Years ago I used to write just for fun, on Lit's choose your own site, Chyoo. It was a lot of fun but real life interfered and so I quit writing until last year. I happened across an old friend on the Lit forums who convinced me to give the Survivor contest a shot and last year it was a lot of fun, got me to experiment with categories and find that there were some categories I didn't expect to enjoy writing in so much. So, I signed up again for the contest this year and have found it honestly to be very different than it was last year.

This year, 2014, is to be the last year of Survivor according to Laurel. It seems to have spurred on some writers while others are fading off. I find myself becoming more disappointed with poor scores, more in that I feel that I can do better. Instead I know I'm pushing myself too much to produce and now that I am sure that I am out of the top 5 [there is one person I know of sandbagging on purpose], it feels kind of like a weight off. As such my production levels will most likely drop and I am going to focus more on the big flaw that reviewers have mentioned, my grammar.

For those who have patiently awaited chapters in their favorite story and bared with me through stories that were not up to the level they should have been, thank you. I hope that future stories will be more in line with the level you expect of me.

This month I've put up two chapters to stories on Lit, one was the fourth chapter in the Shelley's Not a She series and the other was the second chapter of the Ms. Pryde series. In the case of the latter it was a planned series while in the case of the former it was a one off series that's gone much longer than anticipated. One is meant to be more series while the other is being written more as a stroke lark. Being that these two contrast so much I thought I'd explain a little behind the thought process of the pair.

Ms. Pryde's story is partially to serve the pregnancy fetish, which seems a little under served. Personally I find pregnant women to be quite gorgeous, What it is specifically, I'm not sure, but they are. I recall reading some years ago that there was a Playboy photographer who preferred to work with women in the early stages of pregnancy. This series is meant to be simple snapshots in time as Alexis Pryde builds up her business, from start to up and fully running. Chapters are meant to be a little shorter, more like updates as time progresses on.

In comparison Shelley's story is one about a young MtF transgender as she finds her first lover as a transgender and searches for acceptance. Though, I am trying to include more sex in the chapters, as it was pointed out they needed. I approach each chapter in this series as it's own individual story, generally over a weekend period of time. For me, Shelley is actually one of the harder characters that I write and I tend to find myself taking much longer to write each chapter. An average story would normally take 1-2 weeks for me to write, but chapter 4 actually took about 2 months from conception to publishing. For chapter 3 I actually wiped out over a thousand words after letting it mull for a couple of weeks upon realizing it wasn't going where it needed to. No other story have I had to do severe editing like this. Perhaps I've just set lofty goals for this series, but with some of the feedback it feels like people are rather attached to this couple so it does sometimes make me think a little longer on what I plan to do with the characters.

Just kind of a glimpse of the thinking that goes into the stories. Honestly I probably spend more time thinking than actually writing, trying to sort out just how a character would approach a situation and how to have them react to experiences. That and loads of research, as I get further into writing I've been finding myself doing more research on a variety of topics. But for now, I think I need to head back into doing some more Goth research. Happy reading!