Coming Up for Air

I have at least four plotlines dancing around, taunting me with their potential awesomeness, and I haven't had time to write any of them down. They've been driving me nuts. I have potential characters popping into my dreams and making arguments for why I should get up and write them. I have new locations sprawling out at night, all fierce and wonderful and mysterious. Granted, as soon as I wake up properly, I don't remember a damned thing about them. That, more than anything, has been pushing me off the deep end.

I've had to put my usual writing goals on hold for the last week and a half to get through three rounds of edits, and my brain is going through a large-scale rebellion. Apparently, reading through the same manuscript twelve times in nine days is not conducive to sanity. Ask my husband. I've been a babbling, spaztastic, incoherent mass of nerves--though that could also be due to my increased coffee intake. I would not survive without coffee, but it sure ups my crazy factor.

At least I have time to sketch out plot ideas, now. And character sheets. And locations.

Oh my.

Writing is like Parenting Teenagers

Yesterday afternoon, the main character of a short story began acting out in earnest. I've been struggling with the whiny little brat for days, and things came to a head during one of the emotional climaxes of the thing. He threw a temper tantrum I would have been proud of back in my rebellious days. He's done property damage to other people. He's gotten the police involved. He's given me all sorts of red tape to deal with. All in all, he made the story far more interesting than it was.

Unfortunately, the side effect is that he's becoming a whiny little bitch. He's supposed to be in his mid twenties, and he's acting sixteen. Granted, I'm in my mid twenties, and I still act sixteen on occasion, but I grew out of smashing out random car windows over perceived slights when I was twenty at the LATEST. (I hope.) 

There are perfectly good reasons why I don't have children. My characters give me hell enough. 

Taking the Plunge

When I first started writing with the intention of public consumption, I never thought I'd end up in this genre. Finding m/m romance was kind of an accident, albeit a fun and thoroughly satisfying one. I was in the middle of a plot line, begging and pleading with my heroine to get her to behave, when I realized that the whole story would work better if she were a man. Two hours of pronoun replacement later, I had something far more interesting to work with. 

And my new niche was discovered. 

I love writing many types of fiction. Science fiction, fantasy, contemporary, horror, paranormal-- you get the picture. I think the only genres I haven't tried at some point in my life are mystery and detective (though I love reading them!). When I discovered that I could add an LGBT romance element into any one of these genres, I was elated. Adding an erotic element to my stories was another delightful challenge, since I was taught, as so many of the midwestern Bible-belt kids are, that sex is wrong. Utterly, terribly, horribly wrong. Dirty. Disgusting. Evil. Until, of course, we get married to a member of the opposite sex. Then it's magically transformed into a wonderful thing, as long as it's done in the most vanilla ways in a valiant attempt to spawn. Sometimes I think I still have a mental block when sex is involved. Writing an erotic scene has become a kind of therapy. Fun therapy. The kind that doesn't make me cry. 

So here I am, a soon-to-be-published author of gay romance. I think I'm still shellshocked that it's actually happening. Wish me luck, all you ones and zeros. I just might need it.