Suspension of Disbelief

Something that comes up with a fair amount of predictability in discussing fantasy and science fiction writing is suspension of disbelief. Basically, this refers to the reader’s ability to suspend disbelief in whatever speculative elements the writer has included in the story, whether it be magic or advanced technology of some sort. Suspension of disbelief in the reader is key for these stories being a success.

For me, I require my own personal suspension of disbelief in order to write these gay romances. The most important result of this for me is that it makes it possible for me to write the romancey bits, and aids particularly well in writing of sex scenes.

It starts, for me, with believing the situation that brings the couple together would actually have a reasonable possibility of happening in real life. If I can’t believe a particular situation is at all possible, I fiddle and wrangle with it until I have some marginal confidence it’s at least plausible. It may require finagling of the actual situation, or I may have to twist the characters’ personalities until they fit the situation I envision. On occasion, it requires massive “rework” from a completely impossible-to-me seed of an idea into something that I can kinda-sorta see just might actually happen between two people if it were to happen in real life. Frequently, this reworking happens over the course of a number of partial and almost-complete manuscripts. Sometimes, I’ll take apart a completed story once I have a better “view” of the conflicts which were bare notions when I first wrote the story, as I am with LTPB. This kind of suspension of disbelief is usually fairly easy for me to attain, primarily because of the freedom I have to twist and play with the ideas until they fit something that I think just might be possible in real life.

What I have the most difficulty with—and this was true even when I was writing the gay romances steadily—is the sex scenes. I’ve been reading through some of my stories, and even with that, I’m having trouble believing I came up with them. Depending on my mood, I can be quite hard on myself, and I’ve always felt the sexy bits of my stories are some of their weakest points, even if I manage to do them fairly well. By “fairly well” I mean I manage to get at least one or two sex scenes in a longer work to tie into the characters’ emotions and thoughts in such a way the sex isn’t just sex, but becomes a way for me to build character and/or move plot forward on some level. Building character is good, and I’ll accept that. Building plot is good, and I’ll accept that. Those are passable, and, to me, believable scenes. What I rarely manage to do is bring both those aspects of story well enough into play in the sex scenes to create what I believe are some of the best and most moving sex scenes I’ve ever written.

And right now, I don’t believe in even the romancey bits. I’ve got a number of stories where I’ve brought my MCs to the brink of romance—or, hell, sometimes even still quite a bit distant from it—and I’ve stalled because I just can’t believe I’m capable of writing the kinds of scenes I feel the stories and characters in them deserve. This kind of disbelief is debilitating to my writing of gay romances, a genre I’ve never been quite as confident in as I have been in other genres I write.

I attribute this to a few things. One, I’m not as experienced with writing the gay romances as I am with the fantasy and science fiction. Another thing is that I’m not as well-versed in the genre as a reader; I didn’t start reading gay romances until I backed into writing them. Along with that, I’m not as voracious a reader as I was when I started writing the fantasy and science fiction I cut my writing teeth on; back in those early days, the first ten or so years of my writing, I read anything in the fantasy and science fiction genres I could get my hands on, whether via the library or through purchase from various local bookstores selling old and/or new books. In addition, I had the doubts fostered by the fact that all I knew of any romance subgenre came from straight romances; at various times from high school on, I read historical romances set in various eras, some romance-with-a-taste-of-science-fiction, or my one-time favorite staple of good ol’ Harlequin Romances—of which I once had an extensive collection of secondhand Harlequins written in the seventies and early eighties, which I’d garnered through many, many expeditions to a local flea market where there was a stall where I was guaranteed a wide selection I could always find at least half a dozen books I wanted to buy even after I’d exhausted all my meager book-buying funds.

For me, this wasn’t exactly the best recipe for writing confidence once I realized I was in gay romances for the foreseeable future. I’ve never quite worked past my lack of confidence in my gay romance writing.

This is why I wrestle with ideas until I feel they’re believable. Most of my ideas start of vague. A seed. My first inclination, even after all this time writing them is to blow them up far out of proportion. I conceive exaggerated personalities for my characters. Or I give them a situation that’s so full of plot holes the premises may as well be Swiss cheese. I’m the most rigorous in researching jobs (after I’ve started writing with an idea of what the characters do) because I’m all too likely to let my characters drift through their story without any sort of income no matter how much money they spend.

I’m being quite honest when I say that gay romances aren’t my forté. Part of the reason why I’ve tried to learn specific lessons with each story I started was because I knew I needed to do something to improve them. It’s helped all my fiction, but has improved my gay romances the most. Instead of having an occasional gem that worked, I found myself able to write better and better stories more and more consistently.

But I’ve never quite lost my uncertainty with the sex scenes and, in a lot of ways, the mere romancey bits. I think the reason why I’ve written a number of incest stories is because there’s built-in conflict there, regardless of which way the MCs move in the story, because they’re brothers. So, much as I enjoy writing those stories, they’re also sort of a cop-out, because of the built-in conflict of the MCs being related somehow. They’re a crutch, and I can’t allow myself to keep writing them because to do so would mean my overall writing skills would stagnate. Much as readers enjoy “more of the same,” it is possible to take it to extremes, and I don’t want to do that, because, even if my readers don’t get tired of it, I will.

And, I must say, this inability to believe in my own capabilities, even when I read a particularly good story or partial story I’ve written, and come across sex scenes I did quite well, is frustrating. I want to make progress on these stories, and my own doubt and lack of confidence are getting in my way. I think, if I could only suspend this disbelief in myself, I’d make better and faster progress with these stories than I currently am.

Poor Sleep + Illness = AWOL Creativity

I’m not making as much progress as I’d like on any of my wips. The Cleary Brothers stories fizzled out, so I opened LTPB’s plot points and outline and what I have on the project, but I can’t dredge up any decent ideas for any of it. I was kind of hoping to have at least a little bit of an outline for the rewrite ready for November, but it looks like that’s not going to happen unless the Muse hits me with a major LTPB-related clue-by-four within the next week and a half.

So there go my Nano plans.

I’m not giving up though. I have something else in the works, one of my fantasy projects, that I’ll work on under another name for Nano. In the meantime, I’ll continue to do my best to make progress on LTPB.

Part of preparing to get into working on it was reading the three or four scenes I have written on it already. They hold up well. I’d like to make more progress on the outline than what I’ve got, but to do that I need to figure out more of the plot. These points aren’t coming easily.

Really, my creative juices aren’t flowing very well right now. I’m having trouble sleeping (when I do sleep) and the interrupted sleep pattern does a lot to wipe out my writing-creativity. I’ve also been ill recently, and that’s been interfering. Headaches are not conducive to working well on writing projects.

I’ve said it before, but this year has just not been my year for writing on anything. I’ve spent more time not writing this year than I have getting words. It’s frustrating, but I’m dealing with it. At least this time I have what I feel like are better excuses than I’m just having a dry spell. I can’t do much about the sleep problems or my illness, so I’m more forgiving of myself.

So I’m hoping that as I get well, this fog will clear. That I’ll sleep better, and I’ll be able to get back to working on one of my projects from my What I’m Doing page. Wish me luck and good health.

The Results of Trying to Make Progress

I haven’t been having a very easy time of it recently. At least, with regards to working on any of the WIPS on my What I’m Doing page. Leaving the Past Behind isn’t going anywhere, and no matter how much I read through what I have of the Cleary Brothers trilogy, I’m stuck on all three.

I’ve mostly been focusing on the Cleary Brothers stories, because my muse has an aversion to even looking at LTPB for some reason. I’ve spent hours at my computer, reading through these stories and trying to come up with anything to plot, outline, or even write. My mind remains blank. Laying down and focusing on one or another of the stories isn’t working either; I lay down, put on a song that helps with ideas, and my mind goes blank. I might get a nap, but I don’t get ideas.

Now, I have tarot cards. They’ve been gathering dust for years, but I decided these might help me, as they seem to help other writers I know who refer to them when they’re stuck. So I took out the deck and a book that has the meanings of the cards, and did a four-card layout that I thought might tell me something about how to get over the hump in Going Back.

The result?

Well, the cards told me what I already knew about the situation surrounding the story. I have to laugh. It’s like God or whatever’s up there is telling me I’ll be able to solve this issue on my own.

What I think need to do is go through and read GB with a mind better-focused on seeing what plot threads I can pick up and carry on. I have some ideas for new subplot threads, but I don’t think these will be useful until I see what I can do with the threads already going and the main plot. I also need to decide how far I will take things with one character’s ex—whether he’ll become a creepy stalker-type person—though I’ve worked out that the other character eventually ends up friends with his ex girlfriend.

And I think I see what the main issue is with GB. I need to cut a scene—or at least change it. And, yep, the tarot cards were right, I really don’t want to do this, for a number of reasons. But I think this is a characteristic all the triplets share, this avoidance of discussing certain things with their brothers, especially things they think or are fairly certain will get them in trouble or mocked/picked on by their brothers. The other two are going to do it in their stories, so I think that’s what’s been hitting me wrong with this. Zar, the triplet in GB, is a little too open and honest about the fact his most recent ex is trying to come back into his life.

Well, now that I’ve solved that issue, I think I’ll be able to make progress.

Restlessness

I’ve hit another block. I feel confused about my writing—I don’t know what to work on or where to start with anything. I’m jumping from the gay romances to the fantasy and back again. Reading through different things. Not sure if this is an indication my creative mind is switching again or not. I just can’t focus long enough to make progress on anything right now.

It’s frustrating when I get like this. And, sometimes, it makes its way into my real-life. When that happens, I end up bouncing around my apartment, physically restless. I’m hoping this doesn’t happen again, because the last time it happened, I ended up returning to the Catholic church for a brief time.

This is the week I intended to start outlining Leaving the Past Behind from the plot points I have in Scapple, even though the plot points are done. It’s my hope that outlining will help shake thins loose. I may be participating in Nano this year, and if I do, LTPB will be my project, so I want to have a fair amount of the outline done by November.

I also need to check out my What I’m Doing page to see what to do with the projects on it. Going Back is still high on my list, and of course I’m working on LTPB, but the rest I haven’t touched or looked at, and I think I put a bit too much on my plate. I feel too overwhelmed to even look at the page to keep up with what I have on it, so I think I’m going to trim some stuff. One thing I know for sure, though: Someplace Where it Snows is not doing a single bloody thing; no ideas, no desire to do the research. Nothing, so I’ll probably be taking it down. My main focus this time around has been GB and its sibling books in the trilogy, so I’ll probably list those, since those and LTPB are the ones I’ve wanted to work on most of the time this year. I’m trying to go with the trend here, though I suspect it’ll change the moment I make a definite decision on what to work on.

And now I’m feeling enthuses about LTPB, so I think I’ll go work on that a bit.

I Wish I Could Say . . .

I was making lots of progress on something from my What I’m Doing page, but I’m not. Not really, anyway.

One thing I have made a fair amount of progress on is plotting out the rewrite of Leaving the Past Behind. I’m using a new program by the makers of Scrivener, called Scapple, and it’s helping me to figure things out. I like the randomness it allows. Usually when I plot stuff out, I do it in a Scrivener file, which drives me nuts because I get the ideas out of order then must organize them as I extrapolate an outline from them. With Scapple, I’m able to enter plot points in a disorganized manner, then organize them so they’re positioned linearly for me to draw the outline from. This has really helped with LTPB so far, though I’ve hit a bit of a stall on it.

In the meantime, I’ve started yet another new project. Something I’ve had in mind for a long time. The opening scene had been beating around my head for a while, even before I switched so totally to Fantasy stuff. It reached a boiling point last week, and I wrote it out. This story, Blast from the Past, is the second in a series—is actually the sequel to Going Back. Yes, the Going Back on my What I’m Doing page that I’ve been stalled on forever.

Well, BFTP’s opening scene solved the timeline issue that’s had me stalled on GB. I originally intended to run these two stories in tandem, but I was having difficulty with the dating. GB begins somewhere around April, but I wasn’t sure how long it would run, and I’d stalled on ideas for continuing on from where it’s stopped, and that was only compounded by my uncertainty about how BFTP’s beginning. I knew how the MCs would meet, and where, but not the specifics of the scene. As originally planned, one MC was supposed to leap at the opportunity for pursuing the man of his dreams with the help of one of the MCs from GB.

As it’s written now, BFTP begins in November, which gives me plenty of time to work out the story in GB. Blast from the Past has been giving me ideas steadily since I started it though, so I haven’t looked at GB. I intend to look at Going Back today, since this is the first day when I’ve had plenty of free time to look at anything since staring BFTP.

I also intend to get some more plot points on LTPB today. It’s my tentative intention to write this story for November Nano, which means I need to get the plot points done and start outlining on it. I’m actually considering starting the outline now to see if that helps me with the plot points, since the outline is much more detailed than the plot points.

So that’s where things stand. With luck, I’ll be able to swing back into Going Back pretty soon, and make lots of progress on Leaving the Past Behind.

Reversal

On Friday night—actually, early Saturday morning—I realized something about myself. I feel better about my gay romances than I’ve felt for years. Since before 2012 certainly.

And I realized something else.

My enthusiasm for my Fantasy writing had flagged somewhat. I’ll be honest here. For a number of months, I’ve not been as interested in working on my Fantasy stuff as I used to be. Actually, for most of this year. In January, I started out with a great deal of enthusiasm and threw myself into a brand-new world and project as I tried to write on a number of other projects that were running at the same time. A major stressful event knocked my creative wind out of me, though, and it hasn’t been right since.

As late as July, I still struggled with lack of desire for working on my gay romances. I couldn’t find the interest to read them, much less write on them, though I tried valiantly. It just wasn’t there.

But my Fantasy work also wasn’t there.

Nothing, writing-wise, was with me for the past several months. What writing I did do on anything I did mainly through force of will, and I took it very easy, even with the Fantasy stuff, which I vaguely wanted to work on “more” than I wanted to work on the gay romances. Because I could feel myself starting to dislike the Fantasy stuff, even when I had new ideas to play with.

Most of August, I didn’t feel like writing on anything, though I pushed through completing one of my Fantasy projects. But I also spent a good deal of the month reading through my gay romances—even more than I was interested in reading my Fantasy stuff. Typically, I’ll finish a scene or chapter and read through it to make sure it flows well, and I wasn’t even doing that reading with the Fantasy stuff.

So things are reversed. I have growing enthusiasm for working on the gay romances and increasing dislike of working on the Fantasy stuff. I honestly don’t know what it means, especially since while I recall the hell I went through in 2012, it’s not making me as scared to work on the gay romances as I usually feel. In fact, I’m more afraid of causing that level of despair if I continue working on the Fantasy stuff.

I wasn’t expecting this, and I don’t know how long it’ll last. At this point, I’m just waiting to see how far this goes. I’m not confident enough to say I’m glad to be working on the gay romances again, but I will say that I’m enjoying writing on them, and it’s a relief to feel this way.

I Don’t MEAN to Keep Dropping Off

I haven’t been posting mostly ’cause I’ve not had anything to say about my writing. My life’s been busy the past month or so, which is why there weren’t any posts in August. I intended to make some posts, but never got around to it. Kept on getting sidetracked and life kept getting in the way.

Part of it is mood issues. I’ve been depressed a bit, not seeing the point in writing. When I’m like that, it’s difficult for me to make progress on anything, even writing I want to do. I think I’m coming out of the trough though, so maybe I’ll be able to do some more work.

Today is the first day I’ve really felt like writing, and I wanted to work on something, but I haven’t been able to decide what. It’s not like I don’t have anything to do. Several incomplete projects, several stories I’m rewriting, and lots to edit. Kind of overwhelming, to be honest. I think that’s why I haven’t been able to figure out what to work on. So much to think about, I don’t know where to begin.

I hope I can figure something out soon. I’d really like to get back to these stories. Right now, I’m not feeling any fear of them or what they’ll do to me, so maybe the time away from them has helped a bit. I still remember what it was like the last year I worked on these with any regularity, but it’s not as . . . prominent in my mind.

I’ve spent most of the past couple days sort of touring my stories. Reading bits from different ones. A paragraph here, a scene there, maybe a chapter in another. And I’ve been paying attention to my mood. Amazed they’re as good as they are, identifying again what I want to fix in those I’m supposed to be rewriting, wondering why I can’t get into them substantially any more—is it all fear of being driven to despair again, or is it something more? Have I managed to turn my muse completely off of these stories, or is my muse just on hiatus from them?

One thing I do know is that I’d like to get back into working on these regularly again. Life, though, needs to let me. Even my other writing isn’t going as well as I’d like. But I miss the gay romances. Reading through them, I see the hope they have in them, their potential to be good, if not shining examples of the genre, and I really want to get them out there. I wish life would cooperate and my muse would be more willing to give me ideas for them.

At this rate, I’m beginning to think my life won’t cooperate for a while yet. I’ve been looking into getting out more, which is part of what’s kept me away from writing. I was basically a shut-in for the past few years, and it wasn’t doing me any good. In a way, I think it added to my mental condition back at the end of 2012 when I stopped writing on the gay romances with any regularity. I’ve been looking into school, or maybe getting a job, going places where I can make more friends and getting to know new people. Something’s got to change, and I think when I figure out what my life needs, all my writing will come back full force. That’s my hope anyway.

I’m Back! (Again)

I sincerely don’t mean to fall off the face of the earth like this so much. This has just been a crazy year for me. I can’t promise it won’t happen again, either. The way things have gone so far, I expect Real Life to throw all my glorious plans out the window again. I’ll do my best, though. This time, it was computer issues; it spent most of the past two months in the shop, and my “emergency” computer is even older than this one, so I’m leery about relying on it as much as I had to.

Now, to address something anyone who visits Literotica may have noticed. Yes, I have removed all my stories from the site. Part of my dissatisfaction with my gay romances has been, I think, the fact I habitually wrote, then posted almost as soon as I got them done, so some of them really needed some cleaning up. I know, I know, they looked perfectly fine, but I still want to straighten them up. Why couldn’t I leave them up on Literotica while I did this? Mainly because I intend to Indie Pub a number of them. The rest (the “squick” stories), I’ll clean up and most likely repost to Literotica once I’m satisfied with them again.

It has occurred to me that maybe I need to look at my gay romances as opportunities instead of burdens. What I mean by opportunities is that they’ve previously proven useful as my learning-writing, when I want to learn a new skill or habit with my writing. I don’t do that so much in my other writing because I’ve usually got much more going on, and I’ve kind of fallen off the Horse of Learning. This means that I’ll be practicing new skills and habits with my gay romances, which should keep them from bogging me down too much. All I know is that whenever I enter into a gay romance project with a goal to learn something new, I generally didn’t get too emotionally bogged down by the project.

I also miss working on my gay romances. Any time I’m away from my writing, I miss it, and I’m kind of surprised to feel this way about the gay romances, but I’m not disappointed in the feeling. I have many incomplete stories with a lot of potential. I still revisit them to read—both the complete ones and the incomplete stories—whenever I have some free time and am in the mood.

Now, last month I fully intended to stop writing gay romances, but I thought I might be being too hasty. I’d had a horrible few weeks, when none of my writing was going well, and I got bogged down in the need to write. Unfortunately, whenever I start losing the joy of writing, I tend to blame the gay romances and try to shove them out the door, no matter how reluctant they are to go. In this case, the gay romances were not to blame at all. It was a general block on all my writing, and that was rather dramatically proven when my other writing wouldn’t go either.

This basically resulted in an involuntary break from writing. I had to reevaluate. After about a week, I found I could write on my other stuff again, but I’d been made shy of the gay romances again. These days, it always takes me longer to want to work with the gay romances, because I remember so well the hell I went through in 2012 over them. This is also why I’m so quick to blame them for any difficulty with writing any of my stories, regardless of genre.

I’ve spent the past weeks deeply considering what place I actually want to give the gay romances in my writing life. The ultimate feeling was that I don’t want to give them up. I’ve taken some more time to figure out how I’ll treat them from now on. Hence using them to learn new writing skills and habits. This actually makes me look forward to writing on them again. I love learning new writing techniques, to be honest, and I haven’t been doing enough of that in my other writing.

So this is where I stand. With any luck, I’ll move up the shore and back into the thick of things with regards to my gay romances. I’m getting tired of myself, probably as much as you are.

A Week of Struggling

I’ve been struggling this week. I had plenty of time during which I could have worked on my gay romances, but I didn’t. The kicker is that I didn’t work on my other writing, either. It was as if my inability to work on the gay romances killed my ability to work on my writing at all.

I have declared mornings (should I be up and about—and home—during them) my Gay Romance Hours. This past week, I was up before 9 o’clock in the morning four times. One of those mornings, I had to go out for appointments which lasted into the afternoon. So that means I had three whole mornings during which I could have worked on my gay romances.

I looked at them. More than once each of those mornings. I checked my What I’m Doing page, decided on a project to focus on (usually LTPB), and opened the corresponding project in Scrivener. Then I promptly let myself get distracted by other things. The internet. Reading. Doing housework. A few times when I looked at various projects, I felt the “this sucks, this is stupid” feeling and decided to work on something else, either another gay romance, or one of my other writing projects—which also went nowhere because it was morning hours and I’ve apparently ingrained the Work On Gay Romances Before Noon decision deeply enough that I couldn’t even begin to focus on my other writing during those hours. This is a good thing—except when I can’t seem to make any progress on my gay romances.

For what it’s worth, I also had the “this sucks, this is stupid” feeling over my other writing. Even during the afternoon and evening hours I’ve allotted to its progress. This basically means I made little progress on anything at all this week overall. What little progress I’ve been able to make on any of my writing has come in the evening hours, and none of that on my gay romances.

I’ll be up early tomorrow for grocery shopping, and I’ll have some morning hours to work on my gay romances. It is my intention to get some plot cards on LTPB and maybe do a little brainstorming on another project from my What I’m Doing page. My mind will be fresh, I should be in a good mood, and I’m hoping that by working on my gay romances I’ll be able to make progress on something.

Wish me luck, though. I may need it.

Some Progress on LTPB

I’ve been considering just how I’m going to tackle Leaving the Past Behind over the past three weeks since my epiphany about it. I stated in my previous post some of what I’d like to do with it, and I’ve realized that in some ways, this story will be substantially different from my original conception of it. While I’m excited about working on it, I almost hesitate to do so because it’s so well-known in its current version.

This doesn’t mean I’m going to abandon this project. I’m confident enough about this new conception of LTPB that it’s driving me to change it. I still very much feel the sharpness of the realization that it’s not the story it could be, and it’s one I’m determined to make the best it can be.

So when, yesterday, I chanced into a fair amount of free time in the morning, I spent some of that free time getting some background work on the rewrite done. I now have a good amount of notes for the new version of LTPB and a functional character list. This took about four hours, all told.

For the character list, I had to comb not only the original version of LTPB but also a couple of other projects for names because I decided how Eric and Dorian’s story ties into the remainder of the Circle of Friends series and wanted to make sure I had the right names for the main connection between them and the rest of my characters in the series; it’s through Eric, but he tends to avoid Ivan, mainly because Ivan has such firm connections to the gay community that Eric is trying desperately to pretend like he doesn’t belong to at the beginning in my new conception of LTPB. I’ll say this much: Ivan is quite determined, and he has Eric’s best friend Maribel on his side, and between them and Dorian, Eric’s going to start accepting himself and his place in the world with enough backbone to come out of the story a confident man who has the courage to stand up for himself and those he cares most about.

I’ve also stumbled upon one of Dorian’s faults in making these notes—and it’s a doozy, as well as difficult to explain simply. He’s a very devout Catholic and prizes his religion. Basically, I’m going to drive him to start committing sins over his relationship with Eric. I’m not taking away his high intelligence, but I’m making it work against him due to his deep faith. As I see it, this is going to torture Dorian until he finally breaks down and admits to his mother everything he’s been doing—not only with Eric, but also the lies he’s told to cover it up and basically destroy his comfortable place in the Catholic faith. It’ll make him stronger, wiser, and, hopefully, much less perfect. Dorian’s been doing his best to ignore and hide from the truth about himself for years, and I’m going to make him suffer for choosing that route.

My enthusiasm has been fired up, and I’m enjoying the feeling. It’s been such a long time since I last felt this way about any of my gay romances that I want to do my best to capture this drive while I have it. Not sure I’ll be able to do much more until later on in May, though, unless I get some windfall free time in the next couple weeks.

I’ll be honest here. I’m not really surprised, on reflection, that I want to rewrite LTPB. I’ve known for years that I didn’t love it, and when I don’t love any of my completed works—even the gay romances, which I invariably do love after completing them, even if it takes a little time to recover from the act—and I could never figure out why. It’s habitual for me to go through all my gay romances two or three times a year, both completed and incomplete stories, in search of a way to pick up the thread of one or another incomplete story, or to enjoy reading those I’ve completed to my satisfaction. Yes, I know I said in the previous post that I detest my gay romances—but that’s generally when I’m in the middle of composing a number of them one after the other; once I’m done and have a break from them, I generally love the ones I’ve completed and feel tugs of desire to complete those I haven’t finished. I completed LTPB in October 2009, and, aside from separating the chapters prior to putting it up on Literotica.com, I couldn’t bear the thought of opening it to read. I haven’t done more than glean names from the copy I have on my thumb drive since posting it on Literotica.com. I simply couldn’t make myself look at it, and any time I tried to force myself, I couldn’t get past the second chapter.

I didn’t know myself well enough to recognize this symptom before now. But the past couple years of focusing on other writing has taught me what it means when I can’t force myself to look at a story I thought finished, and I don’t think I could have reached this conclusion about LTPB before this year. I only barely understood what it meant when I couldn’t stand to read or write on an incomplete story that was running well before I hit the block, and it took another year or so for me to recognize the “It’s Broken Somehow!” feeling I’ve had since completing LTPB. In fact, I didn’t even recognize the feeling for what it was until just recently. I thought it needed “cleaning up,” but I couldn’t even do that without stalling out in the first chapter and hitting a block—and I was basically copying what I’d already written! I seriously think I needed to try the patch-job to recognize what was really bugging me about LTPB.

I’ve still got a copy of the original version, and I’ll keep it even after I finish the new version. I don’t expect everyone to like the new version of LTPB, and with that in mind, I’ll be more than happy to email an RTF copy to anyone who wants a copy of the version of LTPB posted on Literotica.com. For free. As I feel it is substandard—not to my satisfaction—I will not charge for it. I’m making this offer because I intend to have the original taken down from Literotica.com if I ever get around to publishing the new version. Hell, I’ll even do it from this day forward. I do not want anyone who loves the story as is to be angry or upset about its loss. I may take it off of Literotica.com, but I will most certainly not restrict anyone’s access to it if I can find a way to get them a copy. Just use the Contact PS_Lopez page to send me your request.