***AUTHOR COOPERATION***
The key to having a successful community of any kind is
cooperation among its members. Competition is what tears us apart, but teamwork
and friendship is what brings us together. That’s part of the reason why I
chose to be an independently published author: the sense of community. We
critique each other, we honestly review each other’s books, we promote each
other, and we’re there for each other when it desperately counts. When you’re a
part of this community, there is no stepping over each other because there’s
room for everybody at the top of the mountain. It takes a village to write a
novel, sometimes even a capitol city. Nobody becomes a legend on their own.
My own journey to where I am today was marred with
resistance to criticism. In 2001, I went to an anime/sci-fi/fantasy convention
called INCON and had a piece of writing critiqued by five different
professional authors, all of which had decades of experience and wisdom.
Because of their somewhat harsh demeanors, I walked away after the first two
authors got their words in. Maybe I was intimidated by the fact that I had so
much work ahead of me to make my writing immaculate. Maybe I believed
“potential” was an empty word when the first two authors told me I had it.
Maybe it was my massive teenage ego that shoved everybody out of my circle who
didn’t worship at the Temple
of Garrison.
Whatever the case was, this over-inflated ego carried over
throughout high school and college. I wrote a violent and sexually explicit
poem about a classmate who said my writing sucked and he was hardly the only
target of these rants and raves. Online folk, geology teachers, real life
strangers, they all felt my fiery poetic wrath in one way or another. The more
I reflect on this, the more I think that the reason I don’t have many Deviant
Art followers is because of my past behavior and tendency to lash out.
It wasn’t until 2012 that I realized I needed help. I
gathered up some money and went over to Writer’s Digest’s website to use their
Second Draft critique services. For a moderate sum of money, you can have a
famous author critique your work, but it’s only for a one time deal and there’s
no guarantee you’ll get published. Given my verbally violent past, I was
terrified to go through with this.
But sure enough, the piece of writing I wanted critiqued was
a memoir about my experiences with getting bullied in my freshman year of high
school. My intention was to circulate this essay to various literary magazines
with the hopes of getting picked up. My editor was an author named Carolyn
Walker, a nonfiction author, champion for the mentally disabled, and cordial
human being. Her biggest critique for my essay was that it sounded too angry
and that I hadn’t been descriptive enough to earn my ending. I ended up
scrapping my own essay because that’s a part of my life I want to leave buried
forever and I regretted writing about it.
As scary as taking that next step was, I would happily use
Second Draft again, this time with a short fantasy story called Beauty and the
Barbarian. In this story, Sonya Jade’s boyfriend is turned into a hideous
monster by a witch and she wants to sneak into her castle to get the antidote.
My hired beta reader, named Kathy Giorgio (if I remember correctly), said that
the story felt incomplete and that it should be an entire novel or longer short
story. I took her advice and expanded it to ten pages of single spaced text. It
made it onto a short story collection I published in 2013 called Dragon
Machinegun. Unfortunately, due to my dissatisfaction with how those stories
were written, I took Dragon Machinegun off the market and it’s no longer
available.
The third and final time I went to Second Draft was when I
wrote a story called Dick Tater, which is about a homecoming prince with a
bloodthirsty monster for a penis. This time, my beta reader was a military
fiction author named Stephen Mertz, who said my story was marketable, weird,
and kinky. He also said that it needed dialogue to show instead of tell (my
story had absolutely none). As a token of my appreciation for his services, I
bought a novel he wrote under the penname Jim Case called Cody’s Army and gave
it a glowing review after reading it.
I didn’t completely come out of my shell until I joined the
Good Reads group Weekly Short Story Contests and Company. With all of the
friendly people who helped me through the rough drafts, whether it’s Edward
Davies, Ryan Stone, Leslie Onus, Melissa Andres, and many others, my writing
improved greatly and my fear of being critiqued was non-existent. When I got in
touch with Marie Krepps in 2015, she became my permanent beta reader and I
trust her with everything. She’s honest, she’s smart, and she’s funny as hell.
She’s also a damn good writer who has earned every ounce of praise I’ve given
her in my reviews for her books.
It was a good thing that I had calmed down over the years
and learned not to take everything personally, because in June 2014, I may have
just submitted the most offensive short story to the WSS during that time. It was
a PG-13 bondage erotica called Tainted Love where Marilyn Elkins is kidnapped
by a handsome stranger and duct taped to a hotel bed. She enjoys the kisses and
sexual attention she’s getting to the point where she helps her kidnapper fight
off her abusive husband. I wrote this story strictly for entertainment, but it
ended up offending many people at the WSS and gave them the false idea that I
was a sexist. As a token of apology, I took down the story from all of my
social media sites and dropped out of the contest for that week. I spent the
next week hurting like hell, but I took pride in the fact that I handled it
like a champ instead of a raging lunatic.
That just happens to be my story. Everybody’s path to
success is different, but nobody does it alone. Wisdom comes from experience
and experience comes from the best the writing world has to offer. Don’t push
these people away. They’re just as much a part of your inner circle as your
friends and family. They want you to be successful. They want you to be happy.
They want you to be the best damn writer you can possibly be. The more you
listen to their critiques, the less it hurts. You may have to read their
comments more than once to ease the sting, but if you take what you’ve learned
to heart, you’ll do just fine in this world. In the words of Red Green, “I’m
pulling for you; we’re all in this together.”
***WEEKLY SHORT STORY CONTESTS AND COMPANY***
As long as we’re on the topic of sensitive gender issues,
this week I’m going to tackle a topic that’s hotly debated in pro-wrestling and
MMA alike. I hope I can handle this topic with class, unlike Tainted Love from
2014. The prompt is “Dazed” and my story is called “Gender Blind”. It goes like
this:
CHARACTERS:
1. Sting
Masters, Mixed-Martial Artist (Lightweight)
2. Rachel
Gustafson, Mixed-Martial Artist (Lightweight)
3. Bill
Dash, Referee (Heavyweight)
4. Raymond
Katz, CEO of Battle
Born Promotions
PROMPT CONFORMITY: Being dazed is
a normal part of an MMA contest since one of the ways to win is by KO.
SYNOPSIS: Battle Born Promotions is making history by
sanctioning its first ever inter-gender mixed-martial arts fight in the
lightweight division (155 lbs.). This upcoming main event match between Sting
and Rachel has sparked a lot of debate and controversy among media outlets and
MMA fans. Some people think it pairs men and women as equals while others are
sickened by seeing a man beating up a woman. When the pay-per-view actually
takes place, there are excited audience members in the building and protesters
outside. Raymond Katz has a lot of explaining to do and a lot of security
detail to hire.
***DARK FANTASY WARRIORS***
Okay, so he’s technically part of a modern day drama and not
a dark fantasy story, but I’m going to draw Sting Masters anyways. I’ve drawn
MMA badasses in the past whether it’s Edward Glass from Molly-Dolly or
Christina McKenzie from Gates of Hell. Sting Masters is a lightweight fighter
from England
and I want my drawing of him to reflect those things (not stereotypically, of
course). Wish me luck!
***YOU TUBE QUOTE OF THE DAY***
“Hi, I’m an attractive
woman on the internet. You are somebody who comments on my videos or articles,
though what you say isn’t always pleasant. But honestly, that’s not what we’re
here to talk about. Though yes, you are awful. Even more alarming is those of
you who think you’re being complimentary. While I’m flattered that you’re
trying to express a fondness for what I do, you’re doing it wrong. If you like
one of my videos, screaming, “TITS!” is wrong. Providing the phonetic
representation of the sound of a man masturbating is incredibly wrong. Unless
you’ve just typed in credit card information, telling a woman you’ve never met
that you just masturbated to her comedy video, it’ll never be the right thing
to do, honestly. I don’t know, maybe you’re confused because there are videos
on the internet where the women explicitly tell you to masturbate. Yeah, I’m
not making those. If you like what I do, say that. And if you like masturbating
to things, go do that, just don’t tell me about it. Thank you for your time.
I’ve been a woman of the internet. I didn’t ask to see your genitals, so don’t
ask to see mine. And please stop telling me how you masturbate!”
-The women of
Cracked.com-
