“where do you get your ideas from?” aka the creative process

The writing community, known for many things including rampant pretension, deep earnestness, and undeserved self-importance, also apparently hates being asked, “Where do you get your ideas?”. I feel like I’ve read multiple author’s notes, afterwards, forewards, interviews, etc, where a writer opines the plebs, once again, asking gormlessly, “but like, how’d ya think it up?”

When I told my parents I was writing a novel (terrible terrible idea, do not do this unless the ink on your publishing contract is already dry, extremely embarrassing otherwise), they both commented, multiple times, on their surprise that their daughter could produce a novel. Not because they thought I lacked the skill, but because neither of them are writers by trade, and in fact, both seem to view it as some sort of secret alien skill that is completely unknowable to them. My mom has declared, multiple times, “I wouldn’t even know how to start!”

Plebs 🙄

Anyway. I’m with my mom on this one. How do I start? How do I finish? How do I do that simultaneously boring but also vital stuff in the middle? How do I make it good? How do I make it worthwhile? How do I make it funny, or sad, or electric?

Maybe the writing community doesn’t like this question because the answer, so often, feels like, “dude, I wrote the damn thing and even i don’t know”.

Each writing element, on its own, is one thing. Prose, dialogue, character, themes, plot, structure, framing, atmosphere, the list goes on. But writing a story start to finish almost feels more like a completely separate skill than being good at any one element. It’s something that is more than the sum of its parts.

In the world of fanfiction, my creative process was thus: I wrote what I wanted to see. The characters and the world and the voice of the source material was taken care of for me— my only job on those fronts was to interpret as I saw fit. It was the plot and story that I had to come up with myself, and in fandom I was of the mindset that no one was going to give me exactly what I wanted except me, so… I just did it myself. Be the change you want to see.

This might have been noble if I wasn’t otherwise a snooty, picky bitch about the fic I actually did read. In both Supernatural and MDZS fandoms, at my most entrenched, I was barely reading fic by other authors because I was so easily annoyed by interpretations I deemed wrong (funny enough, much of this drama revolving around the fact that I think both Dean and Wei Wuxian are gay ((THERE ARE DOZENS OF US!!!)) whereas most of fandom thinks they’re bisexual). So I ended up taking on the onus, if you could call it such, of writing such hits as, “What if Dean was gay and didn’t realize it?” or, “what if Wei Wuxian was gay and didn’t realize it?”. At least in MDZS, this is literally a major plot point… though it could be argued it’s a big neon anvil-shaped character note hovering over Dean’s head for the entire series, threatening to drop at any second, crushing him like a bug. (Writing that last sentence gave me such a nostalgic rush of “hehe i love when bad things happen to characters I love.” Ah, the foibles and follies of ye olde fandom days…)

So, where my fanfiction ideas came from was the source material. Or, being generous to those with different opinions, my interpretation of the source material. Still, though, I would argue that a primary driving force for me, even in my fanfiction where I was writing in worlds and with characters I didn’t create myself, was to draw an arrow between the writing elements above directly from the source material to my story. For example, one of the themes in MDZS that really hit for me was Wei Wuxian finally finding a safe place to land with Lan Wangji after years of instability from both societal and familial external factors as well as internal factors like his own fevered brain (<3). This same theme manifests in pretty much all of my MDZS fic, and draws directly from the source material. Supernatural is similar (allowing room for difference as it’s a source material created by a bazillion people which will always invite wider interpretations as opposed to the single viewpoint of a single author like MXTX). Dean’s self-worth issues and projection as a masculine suave cool guy action hero ladies man when in reality he is a soft-hearted mommy’s boy with a heart of gold who just wants to be loved and domesticated is like, the central theme of pretty much every deancas fic I ever wrote, lol.

Maybe this seems obvious, but there is a large quantity of fanfiction out there that is almost completely divorced from the source material. And some of that fanfiction is also divorced from all other writing elements, but there’s no need to be mean, and fandom is and should be a place free for creative expression, so let’s leave that right where it is.

Fanfiction, to me, is like a frayed sweater. There are a lot of threads, knit by someone else. I have now come into possession of this sweater somehow (stolen, thrifted, gifted, dealer’s choice) and the question at hand is: which threads do I want to pull? And how do I weave this sweater back together in a way as to complement the original garment that is true and authentic but also leaves my mark on it? An egregious metaphor, but you get it.

My approach to original work is similar, except now I have to knit the sweater myself, which is like, a lot harder. Any threads I choose to pull were already left there by me. It’s mes all the way down.

I’ve never found getting ideas to be the hard part about writing. Ideas come in a million ways, from a million different directions, and in a million gradations of detail. Some ideas I’ve spent weeks daydreaming about, only to never put pen to paper (fingers to keyboard) and actually write anything out. Some ideas are like newly birthed babies in my palm, and end up getting raised, clothed, fed, and put through college by me. And the thing is, the difference between these approaches isn’t the quality of the idea, but simply the ideas I saw through to the end. Which sounds inane, but inane things can be true.

When I knew I wanted to write a novel, it wasn’t a matter of “Gee, what am I going to write about?” It was “Gee, I actually have to commit to one of these thousands of ideas I have and write about it for an entire book.” So, Don’t Worry About It, as much as I love it and cherish it and think it’s a worthwhile and good story, was mostly born of me closing my eyes and blindly deciding, “Okay, I’m sticking to that one.”

And I did. And it was hard. I have commitment issues.

Once that part was over, the hardest part of writing began: the actual writing (whatever step of writing you are currently on is the hardest, btw). Don’t Worry, in its very earliest stages, leaned way harder into the romcom aspect of fake dating (and may have originally started as a fanfiction idea but i’m taking that to my grave). And then, as many of my fics that started as romps did before it, it became a lot more serious, and, frankly, interesting.

I write all of my work almost entirely in chronological order. There are scenes here and there that I start chewing on in advance, which tend to get written out in either my phone’s notes app, or an email to myself, or at the end of the story document, etc. Somewhere within easy reach. These then serve as benchmarks I can write to, though there are also a lot that never make the final cut because I never run into a place to naturally slide them in— it ends up being a give and take, though I like to imagine I err on the side of “what’s right for the story” as opposed to “I wrote it, so it should be included”. Fine line to walk, because “what’s right for the story” is an incredibly amorphous statement.

To the Supernatural crowd, remember the days of “we go where the story takes us”? For those not in the know, anytime something shitty happened on Supernatural, TPTB would default to, “we go where the story takes us” to justify their shitty decisions. Obviously, this drove me nuts, because, like, stories don’t exist independently in the world. You guys wrote it, you take ownership of it. Acting like a story is an overexcited dog that slipped its leash and is off pooping in all the neighbors’ yards and causing general chaos and acting like you have no responsibility over it is stupid, right? “Well, the dog did it, not me.” Ok, dummy, sure, except for the fact that it’s your dog.

AND YET.

It would be disingenuous of me to pretend like there isn’t a deeply intangible part of my writing process that is similar to “going where the story takes [me]”. Sometimes, it really does feel like the story is happening without me and I’m scrambling to type fast enough to keep up. Yes, it all comes from me, but it’s almost like the story comes from somewhere in my body other than my brain, bypassing conscious thought altogether, and exiting out through my fingers.

The funny thing is, this intangible part of my writing process is probably the most important. Sometimes I’ll include a turn of phrase or line of prose or character note that feels important, only to realize upon editing it felt so important because I had already included it earlier on (likely weeks/months ago, so like, I’ve forgotten, but also not??). This internal, unconscious dialogue that always seems to be happening inside me when I’m writing a story is very strange, and feels even stranger to try to put into words. Sometimes I refer to it as “lateral thinking”, where concepts and themes and dialogue and so on all smash together in my head and somehow sort themselves into something legible and meaningful. Like when you put a bunch of garlic in a plastic container and shake it up and the cloves come loose from the skin.

So… it just happens. But also, it doesn’t just happen…s.

To make matters more complicated, I know that I have a natural knack for writing. I’ve worked hard and honed my skills, to be sure, and will always be learning, but even when I was a kid, I had the ability to put words to page in a way most of my peers either couldn’t or weren’t interested in. So here I am, saying I have a mystical "lateral thinking” creative process, plus at least some innate talent, which again, not much of this is actually explaining how I write. I’m bragging about my writing prowess, but can’t even put how I do it into words. Typical pretentious writer bullshit.

In the past, I’ve described my layered approach of storytelling as leapfrogging. It sounds deeply unromantic to say it out loud, but essentially what that looks like is:

• THEME AND/OR PLOT POINT 1

• THEME AND/OR PLOT POINT 2

• THEME AND/OR PLOT POINT 3

• THEME AND/OR PLOT POINT 1

• THEME AND/OR PLOT POINT 2

• THEME AND/OR PLOT POINT 2

• THEME AND/OR PLOT POINT 1

• THEME AND/OR PLOT POINT 3

• THEME AND/OR PLOT POINT 1

So, really, it’s just structure. It’s just balance. There have been times during the editing phase where I will just copy and paste chunks to different parts of the story because it helps even the scales. Or times I have deliberately added transitional scenes solely to break up a THEME AND/OR PLOT POINT that’s gone on for too long. It’s not elegant in the slightest, but I always try to remember that the only person who knows how many times I’ve changed the order of something, cut things here and added things there… is me. I’m looking at the story from behind, with all the tape and glue and popsicle sticks and gum. Readers are, hopefully, only seeing the story from the front, where as far as they’re concerned, that’s the only version of it that’s ever existed. Don’t Worry is actually a great example of this, because in an earlier draft, there was a whole subplot with Wren and her personal trainer meant to supplement the theme of Wren’s desire for control, and what happens when she meets someone who pushes back against that. She was also meant to be one of the few supports Wren has in her life, so when it inevitably goes sour, it’s part of the overarching story of Wren’s emotional tethers, tenuous as they are, finally being cut one by one (and of course, Wren’s the one doing the cutting— working title of the novel should’ve been Wren Scissorhands).

Imagine my surprise, when, desperate to cut down the final word count (debut literary novels should not be almost 120,000 words), this subplot got cut and it was only about 4000, or 3%. That’s not a lot. There’s no hard and fast rule, but I’d say having a subplot that only takes up 3% of your total word count is not really earning its place in the final product. It’s off balance. However, at the same time, I was afraid that cutting that subplot would throw the balance way off in the opposite direction— that is, not enough was happening in the remainder of the story to justify… well… the story. Like it was too much THEME AND/OR PLOT POINT 1 with no 2 or 3 in between as a buffer. EVEN THOUGH 1 is the main plot and is by far the most important. But also buffers aren’t just filler. They fill out your story, but they shouldn’t be just filler. But also, by definition, they are not as important as the main plot. So why include them at all? Well, because you need a buffer to help keep your story balanced aaaaaand we’re right back at the beginning. The leapfrogging is not perfect. The leapfrogging is not all knowing. Stories can be told in an infinite number of ways, but the stories I tell cannot. I subscribe to the frog.

This is somewhat of a sidebar, but all of this is compounded by my fear that my stories are boring. I know objectively they’re not— I have more than enough feedback to confirm this— but if insecurities were that easy to dispel, there would be a lot less makeup brands in the world. Like so many things, the more confident you are in your writing, the more likely other people are to respond in kind. Being transparently insecure, fishing, or “playfully” undermining your skill only invites scrutiny, which only leads to an unhelpful and unproductive feedback loop.

Obviously, I am an overthinker. And a circular thinker. And, dare I say, a “lateral” thinker. One of the ways I am attempting to combat the worst of all of these is to invest generously in my self-esteem. The ultimate enemy of overthinking is the confidence that you’re a competent human being who can do things well. It is simultaneously humbling and horrifying to consider the ways in which I’ve held myself back, both in my personal life and my writing, because I struggled for so long to take myself and what I have to offer seriously. It’s alarming to draw such a definitive line between between my ability to create and something as mawkish and nebulous and societally manufactured as the concept of self-esteem. I wish I was above it. But I’m not.

The good news is that with the sticky concept of self-esteem comes humility, humour, and a healthy amount of self doubt. Because the goal of creating isn’t to get it right the first time every time and accept no criticism ever (unless you’re one of those people who said you didn’t like dean winchester beat sheet because of dean’s fashion choices, your critiques mean nothing to me!!!). Actually, maybe it’s not confidence that’s the ultimate enemy of overthinking, but creating. Is there anything that says “screw you” to self-doubt and overthinking more than actually having pushed through the muck of both of those and come out the other side with something you made—and finished— with love and persistence and determination?

I can only speak for myself, but I suspect there are authors out there who are much more efficient and much less woo woo about their work than I am. In fact, a lot of the advice I’ve seen about taking your writing seriously is to treat it like a job, where you write no matter how “creative” you are feeling that day. At my most expeditious, I have done exactly that and seen the benefits of it. Sometimes, you really do just need to put some damn words on the page to shake the cobwebs loose. However, I don’t expect to become Stephen King levels of prolific anytime soon. I don’t think I have it in me, nor do I think I need to have it in me to feel like I’m a worthy writer.

All of these words to say exactly what I said at the beginning: “dude, I wrote the damn thing and even i don’t know”. I don’t have all of the answers, or even most of them, or even some of them… but I can say that creativity is an experience unique to everyone, and there is no clear road map to a “successful” creative session no matter what anyone says. That being said, willingness to make mistakes and be imperfect and embracing a reasonable amount of self doubt while at the same time feeling secure in your abilities goes a long way.

With that oxymoronic advice out of the way, I have one final word on the matter:

ribbit

failing to get the magnum opus published, then writing another, worse novel anyway

In the query letter for Don’t Worry About It, I said, on its potential impact: This novel takes a complex, unflattering look at how the world views women, and a complex, unflattering look at how women view each other and themselves. It is a novel about the damage women do to each other, and the lateral societal structures that encourage them […] DON’T WORRY ABOUT IT is an adult novel of 110,000 words that combines lesbian erotica, literary fiction, and romance into thought-provoking social commentary. This novel is meant to titillate body and mind, exploring female and lesbian desire in a way few other mainstream works have. It is meant to be a challenging story, encouraging debate and word-of-mouth discourse.

I didn’t oversell its themes, but I absolutely oversold the number of people who would be interested in reading such a thing. And yes, I sure did lean on the erotica aspect in the spirit of how much everyone wanted to gawk at 50 Shades back in the day, despite the fact that 50 carries with it an entire airport’s worth of cultural baggage, and also, aside from that, just sucks. This novel is not like 50 shades at all, but there is a lot of sex in it, which is a whole other blog post all its own.

My point is that aside from the usual stink of eau de Buy My Book Please that pervades all query letters, what I say in mine holds water. To me, anyway. I believe this is an important story with a lot to say, and I didn’t pull my punches when it came to critiquing our cultural and political moment, specifically as it relates to (a subset of) women. I was well aware while writing this novel and falling in love with it that it would be an uphill battle to catch an agent’s interest, and that’s before even discussing the current state of lesbian fiction (bad). Even finding comparative titles was really hard, both because I don’t read lesbian fiction (mea culpa) and because, for better and worse, Don’t Worry is fairly unique in its genre.

But I followed my heart anyway. I pushed aside what The Man asked, expected, nay, demanded of me, and pursued my art in an as pure, as unadulterated, and as authentic manner as I could. This isn’t to say there wasn’t more I could have done. I am sure there was a way, or even many ways, in which I could have moved forward with this manuscript— whether that meant getting back on social media and soliciting interest there, or digging deeper for agents, or paying a professional editor/querying service to ensure my submissions were up to snuff, and so on— but I didn’t. After a year, I threw in the towel, in the sense that I accepted mainstream publishing wasn’t interested in Don’t Worry and likely never would be, and the ratio of blame as it pertains to my writing abilities vs Society will always be up for a debate that can never be resolved, and that’s just how it is, regardless of if I can reconcile those feelings or not.

And that’s hard, emotionally. Anyone who has put their art out there only to have it rejected—for whatever reason, whether it’s a result of their own skill level, market forces, or other factors— will feel the sting of your Most not even being enough to pass the first hurdle, let alone the finish line. And the response to that is, like, wow, okay, so I put my heart and soul into something and now my feelings are hurt and my heart is crushed and i flayed myself open, every sticky crevice on display, the most vulnerability i have displayed in my time on this earth so far, and i didn’t even—

—profit off it.

did you hear that? that metallic popping sound? it’s the can of worms i just opened.

We all want to be seen, we all want to be understood, and how we are seen and understood is often through the art we create. But the art we create cannot exist independent of profit unless you’re already independently wealthy and you have endless time, resources, and physical/emotional availability. Sure, you can make crafts or visual art or do any other type of creative activity in your spare time as a hobby, even though sometimes it feels like hobbies are dead and everything is a side hustle now, but I’m referring to making art for a living. If you create as a hobby, well, the money you have has to come from somewhere, y’know?

On paper, I despise the monetization of hobbies. In practice, for years I wrote fanfiction for free, which was a hobby, and now I’m writing original fiction, and I want money, please. I would like to monetize my hobby, please.

Nothing about marrying these disparate streams of thought is easy. In the past, I’ve been asked once or twice about how someone can give me money in exchange for fic i write (always with kind intentions, I don’t begrudge these people at all) and have received many comments about how the commenter would like to purchase a book I write someday, or wish they could compensate me financially because they enjoyed the fic, stuff like that. Toward the end of my time in fandom, it became common for people to write a threadfic (is that still a thing in fandom?? do people know what that is??) and then put their ko-fi (is that still a thing in fandom?? do people know what that is??) at the end. with the passage of time and my exit from the fandom world I feel like I can admit I always judged this choice (funny, considering how easy I accepted the concept of people taking fanart commissions/selling prints… is there a difference or is this just another instance of me demurring and undermining the concept of writing as a skill that deserves compensation?? should anyone in fandom make money off their peers?? sweet, merciful jesus, can anything ever be simple??). And then i wrote Don’t Worry, and while this is an original work, I also originally claimed that I didn’t want to “monetize my audience” when I first had the idea of publishing it on ao3 or self-publishing if the mainstream avenues didn’t work out. And, y’know, here we are. I have a donate page ready to go on this site and the only reason I haven’t activated it yet is because I have to upgrade my squarespace subscription for it. I mean, they do say you have to spend money to make money. Money I will soon be asking you, my audience, for. haha.

On top of that, there is always, thrumming just under the surface, the killer, nigh-undefeatable imposter syndrome. It seems impossible that I can objectively know I’m at LEAST a competent writer and storyteller, and yet, the thought of receiving even a cent in exchange for my work is excruciating. Other authors have written much worse books than I have and they’re getting paid for them. I used to say that the moment I receive compensation for my writing is the moment I stop writing forever. And it’s not out of some moral quandary. I’m just afraid. Of what? I don’t know. What if I’m really not that good? What if, independent of quality, people don’t care for my writing and I never publish another book because I just don’t sell? What if people care so little about women, specifically lesbians, that writing stories about them never generates enough income for me to live on even though this is the most natural, authentic shape for how I share my art with others? What if there’s a bomb strapped to the loonie and I don’t notice?

The unfortunate side effect of these posts is getting to know me at least a little, no matter how much I’d like to keep this writing blog and my personal life separate. Almost like my writing and my personality feed into each other! who knew. Anyway, I tend to overthink things, and not just once. The paths of my mind are well-trodden.

“Well-trodden”, though, is also a funny way to describe my mind, because the ultimate outcome of the woolgathering and pussyfooting and hand-wringing above is just: au??ghuughhuu?hughhh????

And still, all of this comes down to exchanging money for goods and services. I want to publish a book, and I want to get paid for it. I want to create stories and receive financial compensation in return. I want the widest audience possible. I want (my work) to be seen. I want to live my life in a way that is meaningful and fulfilling to me, and we live in a world where meaning and fulfillment come hand in hand with financial success, and on a smaller, more boring scale, I have bills to pay and only dead-end career prospects and financial mediocrity ahead of me otherwise.

Amidst this mental ensnarement and existential dread, I am writing a second book. I’ve already started off on the wrong foot because this one is also about lesbians, and gay women just do not generate the same mainstream interest as stories about straight women or gay men. However, I am keeping in mind that the current lesbian fiction scene is very milquetoast, and the narrative I’ve constructed reflects that. A fun easter egg: while constructing the story I asked myself, what’s the most non-threatening social justice issue to hinge the protagonist’s character arc on? Why, environmentalism of course! Which is not to say environmentalism isn’t a worthy cause— just that there’s not a lot of nuance to the general public’s opinions on it, and you won’t stir up a whole lot of controversy by saying, “Umm, maybe we should stop killing the planet we live on?” Scathing commentary.

It’ll be fun. And romantic. And funny. And probably, genuinely meaningful to at least a handful of people. There will be at least a few goodreads reviews for it that begin by listing the REP(resentation) stats like they’re Pokemon cards, with little to say about the actual novel itself. I’ll have a few bucks in the bank. The cover will have that god-awful paper cutout look that is so popular with contemporary romance novels right now.

And, um, all will be well?

This is so confusing and harrowing. I fear the hopelessly contradictory nature of creating art for profit will never free me from its clutches. Imposter syndrome can only be fed by a lack of self-esteem and, simply, self, both of which I can address in my personal life. Uncertainty is more likely to take hold while feeling directionless and like I’m lacking purpose, also things I can work on privately. My fears, doubts, and judgements surrounding this topic are not unique. I am barely a blip on existence’s radar, and that should free me from such earthly concerns. Art is a worthy human pursuit regardless of whether it generates profit or not. Art is a worthy human pursuit regardless of whether anyone else beside its creator ever lays eyes on it. Art is only worth what someone is willing to pay for it, and what someone is willing to pay for it is often utterly arbitrary and generated by a complex and external series of consumer trends and economic factors and says nothing about the intrinsic value of the work itself, if a monetary value could even be assigned to such a thing in the first place. A soothing mantra I repeat to myself every night in bed before I fall asleep.

And then every new morning, I still wake up with a piece of me having been deemed unworthy, and a less worthy, in-progress piece of me in microsoft word waiting to find out what happens next, and if the lesbians can save the world with the power of love from evil energy drink CEO Dr. Litterman and his giant laser that is going to speed up global warming to even more unprecedented rates all so he can make a new patented formula in an effort to gain back the market shares he’s lost to all those seven year olds who are addicted to prime.

For what it’s worth, none of this negates how proud I am of Don’t Worry and how excited I am to finally share it with an audience. I can’t say much for sure, but one thing I can is that I’m at my best and my happiest and my most fulfilled when I’m crafting a story. Whether it’s serious or goofy or erotic or milquetoast or complex or just for silly fun, it’s always part of me, and I hope that part of me connects with part of you.

And with that brief preamble out of the way: saltyfeathers donation page coming soon 🥲

the thin line between meaningful and gratuitous suffering

There’s a scene in “The Troop” by Nick Cutter that has stuck with me since the first (and only) time I read it years ago. Premise of the novel is a troop of boy scouts are stuck on an island off the coast of PEI and a lord of the flies-type scenario ensues, plus nasty infectious tapeworms squiggling around making things worse. I have a pretty wide, if not deep, horror lexicon, and horror novels especially rarely inspire more than a shrug from me. I find the combination of visual and audio cues from horror movies or just the audio of podcasts a lot more effective at scaring me than just words on a page. However, in “The Troop”, there is… the turtle scene. Funny enough, I don’t remember the specifics of it, nor the events surrounding it. That hasn’t stopped me from being haunted by this scene since I read it, and presumably, forever more until the day I die, amen halleluiah.

The turtle dies. Is killed. In quite a gruesome way. I cried.

Animal suffering in horror media is not even close to novel, and a trope I assign a combined rank of baseless, gratuitous shock value and counting on the average person’s sympathy toward the unjust suffering of an innocent animal. It’s part of the toolkit of horror more than anything else— a great way to raise the stakes (death) without actually killing off any of the human characters quite yet. I know there’s a whole club of us who cringe every time the happy family moves into a new home at the beginning of a haunted house movie and their loving dog bounds around cheerfully barking in the great new yard it will definitely have lots of time to enjoy!

The turtle murder, the turder, if you will, has stayed with me since the first time I read it. There are a ton of other nasty scenes in that book, and if you’re a fan of gore in your horror, I highly recommend it. Going by what I said in the last paragraph, I should be able to easily write off the turder as a cheap trope checked off the infection/zombie horror subgenre list. However, my memory of that scene is not quite so simple. It’s tinged with a cosmic injustice of the banality of human (or animal) suffering. There was a moment in that scene where the turtle looks up at the night sky filled with stars as it died. And again, I can’t remember the scene well, and feel no desire to search it up to relive it for this blog post. I can only attest to how it’s lived in my psyche since then, and potentially transformed into something more than itself. To this day, I still feel sad about the turder. In the real world, turtles die and are killed every day, which is sad. But the turtle I feel saddest about is the fictional one in “The Troop”. Maybe it helps that it’s not a particularly long scene. Sometimes, emotional resonance in fiction has to be a surgical strike. There are times to linger, but this wasn’t one of them. If I recall correctly, the scene’s place in the larger narrative was to chronicle one of the main characters’ descents into madness after becoming infected by the tapeworms that make its victims violent and homicidal. The turtle’s death was merely a stepping stone on that journey.

This post isn’t about shitting on the narrative stepping stones. How we construct stories, how we raise the stakes, the weight we place on one type of event over another and how that shapes our understanding of rising action, all of that is an interesting discussion for sure. And I’m not here to shit on “The Troop” or Nick Cutter. In fact, “The Saturday Night Ghost Club” by Craig Davidson (Nick Cutter is his horror pseudonym) is one of my favorite books of the last few years.

What this post is about is the turder, and my own personal stepping stones to understanding the difference between meaningful and gratuitous suffering.

I really like to make characters suffer. I think my laser focus on this does stem from my fandom days. Essentially, the more a character suffers, the sweeter the nectar of their happy ending. This leads into another storytelling tool I believe very firmly in— endings must be earned. In general, that doesn’t mean the main character gets what they deserve. It means the ending of the narrative is justified by all that comes before. In fanfiction world, however, it means exactly that. Dean Winchester or Wei Wuxian or whoever your favorite little fictional pawn is has suffered greatly in their life, and after a period of great strife (and usually dying at least once), they find their happy ending with their love interest and even if things aren’t perfect, they are good. It’s cathartic, and catharsis in storytelling, to me, is imperative.

[the link between true happiness as a result of suffering and the christian worldview of the reward of heaven after a lifetime of strife… well… I’m aware of it. I’m just not educated enough on it to probe this avenue of thought any further beyond “We live in a society.” Though I did learn to tie my shoes in church when I was a kid, so maybe god really does exist]

Eventually, I became wary of my love of making characters suffer. Not fully— stories really can’t exist without conflict of some kind, and suffering is absolutely a kind of conflict. In fandom, there are a lot of fics that refuse their characters any kind of suffering or conflict whatsoever, which leads to flat, uninteresting narratives (which is totally fine, I’m only speaking for myself here and lots of people enjoy the comfort of fics like that— I’ve definitely written my fair share). I think my wariness stemmed from the glee of suffering. Obviously, occasionally, fictional suffering is delicious and sexy. But when it got to the point that it was more about the glee, about the gratuitousness, of the suffering, than about what could be meaningfully or cathartically gained from said hardships, I had to take a step back and reevaluate my approach.

I think this became more apparent to me in 2015 (if you can possibly cast your memory back that far, lord knows I can’t without the timestamps) when I wrote my one and only DCBB, take me home country roads (no they never go to west virginia in that fic, yes the title will haunt me till i die as a result). This fic was basically an exercise in gratuitous Muchness, that particular type of overwrought emotionality you see praised a lot in fanfiction but at the end of the day is pretty void of substance with all the empty caloric intake of Guys In Epic Love. i wrote that thing until i was bloated with gleeful misery, so much so i took a break partway through writing it so i could bang out a short goofy haunted apartment fic that ended up being by FAR my most read ever, go figure (for the curious).

I was convinced that all the suffering Dean goes through in country roads made it more meaningful. I was sure that every brutal depiction of violence and gore was absolutely necessary to prove how edgy and nasty the world is. Every tooth-rattling punch, every visceral bloodspray, every violent thought of self-hatred and regret was imperative because more begets more begets more begets more. This Muchness was training the audience to respond in kind— like, I was almost baiting people into frothing sadness cum (tempered) eternally wedded bliss by the end.

There are two MDZS fics that I think of as spiritual successors to country roads, out in the garden, there’s things you hid away, and a moment on the lips. out in the garden is basically a retread of country roads with an mdzs wash of paint and most of what i said about country roads applies here as well— it was the first long fic I wrote for MDZS fandom (technically just cql as I hadn’t read mdzs yet) and i was awash in the new fandom/obsession glow and couldn’t wait to put Wei Wuxian through his paces and see what evil deeds I could visit upon him. It was fun and it was gratuitous, I don’t think there’s a lot more to interrogate there.

a moment on the lips, though, whew. By far, I would call this my nastiest piece of work, but also one that I’m most proud of. While writing it, I was intimately aware of my tendency toward Muchness, and intentionally pulled back on that despite the story itself being, well, quite awful (in terms of plot, not writing lol, I’m actually really pleased with the prose in that one). And I think my restraint (which is hard to demonstrate, considering by its nature you can’t exactly see restraint being applied) is part of what really sells it. if you clicked over to the ao3 link, you’ll notice this story has picked up almost no traction in MDZS fandom compared to most of my other fics. This is because (I think) this fic is lacking in that fandom catnip quality of overwrought emotionality I mentioned earlier. This is a nasty story, but not in a fun way, or a kinky way, or even really a gory way. It’s just awful and difficult and many times I was afraid I was entering dead dove territory, though I’m glad in the end I decided I thought highly enough of it to refrain from labelling it as such. This was also one of the rare times while writing fic I followed the principle of an earned ending that wasn’t happy for the main character (even though it ended with Wangxian together). So that all-important catharsis was minimal, but overall, the story earned the ending, and I think it was a worthwhile journey, and as such I think it’s a worthwhile story (while also completely understanding that almost no one wants to read it cause that shit is nasty).

Now that I’m writing original fiction, it’ll be interesting to see how this plays out in future stories. I won’t say too much about Don’t Worry About It yet, as it’s still being posted, but I think the ending is earned, and justified by the story it’s built on (and Wren absolutely suffers, but to a degree I think does justice to the story and her character). Though there’s romance in the story, I wouldn’t call it a romance, nor would I even necessarily call the romance the main aspect in the story. This already is a departure from my fic-writing days— it’s surprising to adjust your lens even that small bit when writing where literally anything, not just a romantic pairing, can be the main pillar of the narrative. But my experience writing fanfiction, as detailed in this blog post and future others, serves as proof that it’s been an invaluable experience in how I approach my original work.

Even the Dean Winchester Beat Sheet (née cherry ass au) is what i’d call a spiritual predecessor to Don’t Worry About It. Which is… hilarious. But I suppose at the end of the day in order to learn how to write, you have to write. And from one fic to the next, to the next, all the way to my more recent original stuff, you can see that DNA repeated over and over. Sometimes, like with the Muchness and the gratuitous suffering, I can catch it, interrogate it, and work on it. Sometimes, like with the big gay crises and the vomiting for dramatic effect, I’m aware it’s a bugbear but completely unwilling to do anything about it either because it doesn’t bother me or I think it’s funny (vomiting for dramatic effect). These things can be hard to pin down, not only because they are such ephemeral concepts (not the vomiting for dramatic effect), but also because one woman’s gratuitous suffering is another woman’s “FAVORITE FIC EVERRRRRR MADE ME CRY FOR DAYS I HAVE NEVER FELT EMOTIONS LIKE THIIISSSSS”.

A potentially important caveat to the above is that part of the reason i left fandom is because i started to feel like that Muchness crept into my real life, or, more accurately, rendered me unable to participate in the real world in a way that felt meaningful, because few things in the real world render one as gleefully miserable as a fanfiction that engages in endless gratuitous suffering, only for the characters to rise up out of the ashes of their noble destitution into the light of a clear, beautiful day. To me, it was similar to the social media dopamine machine— those emotional highs that are impossible to replicate in real life, while fine in small doses, are wide open doorways to total and utter mental burnout when real life and real emotions about real things don’t live up to the hype you read about on ao3 (or insagram, or facebook, or blah blah blah).

Again, this is a thin line situation. I want people to read my work and be emotionally moved by it. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with reading a fun, sad, lighthearted, meaningful, gory, gratuitous, or all of the above fic. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with losing yourself for a while in a new interest, a new fandom, a new story. All of these things are fine and part of life, and we are all trying to walk that line, thin as it is, between being real people with real responsibilities and a duty of care to our fellow person and being a basement dwelling troglodyte whose only contribution to society is watching the National Treasure movies on endless repeat (NOT THAT THERE’S ANYTHING WRONG WITH THAT).

Speaking of the difference between meaningful and gratuitous suffering, this blog post is pretty long and pretty self-indulgent. Guess that’s the point of a personal blog, but, y’know. Noted. Caught. Interrogated. Will work on it.

Unlike the vomiting for dramatic effect. That can stay.

starting over, new beginnings, still anti-social but working on it

A lot has changed in my life lately. You (the reader that may or may not exist) may have noticed, considering this is a new website and I say right on the tin that I’m moving into original fiction and no longer writing fan fiction. What you haven’t noticed, unless you are stalking me in real life, is that I have recently exited a long-term relationship, quit my desk job, sold my car, moved cross-country (i’m canadian, not appalachian, as the maker of that one incredible uquiz about dean winchester beat sheet theorized years ago), and… am starting my life completely from scratch. I’m back where I grew up, which is where I always intended to be, but not quite in the way I intended to get here. I feel possibly every emotion about it, but the one I am really trying to focus on is optimism. Which is fantastic, considering I am a notoriously miserable bastard*.

I don’t think people will read these. It seems a bit quaint in this day and age to expect people to go out of their way to check a lone website for boring blog updates, especially one that isn’t attached to a social media platform or it isn’t 2008 and I’m not endlessly checking Stephanie Meyers’ website for updates about twilight (fun fact, my theory about the #teamedward to wanxgian-lover pipeline is being reviewed by top scientists as I type this). Which is fine— I don’t plan to treat this blog as a diary or a tumblr, but more of an almost-professional space as it relates to my writing. I don’t share a lot of information about my personal life publicly, which, outside of the first paragraph above, is going to stay that way. If (big if) I ever get a novel published in the mainstream, there likely won’t be any crossover between my saltyfeathers persona and my public one (unless it gets LEAKED, please don’t leak my info in this hypothetical scenario).

The amount of “success” I’ve had as a writer is certainly up for debate. I’ve never been paid a cent for my writing, but the people who read it for free, both online and in real life, seem to like it and think it has promise. So I am by no means an expert. However, if you like my writing and are a writer yourself, and you are also willing to occasionally check my website for updates (or are following along with don’t worry about it on ao3), you may find something worthwhile on this blog. NO PROMISES. but you may. also, if you have any specific questions, you can email me at saltyfeatherswrites@gmail.com.

to be honest, I feel like a bit of a dingdong starting a blog. so much of my time in fandom was spent creating or consuming, but so rarely interacting with others. this seems counterintuitive as blogs tend to be pretty one-way, but i want to use this space to feel like i’m connecting with an audience, regardless of how small or niche that audience may be. my formative years were spent behind a screen, which also means my formative years were spent not learning how to forge meaningful connections with other people. it’s still online, which is not ideal, but it’s a start. instead of dropping new fanfiction or writing new tweets and never responding to comments on either, i’d like to feel like i’m contributing and actually, y’know, talking to other people and not just myself. soooo… assuming you can leave a comment… feel free!

not sure how often i’ll be writing blog posts. I guess as topics come to me? honestly, something I’ve thought would be funny for a long time is to post a list of all my supernatural opinions that I know the current fandom (aka the people who very kindly continue to engage with my spn works on ao3) would absolutely hate me for. here’s a freebie: i hate you jack, you son of a bitch!!! you ruined the show!!

I have real ideas for blog posts, too. promise.

all that being said… welcome to my blog! feeling very 2007 about it. stay tuned, if you want!

*I’m a woman, btw. It’s obvious to me, but only I am me, so I guess I should mention that for good measure as people don’t seem to know this :)