Kill Witchfire!

Yes, I’m admitting immediately that I’m using a clickbait headline, mostly…

Above, we have my heroine Witchfire, who is the star of my former attempt at doing something positive with the story world created by Danger Babe Central (NSFW link). I’ve been planning for the last few weeks to reboot the series and try to finish what I started.

Waiting for permission from Danger Babe Central’s owner to officially use images from his site in my new blog has given me some fresh perspective however. I’ve been forced to consider the possibility that “Mr X” may say no. He allows use of his characters for fan fiction, especially if it’s posted at his site, but borrowing images that he tries to make a living off of MAY be another thing entirely to him, even with credit and link backs given.

Long story short, that got me playing “What If” and planning for contingencies. The fact that using my own or alternative artwork while continuing the planned setting of Delta City never seemed a viable option got me to do some real thinking… Instead I was planning a story world of my own.

MAYBE the reality is that the nature of Danger Babe Central’s content bothers me more than I want to admit. All the sexual content there is non-consensual, and it’s honestly rather artless at that. It’s all physically overpowering the superheroines, never something more subtle like demanding sex in exchange for information, or the release of hostages, or just a heroine and villain get all hot and bothered while wrestling around, etc… Consensual sex? Forget about it. I’ve been so focused on trying to show I’m a good enough writer to create something worthwhile from that kind of story world, that I haven’t even bothered with the idea of should I bother? I’m wondering now if the two year gap in writing Witchfire has had more to do with that Writer’s Block post I did; how it’s caused by your subconscious telling you it’s a bad idea…

This WORKS, I Promise’

Don’t get me wrong, I see the potential to create something from Danger Babe Central. I wouldn’t have started the original incarnation of Witchfire otherwise. NOW, the question lingers if I’d be better off… more true to myself… creating my own story world with my own heroes and heroines, and a fresh narrative.

It wouldn’t be that hard to do. I’ve been creating hero characters for various games since the 1980s. I started with the pen and paper Marvel Superheroes game by TSR (now Wizards of the Coast), and have gone through multiple computer RPGs as well. City of Heroes, Champions Online, etc… Long story short, I have an already existing massive portfolio of characters good and evil to use.

The idea of creating a world where superpowers might mean increased libido without turning characters into cliches is appealing as well. Nevermind that I left so many dangling plots in all those old games…

I Learned Something While I Was Gone

Still tired and still hitting the blogs later than I’d like to, BUT the followers here deserve a little something for hanging in there this long. 🙂

So, what I have today is a little piece of wisdom for writers. What I learned while I was away, but still rerunning my latest drafts in my head, was that my complete writer’s block almost always comes from not liking the direction the story is going.

It’s my subconscious telling me to stop, look it over, and rethink (rework) what’s happening in the story.

No, nothing I’ve tried to write is anywhere near THAT bad, but the meme was funny. 🙂

Thinking back though, every time I’ve hit a case of writer’s block that’s just seemed absolutely insurmountable, that’s been the case. My subconscious simply wasn’t happy with the quality or direction of my work.

I’m writing about it because that MAY be true for some of you also. Once you realize what the problem is, you can develop a plan top work around it.

Ironically, while working on this post, I came across this YouTube video that largely confirmed my intuition:

The video is only a little over 4 minutes long, but if you don’t want to watch it, here’s the synopsis:

Writer’s block is caused by a need to be perfect (or at least really good), and the cure is to give yourself permission to write garbage, and then let it work itself out in the editing and rewrite phase of your work.

If you’re too OCD as a writer to do that, at least stop, take a step back and ask yourself what’s NOT working with the project. Then STOP and listen to the answer from that little voice in the back of your head. From there, you can figure out what changes to make.

Frustration

NO, not THAT kind, but it got your attention, didn’t it? 😁 I’m trying to keep my sense of humor despite all the nonsense and drama.

Anyhoo, yes I *am* still alive. It is LONG past due I checked in here also. Where’s the frustration, you ask? Primarily from the ongoing drama with our upstairs neighbors. It’s about a month and a half now with no end to the running the dogs back and forth around the apartment at all hours. The racket went on till 5am yesterday. It stopped about 12:30am today, so far (night’s not over after all).

No end to the noise, but we have made enough “noise” of our own that we’ve been given permission to break our lease, and we fully intend to do so. I also fully expect they’ll be ungodly noisy up to the day we’re gone, and beyond.

Enough said there however. I’ve ranted about it all enough lately in the other blog.

There’s more to it all though; a general frustration with life, lack of progress, and a strong dissatisfaction with my writing, and blogs.

Life, general frustrations and lack of progress could turn into a long one, so I’ll save that for another post… perhaps. Writing however…

Let’s start with the blogs. LOTS of frustration there. I work my butt off to network, publish content, etc… While it’s gotten me over 600 followers on the “safe” blog, less that 20 of them are real, active followers who ever read what I publish. It’s frustrating given some of the blogs out there I *do* see getting attention. The networking not paying off is possibly the worst part.

I sort through THOUSANDS of email notifications a month:

Not even a full month’s worth of emails

Post notifications I legitimately read, like, post replies to… Almost nothing to show for it also. Some changes need to be made there. I spend more time chasing emails than I do posting.

THIS blog, on the other hand; a completely different set of problems. Here, I’m actually grateful I’ve got the followers I do. Non-stop real life drama has kept me from doing anything meaningful with my erotica work and I still have 38 followers. Most everyone seems to read posts here sooner or later also.

HERE, the frustration is that life seems to keep screwing with my attempts at a writing career. Every time I start to get traction, I have something like the prick neighbors upstairs completely derail things for me.

There’s also a growing frustration with the quality of my writing also. My “Boobgasms” post I feel was 5 levels beneath where it should have been in all regards. The same is true with all my stories here really; rough draft quality material that I should have polished out much more before posting.

With posts like this, I don’t mind that the writing quality is a hair sloppy and casual. The posts are written with the mindset of talking casually with (or venting to) a friend.

I keep having doubts about the whole “Witchfire” project also. Part of me wants to show that even the worst of the metahuman genre could be much better. A growing part of me is thinking “why am I even giving this misogynist crap the free publicity of good (well, better anyway) storytelling with a new character?”.

Am I just being lazy and depending upon an established world to avoid white room syndrome? My initial justification was not burning through my own characters and ideas, or risking having them stolen. Maybe putting out content that is 100% my own is what I need to grow more as a writer though. “Fan Fiction” (and I’m using an exceedingly broad definition here) can become a crutch for storytelling after all.

The flip side to all of this is that I know I’m exceedingly frustrated on many levels now, and I’m much more prone to rushing into poor choices in that situation. I’m ALSO looking at the existing eleven chapters like a craftsman or artist who turned out something really bad and feels they NEED to re-do it to redeem themselves and prove they could do it right.

Maybe it’s all just part of the normal writing process and I need to just quit getting hung up at that “Dark Night” stage:

Image liberated from https://janeperkins.wordpress.com/ 🙂

Lots to think about moving forward…