peace on earth, smut peddler!

The past few weeks saw the lives of many in Europe and elsewhere thrown into disarray. Plans went out of the window as countries shut their borders. Life ground to a screeching halt of perpetual anxiety and self-isolation.

The world is still trying to make sense of it all. How long will the disruption last? And what’s our way out of it? Until we figure that out, it’s best to be safe than sorry and follow your government’s advice – even though you might not be vulnerable, other people that come into contact with you might be.

As the situation becomes more difficult, your writing projects could be next on the rolling list of casualties of the novel coronavirus. When your daily routine breaks down, it will be a lot harder to keep going.

Strictly speaking, writing isn’t essential for survival. But it’s always great stories from people like you that see our society through tough times like these. It isn’t a coincidence that book sales are up 17% since the crisis began. We need your art more than ever.

Here’s what I’m doing to keep productive.

Stay off News

My post last week’s post was dedicated to this, but it’s worth repeating: things will happen regardless of whether you watch the live feed or not. Staying informed is cool, but there’s no reason to check the news multiple times a day. Pick a time, read all the updates at once and move on with your day. It will do wonders for your well-being.

Besides, most of the information being broadcast during the day is speculation anyway. Even the numbers don’t necessarily paint an objective picture of the situation. Different countries use different testing and reporting methodologies. Watching the number of victims rising on an hourly basis makes you anxious without actually helping you understand what’s going on any better.

We’ll find out what exactly happened many months or years from now when researchers aggregate the data and process them in retrospect. Until then, it’s better to focus on things that you can do something about – like washing your hands and acting responsibly.

Create a New Routine

You may have had a routine or writing schedule back when social distancing wasn’t a thing. For example, I hate working from home. There are way too many distractions. Normally, I go to the local coffee shop or the British Library to write. They both shut down last week which is annoying, but I’m doing my best to set up a workspace at my house and create a new routine to get work done. Make a coffee and turn off the Internet if you must.

James Clear’s Atomic Habits has loads of insights on building new habits.

Stay Connected

Not being able to socialise with others in person just might give you the extra time to join an online writing community or group. There are many out there, including #writeblr here and /r/writers on Reddit. Slack channels and Discord servers and Facebook groups are full of like-minded writers to connect with, learn from and hang out.

Get Inspired

Since the beginning of the outbreak, many companies came forward with generous offers to help people pass the time while self-isolating. Now is a fantastic opportunity to enrol in a free course, sign up for a free 30-day Scribd plan or buy books online from your favourite independent bookstore.

Consuming great content sets you up for creating something great too. Personally, I’ve signed up for Scribd and have been listening to audiobooks whenever I can.

Stay Motivated

We don’t know when, but like everything else, this pandemic will come to an end. Things will go back to normal, and hopefully, we’ll be able to pick up where we left off. 

Following many businesses that I admire, I decided to make Writing Analytics (an app for writers that I’m building) free until the end of May!

If you feel like you need some extra boost to get your words done during this difficult time, sign up for a free trial and I’ll extend it to two months.

Stay safe everyone!

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Past Editions

#134: Focusing on the Right Metrics, March 2020

#133: Forget the noun, be the verb, March 2020

#132: Is Literature As We Know It Doomed?, March 2020

#131: Introducing Writing Analytics, February 2020

my wiki page layout

preview + install

A minimalist, wikipedia-inspired custom layout for OC or blogger bio pages.

Features:

Floating infobox on the right

Customizable everything - I left base codes for you to duplicate

Made for long-form text dumps, just like a wiki

Navigation on the left

I had a bad day, so I did it! This is my first successful Tumblr code, so expect mistakes! Let me know if something isn’t working! 

Working for Fae folk can be a blessing or curse. Sometimes all you have to do is work and keep your nose out of things. Other times, the Fae pull you in and you can’t escape.

Female Reader x Female Monster

The Miss Fortune is a casino and hotel on Cornerstone Island. It’s just one of many establishments that the Unseelie Court has opened in the modern world. It was very surprising when, several years back, members of the Unseelie Court came forth to express their interest in integrating with modern society. The businesses they opened include a publishing firm, multiple casinos, a movie production house, and finally a law firm - which is where you work.

Specifically, you work for the Miss Fortune in house, dealing with the day-to-day business of the place, serving as a legal advisor in business plans, and signing off on almost everything. It’s a huge step up from your last job, where you were nothing but a glorified intern. You graduated at the top of your class and had high hopes, but being so young you were often overlooked. It wasn’t until a member of the Unseelie law firm sniped you that your skills were put to good use.

You’re still a low ranking member of the law firm, but many of the higher-ups have their fingers in much more dubious pies. The Miss Fortune is a means to an end, not their true objective. As long as the place runs smoothly and you do your job diligently, there is no reason for the bosses to even visit the Miss Fortune.

Before you give your manuscript to anyone - critique partners, beta readers etc - you should go through a self-editing process first. Here’s mine:

Definitions

Developmental edits: deal with big-picture, plot aspects. Things about the actual story that may need to be changed

Style edits: this isn’t an official term, but I use it in this post to indicate edits that need to made to the actual writing style/prose of a scene

Line/copy edits: deal with in-line, small issues like grammar, word choice/sentence structure

proofread: checking for any spelling, spacing or sentence errors.

These aren’t necessarily the official definitions of the terms, but rather explanations of how I will be using these words in the rest of this post.

While Drafting

I keep a separate document titled “edit notes” while I’m drafting the manuscript. In this document, I jot down any developmental issues that I need to look at later.

In the manuscript document itself, I use the comments feature to indicate any style issues or scenes I may need to rewrite to improve the writing. I also highlight any line or copy edits I may need to make later on.

This helps a lot, since it lets me identify possible errors right away without having to slow my drafting process to give attention to them.

After drafting

Once I’ve finished my draft, I go through various editing steps

Fix the things you noted in your separate “edit notes” and your in-document comments. This is a great place to start with edits, since the problems have already been identified. Go through the list systematically and try to fix them.

Print the manuscript and do a careful read-through. Errors are spotted much easier in hard copy, but if you cannot print the manuscript, try to read it on a tablet/phone. During this thorough read-through, you’re going to highlight different errors in different colours. I use green for developmental, pink for style/rewrite, blue for consistency and yellow for line/copy. But, obviously, you can use whichever colours you want. The purpose of this is only to highlight errors. You can make notes in pencil, but it’s not necessary to come up with solutions/corrections just yet. Keep in mind that you may also notice more issues later on. This is just for getting started.

Now, start editing. Begin with the developmental edits - the things you highlighted in green. These are the edits that may change your book significantly and have ripple effects. So, this is where you start. All those developmental issues you highlighted… Go back to the electronic version of your manuscript and try to fix them. This is the most brutal part of the editing process. It’s difficult and it may take long. But it is very necessary.

Edit the style errors/that which you highlighted in blue. These edits may require some scenes to be rewritten completely, but it doesn’t take as much problem-solving brain power as developmental edits.

Now, move on to the line/copy edits - you highlighted them in yellow. This is probably going to be your easiest round of edits, since it just requires correcting line-level edits.

You will probably have come across some more things you’d like to change during this entire process. Now is the time to give attention to those.

Run an editing software/extension. Now that you’ve edited every error you could find, I would suggest using something like Grammarly/ProWritingAid on your manuscript. This will help identify overused words/phrases, inconsistencies in punctuation, weak sentences etc. Let the program highlight these for you and decide what you want to change. ProWritingAid has a great free, online editor that I highly recommend if you cannot afford to buy the full software package.

Now, use some other device to read through your manuscript a final time. You can print the whole thing again, but that’s expensive. So, I would recommend using a phone/tablet/e-reader - whatever you have available. Read through the entire manuscript again, checking for any errors/issues you may find. This is mainly for proofreading purposes, but you could spot big-picture problems as well. Correct them as you go along

This will not be the end of your editing process. You will probably still get critique partners and beta readers, who will give you feedback, based on which you’ll make more edits. Depending on your route of publication, you’ll also have to hire a professional editor/go through edits with your agent and editor.

There are many different ways to edit a manuscript. Each writer must find what works for them. This is merely what works for me, and I hope that it can help some of you out there who feel like you don’t even know where to start.

Characters: Orc Female, Female Human Reader Content: NSFW, D/s, gentle domination, praise, petplay, women with penises, explicit sex, snuggling, lesbian romance, anal sex Wordcount: ~6,500

Notes: This is a commission for @dimension-door​, which she won in @lesbian-monsters​ contest. Orc art by Shankar Rao.

This work is now posted on my AO3 & Wattpad

You’re in the garden with a favorite book when the orcs attack. The only warning you have of the raid is a few shouts, and then the huge, green-skinned warriors are surging through the gates, overwhelming the guards, and spreading over the manor grounds. You look around, but there’s nowhere to hide, and you’ve dismissed your guards. It’s not like you expected trouble.

Of course, trouble finds you easily.

A tall, broad-shouldered orc-woman charges toward you. The axe in her hand gleams in the sunlight. You try not to focus on the blood already staining the blade. She’s dressed in leathers and rough-hewn metal armor. It gleams dully in the sun. Your knees go weak as she towers over you.

This one was an anon request way back in February. Sorry it’s taken so long, Anon. Hopefully you’re still around to see this! 

Characters: Female Orc, Female Reader Kinks/Warnings: NSFW, lesbians, strap-ons, oral, and other stuff!  Wordcount: ~3500 This work is now on AO3

It starts like this; two men walk into a bar. They don’t say much at first, but when they drink for a bit, they start talking shit to the regulars, trying to pick a fight. They’re big for humans, but small compared to an orc or an ogre. They appear to be of the opinion that the best way to take over the bar is to attack the biggest person there.

There’s a few options; this isn’t a humans-only bar, and in fact, few of the regulars are human. Tonight though, the crowd is thin. There’s a centaur, a lizard-man, a couple shifters of different varieties, though most of them are in their human forms tonight. And then there’s Sarai.

You know the second they see her, perched at the end of the bar, nursing her beer. She’s tall- coming in at 6’4”- broad shouldered, well muscled, and an orc. Her tusks are smooth and unchipped, her lip, nose, and ears are pierced. Her dark hair is pulled back into a ponytail. She’s dressed comfortably, but cute, in a flowery tunic and jeans. You’ve been keeping an eye on her tonight as she scowls at her beer and generally makes it clear from her posture and the look on her face that all she wants is to be left alone because she’s had a hard week.

Characters: Female Reader, Male Minotaur, Multiple other Monsters Content: NSFW/Grapefruit, Gloryhole, Voyeur/Exhibitionism, Light Domination, Bodyguard Trope, Multiple Partners, Kink Club, Oral Sex (Fetallio), Facials/Semen, Handjob, Fingering,  PIV Sex, Some Violence (non-graphic), Angst Wordcount: ~4000 Notes: A very late Kinktober story for @monster-bait​ which starts immediately with the porn then hits you with some feels. This story is super explicit, so please triple check the tags at the top before reading.

Patrons got to see this one several days early. If you want early access to many of my stories, check out my Patreon. 

The booth is small, and in another venue it might have been dingy. Here at the Velvet Room though, it’s shockingly clean despite being set up as a gloryhole. There’s a chair in one corner, a gel kneepad if you want it, and a refreshment cart near the switch that lets you toggle the lights outside indicating whether you’re servicing folks or not. Three of the walls have holes drilled in them at a few key heights, to allow anyone short or tall be serviced comfortably. You’d expect nothing less of the most exclusive kink club in town.

You take a few steadying breaths, and look over at your minotaur bodyguard in the corner. He’s large, filling the space with his bulk, his dark fur and hair fading into his black tee and jeans. In this small space, it’s already warm so he’s taken off his coat. You can see his shoulder holsters, reminding you that he has a specific job to do; he’s not here for fun. Not like you.

When Am I Writing an Identity Story?

This is a very tricky point to handle, especially since culture informs people so much that yes, you can run into a lot of identity stories that you don’t realize are identity stories. Made even trickier by how often identity stories aren’t told by people who hold that identity, so there is barely a metric for “what is safe for me to write.”

My main suggestion as an idea is asking yourself if the plot points fall apart when the ethnicity changes.

I don’t mean your plot, because the plot around the points can change based on the ethnicity. I mean the actual landmarks of how the story will progress and key turning events.

Say you have a Native character. You want to write a plot with a Native character, and you want her ethnicity to inform the plot.

An identity story’s plot points would go along the lines of seeing colonialism’s ills all around her, having to fight to be recognized as competent by her professors, working towards an art show where she showcases her culturally informed art and proves to the world she’s a good artist. 

A story where she so happens to be Native has her be an artist with a Native informed viewpoint who’s trying to balance her art with her day job and a new boyfriend. She might run into racist art exhibitors, appropriators, and very ignorant people, but those are background events that inform the plot instead of being the plot.

In the former example, the plot falls apart if the character isn’t Native, because so many plot points are based around how the world sees her as Native. In the latter example, the plot changes if she’s another ethnicity, but it doesn’t fall apart completely. 

Hope this clears up the confusion.