I have been a writer and a reader my entire life. As a child my family sat around and read together instead of watching TV. It was our past-time and it was our bonding time, alone, yet together. Each of us would perch on a different area of the couch and read. The first thing I remember writing was an article that was published in the school newspaper in second grade. In 2016 I started writing and publishing full length novels. It’s been a difficult road, I won’t lie. There’s an art to it. My first 3 novels lay under the bed and will probably never be published. I had to learn along the way. I graduated college with a degree in screenwriting. I read books about writing novels, publishing, editing and marketing. I took hundreds of hours of online and in-person classes. I still read craft books and take writing classes today. I attended almost a dozen writing conferences. I hired editors, cover designers, marketing peeps, the works. I wrote and published 11 novels under another pen-name between 2016 and 2018 and while I love most of them and I earn on them, I don’t make a living from them. Writing is really fucking hard. Editing is harder. Publishing is another burning hoop. And marketing… hell onto itsownself. I don’t say this to discourage, I think everyone who wants to write and publish should do it. I say this because it’s true and people who don’t do it, have no idea how hard it truly is. I made a lot of money with one of my series. Money that most people would be ecstatic to make and I’m thrilled about it but what onlookers don’t see is the money I spent. Each full length novel cost me $2K to publish. That’s right, you read correctly, two thousand dollars EACH. Do most of those earn that money back? Hell no, they do not. Does everyone spend $2K per published novel. No, they do not but many of those who don’t, should. I’m a bit of a perfectionist. I want to be a good writer, not an okay writer and certainly not a bad writer. I study the art of writing. I study the art of editing. I study the ART of word mastery. I agonize over each sentence, each story, each plot, and each character. When I started writing erotica shorts last year it was a new endeavor for me. I was used to the long form of full length novels, not the short form. It’s completely different. I didn’t do it to make a bazillion dollars because anyone who thinks that’s going to happen is, IMO, delusional. I started writing short eroticas because it was fun. I was tired of writing long novels that had ceased being fun for me. Writing those became dreary and painful and turned into WORK. The other different "thing" about writing my erotica shorts is that I don't hire an editor, I don't agonize over perfection. I have fun with them instead and I put them out knowing they're not perfect, letting go of the control and embracing sticky uncertainty instead. I abandoned my other pen-name 2 years ago and haven’t published anything under her since. And I’m okay with that. I can always go back to her if I want. She’s still out there, she’s still earning a tiny bit of money. She still has readers, but the genre annoyed me. It was romance. And tbh I’m not really a romantic person. It’s weird to admit that and even weirder to write it, to blog about it. I’m a sexual person, I’m an optimistic person, I’m a person who believes in love and relationships and connection but romance the way it’s portrayed in books, NOPE. I think it sets up a false ideal that can never be met. Not every man has chiseled abs but in romance they all do. Not every man locks eyes with the heroine from across a crowded room and has to make her his, but in romance they all do. It’s unrealistic and it’s downright disgusting. Not every woman wants that either. I got tired of writing lies, that’s the bottom line of it. When I started writing my shorts I no longer had to write lies. My shorts say more about who I am as a person and where my beliefs lay than most of my novels do. Not that there aren’t some truths in those, there are. And novels don’t have to be truth, they are supposed to be fantasy. I’m not shitting all over fantasies, we need that escape as humans, especially now. But there’s fantasy = dragons and vampires; and there’s fantasy = prince charming will save me. I prefer the former. So while not every single thing I write about in my short erotica tales has happened, a lot of them have. The rest are fantasies, the kind that I can get behind ;) As for long fiction, I’m still writing it. I have moved over to the dystopian genre, long before Covid. I’m a nihilistic, optimistic realist. I am a very happy person with a lot of love in my heart but I like some very dark things. That’s MY happy place. It’s not what appeals to everyone but what it took me many years to learn is that I can’t write to market, meaning, write what people WANT to read and what will ultimately earn $$$. I write for ME. If I don’t love what I’m writing, if it becomes a chore or no longer fun or feels like work and my passion for it dies, my soul burns to a crisp husk. Fuck that shit! I’m a Dominant woman and I do what I want, including writing run-on sentences if I feel like it. So there. ~~~ by Rain Star You can find links to my Femdom erotic shorts on my homepage
1 Comment
RUQreus
5/12/2020 02:12:57 pm
Love it! Full of passion! Follow dream(s) and be happy! So thrilled to be following mine!! :)
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Author: Rain StarMistress Rain began her writing career at a very early age. She's published over 20 novels (under a different pseudonym), has written for television and film. Rain spends as much time as possible beating asses and traveling the world. Archives
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