, but not in a suicidal way. It's actually given me some clarity moving forward. Regardless of what I have planned for the future, Book 2 is going to get done and I really hope it will be by the end of the year. I'll probably commission 2 more audioporn chapters and get them all released at the same time, trying to take advantage of getting proper marketing put in place for the release.

After that, we'll see what I do. Book 2 won't end on a cliffhanger but it will very clearly foreshadow the events of Book 3, so I would really like to get Book 3 finished sometime just to be a completionist. I originally thought of a good short story/novella about a superheroine that gets stronger the more anxious she gets, but I don't even know if I want to do that anymore. Not because I don't think the story is good, but because publishing erotica has proven to be draining on me emotionally. To be clear, I like writing smut, but publishing it has proven to be difficult, traumatizing and biased against erotic authors. And because I want to make money off it, to eventually quit my job and spend all my days writing, the fact that my first book's total lifetime run has only reached less than a sixth of my expenses, if this was a movie I'd be considered an Ed Wood of erotica.

I digress. What I might be doing after Book 2 is either taking a long extended break or taking a much longer extended break. I'll probably write something non-erotic and publish it under my real name (and if any of you perverts figure out it is me, I'll appreciate your discretion). Maybe that will take off, giving me the funds to come back to erotica. I wish it were otherwise, but after putting so much work into Becoming Monsters and seeing the actual fruits of my labor be "eh", it makes it really hard to keep kicking against the pricks.

(NOTE: I'm not saying the response from the fans has been lackluster, anyone I can get to actually read the book has given me nothing but joy in my life. There are just so few of you that I can't make a living off of the equivalent of a county fair kissing booth. A girl has got to eat between orgasms.)

Well, this turned out to be longer than I anticipated. I just wanted to pop in and say hi before the weekend, but now its a dissertation. Whatever happens, I love all my fans immensely and wish you only the best perversions. And who knows? Maybe this is just a lull before some celebrity endorses my book and then its smooth sailing on my yacht while I daintily eat exotic cheeses. So don't worry about me: enjoy family, grilled meat and explosions.

Keep harmonizing!

#ailovestogrow #eroticarealities #independenceday #organicwriting