First of all, I want to apologize to those of you who really aren't interested in reading about yaoi, sex and my thoughts on it. Sometimes I can go for weeks without taking sex seriously at all (other than the occasional 'ooh he's cute'), and then I'll sink deeply into the smut morass for a little while. So my blog is kind of bipolar. I'm only human. Well, cow. Sometimes I'm gonna blog about sex and that's all there is to it.
And now, WARNING: I'm gonna do it again. Also... uh... brutal honesty warning. If you don't want to read somewhat unsettling ramblings, maybe you ought to skip down to the vaguely funny entry below. Thanks.
I wrote my first honest-to-gosh smut a couple of days ago. It's something I've been meaning to do for a while now, complete with occasional self-taunting... "c'mon, cow, you SCARED?"
I, uh, guess I should have been.
Writing that explicit yaoific was the hardest fucking thing I've done in years, and I mean 'hardest fucking thing' in every sense of the word, okay? It scared the shit out of me. It's continuing to scare the shit out of me. And the fact that it's without a doubt the best thing I've ever written... that REALLY scares the shit out of me.
Okay. Details. Hang on, I'm gonna squick ya.
You've probably noticed that I'm cursing a lot more in this blog than usual. And using a little more slang, too. That's because I CAN'T STOP. Writing dialogue for Reno of FF7 is pretty fuckin' addictive... and startlingly easy. For the first time in my entire goddamn life I found myself thinking things like "I didn't know he was going to do that." "I didn't know you were like that, RPG character." "I can't help it, the characters ran away with me." "I didn't mean to write it like that." Well, okay, I've thought those things before, but not this seriously. It didn't matter what my rational mind wanted to write, or what I'd set out to write. I wrote what HAD to be written. I put the puppets ON and I wound them UP and I let them GO. I really felt, for the first time, like I was able to do decent characterization. I suck at that, I always have. But by gosh, I did it. I really fuckin' did.
And my body went into panic state. Every night, for hours, I would sit in front of my computer, trembling. Shaking HARD. Too hard to type, occasionally. And it wasn't just writing the smut, either, it was editing the smut, THINKING about the smut, reading C&C on the smut (migod, I actually asked for C&C, that's a fuckin' first), reading OTHER people's smut... and it wasn't that I was turned on. Damn, I wish. It was this hard, twitchy, heavy lump of panic deep in the pit of my belly. I wasn't able to sleep. I just lay there, and twitched, and felt nauseated, and did my damndest to think about anything but sex.
Was I scared of sex? No. Hardly. Was I scared of smut? No, hardly that, either. Was I scared of the raw grittiness of my fic? Well, yeah, a bit. But mostly, I was scared of my own ability and willingness to write it, wherever it took me.
It's like... throwing yourself off an unscaleable cliff, writing smut. You might survive, but you're never going back, either. You're now a writer of smut, in your own mind and quite likely in the mind of others. I was consciously going from 'Oh, Mooncalf? Yeah, she writes parodies...' to 'Oh. Mooncalf. She writes SMUT.' Not that I hadn't been edging towards that cliff for months now. But I finally gave in and pitched myself over the edge. And I seem to have done it with style.
Not that I could tell that at first, mind you. By the time I finished, I was such a physical and emotional wreck that I couldn't tell if I'd written gold or shit. Shellshocked, I took my smutty little baby in my trembling hands and pushed it nervously at people I trusted. Wasn't he a pretty baby? Please? Tell me he's a pretty smutty baby?
Well, blessedly, those wonderful kind people seemed to like my smut. I clung to every bit of evidence I had that I'd written something good. I saved every C&C that people were nice enough to email me, and reread them whenever I got nervous. I reread my smut endlessly, searching it for clues that it was, in fact, a pretty smut. I edited it constantly, I tried every single suggestion that people gave me, I fussed over every little detail, I challenged every single word. Me, asking for C&C. Me, EDITING. You probably don't know how incredibly weird that is.
It didn't help that, completely against my own will, I'd written a raw, gritty, cruel smut. No hearts and flowers for me, no, Mooncalf needs a CHALLENGE! Mooncalf might have trembled herself to death, but by God, she was going to do it for a decent reason! Violence!
I'm a wreck. Maybe you can tell. Which is pretty damn odd, in and of itself. But nothing in my life could have prepared me adequately for this challenge.
And oh god, I seem to be good at it. Do you have any idea how much that SCARES me? Do you know how long it's been since I've been scared of... well, anything that I, personally, could do? And not just slightly scared, no. I drove myself into a two-day-long mild panic attack over the fact that I seemed to be a capable smut writer. Geez, such a fuss over a little skin. Is this what it's like to be a prude?
And would it be better or worse to be worse at it? If I stunk on ice as a smut writer, would that be better? Or would it hurt? I don't know. I might never know.
I'm sure that more experienced smut writers are reading this and either laughing at me, or nodding their heads and remembering how it was. Either way.
But, for better or worse, I think I'm done with the yaoific now. I'm still pestering people for their opinions (and I desperately need those opinions, still) but I don't think I can make it any better any more. Or maybe I just better stop tinkering with it. If I mess around with it much more, I'm going to break either it or myself.
Therefore, without further ado, here's Power Is. FF7, Rufus x Reno, explicit yaoi fic. It'll open in a new window. Please please PLEASE pay attention to the warnings, and don't you DARE click that link if you're underage or not comfortable with homoeroticism. If you do decide to read that, you're in for a fairly unsettling experience. You have been warned.
But... you know what? I've got about two pages written on a second smut fic already. Xenogears, this time. And I haven't trembled once. I guess it does get easier, after the first time.
Twitch.
Replies: add your comment: currently 7 comments
Ah know yeh dinnae know me, but aw the same, ah though ah'd throw in a little comment or two here. That feeling... the feeling when yeh've jist written somethin that's absolutely incredible... when it blows yehr mind to know that this is somethin that you made with yer own hands... well.... it's amazing. Happens to me every time ah write somethin in the 3 - 5 a.m. block, when ahm too tired to censor mahself, just flow and write and wake up the next morning to a wonderful surprise. Still, ah have to say, for mahself, at least, after some people have told me how good it is, the feelin always wears off in a few days, and ah end up burnin mah own creation. In a metaphorical sense, ay course.
Ah'm not much ay a fan of yaoi, but it's a well-written fic, for sure, moony. Congratulations, an ahm lookin forward to newer and better fics in the future!
Posted by Ghostboy @ 08/18/2001 04:42 AM EST
I haven't read the fic yet, but I'm going to soon. I just saw that part you mentioned about characterization. This site might help you with that.
http://www.eclectics.com/articles/character.html
I know they aren't your characters, but they are puppets so you migth luck out. I tried to write smut once and it ended up sounding so stupid that it was more of a comedy than anything else. Okay gonna read now. Buh bye
Posted by Tiffany @ 08/18/2001 06:14 PM EST
I am also very frightened right now, Moon....for many reasons....
*sweat drop*
I think I know what you mean about the writing things. I have written only ONE story (and it was for school...) that I REALLY ended up liking, and I had... a few similar feelings, although not near as extreme as your symptoms. When you do write something you yourself actually find GOOD....it can be SCARY!!! You will probably always be your own worst critic, because you will probably only see the mistakes, or MOSTLY the mistakes. And when you do NOT see any or many of these things....yes, it can be VERY scary!!!
I work in a library and we always crack jokes at the trashy romance novels we see. God...they make some STUPID names up for these things!!! Those are usually referred to as "smutty". Heh. I actually have thought about if I could write anything romancy. Heh. Well....I COULD, but I'd feel weird about doing it. Am I scared of sex? Well....not really, no. I think I could do it okay (writing, that is! If your mind is in the gutter....welcome! LOL j/k). But I'd feel weird about doing it. So I congratulate you on writing something like this, Moon! So what if it's homoeroticism? It's still smutty romance crap that I probably would never touch. So congrats!! ^_^ Would you like a sprinkle cone?
Posted by Wolf @ 08/18/2001 10:58 PM EST
I AM OFFENDED BY YOUR SMUT! You have contaminated my poor, innocent, homophobic little mind. I am traumatized. Because of you I am going to become a sexual deviant and die of an STD after spending all my money on psychotherapy and being reduced to robbing banks and selling drugs. You have ruined my life.
And I haven't even read the fic yet!
Posted by Ed @ 08/19/2001 04:30 AM EST
The smut is good. I'm sure Ed won't miss the life it ruined one bit.
The smut is quite good. Moonie has talent. Of course, we already knew that.
Posted by Lack Thereof @ 08/19/2001 09:45 AM EST
Just popping by to say that I honored your warnings, something I rarely, if ever, do. Underage, muh arse. Anyway, I just figured maybe that would comfort you some.
Posted by Moonshine (the other Moon*insert word here*) @ 08/20/2001 07:17 AM EST
OK, it's a bit late - I've been using the computers at work, and smut + work is the #1 no-no. But - whew. Comments - Excellent. Evil. Um, even its evilness is excellent. >:D (Or maybe I'm just a sucker for really great voices, which was evoked nicely, of course.) That's...all. yep.
Posted by StB @ 08/24/2001 02:41 AM EST
