In the beginning…

I’ve been thinking for a while how I should start this blog off and how to do it right.

It took a jerkoff criticizing my work to give me that final motivation.

I’ve been writing for years, but I was finally able to channel that creativity through NaNoWriMo, and it wasn’t until 2014’s event that I finally found my Muse, so to speak.

And so, I’ve created this world and these characters and have allowed myself to become submerged in the drama I have created for them.

I thought it was good.

I wanted to share it for other people to enjoy it, to talk about it, and to help motivate me to want to write more.

To date, I had received such praise and feedback.

Of course, I had given it only to friends and close acquaintances to review, so who knows if they would actually tell me if they didn’t like it.  I would like to think they would – they gave me pretty decent feedback otherwise, so I was never inclined to think they would lie to me.

Fast forward to last week.

I had posted an excerpt from my recent novel on one of the forum boards, and received a message about a potential novel swap.  Sounds good, I thought – we would go chapter by chapter as our revisions and edits came along.

What does this asshole tell me the first chapter he reads?

I’ve read Twilight and 50 Shades of Grey – you need to have it be more adult if you want erotica, or less if you want it to be YA.

What the fuck?

Is this all because I told him it was fantasy/sci-fi, drama, romance, betrayal, politics, with a hint of adult themes?

Needless to say, I haven’t heard from him since.  Apparently he didn’t like it enough to want to read more.

This was further supported by another poster on the message board who pretty much told me my first 1500 words were D-graded YA crap.

Sigh.

I took to Twitter with my frustrations.  I had a few choice tweets for my critics.

And now I’m not sure how I’m going to start writing again.

Or if I even want to.

I keep asking myself- what’s the point?  Do you really think you’re ever going to get published?

No, I tell myself.  But I do enjoy it.

And shouldn’t that be enough for me to keep going?

So here we are.

And I think rather than keeping my works to myself like I have since 2014, I think I need to start getting it out there.  Because I have a lot of content to work with, and I know Rome wasn’t built in a day.

So I think this blog will help me in that I need a place to braindump.  Be it character development, settings, people, places, or hell, even snippets from the crap I’ve already written.

So there you have it. I’m finally going to get what I’ve been working on out there for people to see, and who knows – maybe one day the right person will see it.

I mean, that’s how 50 Shades got written, isn’t it?