Episode #206: How We Got Here From There {1st}

To reminisce of days gone by. Sadly, this particular bucolic scene no longer exists, as the flowers were turned over when the pond was filled in, while the statue was moved over to a side garden to stare out to the mountain.

Note: This post kicks off a series that specifically focuses on the deceptively complex question of, "Why do you write your male and female characters the way you do?"

I was originally inspired by one upcoming event that will split off into two intertwined pathways, which in turn brought me face-to-face with the fact that to give this event my complete attention, I needed to make sure that the blog would be set for posts until mid February. The event in question, is of course, publishing my novella, with the two intertwined pathways being the cover and formatting the manuscript. After all, when you're dropping quality cash for a quality product, you best be paying attention to all aspects thereof.

So with that being said, onwards and upwards. One other thing I must mention, is that this series does delve rather deeply into issues that may be offensive to the eyes of some people. Reader discretion is strongly advised.

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From time to time, I would often wonder how I had arrived at this particular junction in my writing life. I mean, back in the day, back when I still had remnants of hair follicles growing out of my scalp, when I had made the conscious decision to start writing, I always thought that my genre of choice would be romance, or something along those lines.

I mean, how difficult could it be, right? I mean, have two people meet up, have a series of misadventures, throw some intimacy in, some conflict, mix it all up and viola! A romance novel.

BWHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!

It took me about a year to reach that conclusion and about five more to extricate myself from that mindset. However, during that extrication process, I did try other kinds of themes/genres, in a genuine attempt at finding one that I felt very comfortable writing in.

As I searched, I obviously grew as a writer. I gradually figured out what I could and could not write if I wanted to stay within my own personal boundaries (strangely, one was writing a G-rated story). But we preserved and eventually found a consistent level of sorts on what direction I wanted to go and what kinds of themes I wanted to explore. 

I eventually got the hang of writing sex and violence that contained varying degrees of explicitness for each type, taking great care and finesse in not going "Hustler" on the former and gratuitously disgusting on the latter unless it was very germane to the plot/scene.

On the former, the only time we reached "Hustler" territory was with my one and only traditionally published novel Line 21/The Inner Sibling, which was directly due to the fact that the MC had to jump feet first into the waters of the adult entertainment industry. In regards to the latter, we have not crossed that line, but we have tip-toed right to it (my upcoming novella pretty much pulverizes that boundary in a barely non-gratuitous fashion).

Eventually we settled on exploring various relationships as an overall theme to apply and nurture my writing mindset. With one of my short story anthologies, What Is Life?, I was, to a certain degree, all over the relationship platform, which was due to the twin themes of the four seasons of the year and the four stages of life.

The relationships explored were pretty generic: Story #1 featured a mountain's relationship with the outside world, like a year in the life; Story #2 featured the relationship between man and nature; Story #3 featured the trials and tribulations between a writer, his work and his spouse; and Story #4 was a musician's relationship with their music and their manager.

With our other short story anthology entitled A Trilogy of Love, we started concentrating a bit deeper on human relationships. Story #1 featured a young man going through the heartache of being dumped by his girlfriend and being pursued by a secret admirer afterwards; Story #2 is about a strangely platonic relationship between two besties (M&F); Story #3 is also a story about two besties who do a "friends with benefits" scenario.

Story #3 is important to me, as it marked what I believe to be a very key turning point with my writing in multiple ways. First and foremost, because the scene unfolded between two female friends, I wanted to make sure that I didn't divebomb into an adult entertainment area of descriptive prose. Because to be perfectly honest, I didn't think at the time I had the ability to do that kind of deep exploration of a relationship in this particular story. So we kept it to a happy medium between softcore and hardcore.

After finishing that particular story, I went off on and odd exploration of relationships, in which we covered a few particular types: platonic with a deeper bond, besties on different levels and FWB on deeper levels too. And because I enjoy challenging myself, I throw in siblings as well.

Now sufficiently armed with a travel bag filled with endless possibilities for writing, we set off to have a little creativity in overdrive.

😎

So ends part the 1st of our multi-part series. Barring any pleasant surprises, stay tuned for part the 2nd on this must read blog series. Here's to your spiffy Monday, as well as your Tubular Tuesday, Hump Day Wednesday, Ticonderoga Thursday and Feline Friday.*

*four of the five day adjectives are self-explanatory, while the fifth, Ticonderoga, can be interpreted in a number of ways, from being a village in New York, to a Revolutionary War battle and military foot, to even a comedy bit for the Three Stooges and others from that era.

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