celeste_noelani | back up on the horse

Many many moons ago, before I started dating Ian and moved to Seattle and worked for the bank, before I got pregnant with Christopher Robin and had my eyes open to the depths of babyloss, before I started therapy and healing and cultivating positive coping mechanisms just in time for my mother to get cancer and to battle postpartum depression all over again.

So many moons. All those moons ago, if you've been around that long and remember and whatever, I was writing a book. I called it my Great American Smut Novel. I had a great time with it. I write sex scenes. Graphic ones. I love them.

And then, all of the things that I talked about in the first paragraph of this post, all of them happened and seven years have gone by. I started writing a different book. This one has graphic sex scenes in it as well, but it isn't the Great American Smut Novel I boldly said I was going to write.

Anyway, I was complaining to myself about the 50 Shades of WTF travesty and said that *I* write better smut than that. I should get a book deal and have my book go totally viral. Well, I replied to myself, you have to actually finish writing it first. And we laughed at ourselves and we said YOU ARE SO FUNNY. And we said that so many things have changed now and I don't know if I want to be known for writing a really good blowjob scene or whatever used to be my goal for the book. Maybe I want to write about my kids and depression and dead babies and empathy and avoiding suicide. Maybe I want to be a little more respectable than writing about labias and precum. (sorry)

So now I've decided that I'm stupid. I can be all of these things. Well, I already am all these things. I talk about dead babies and depression and high risk pregnancies and mental illness awareness and cancer and death and love and honest, solid relationships. And sex. I am all of these things. Or, maybe, all of these things are a part of me.

Okay, fine, I said. So let's finish the novel. I've got more than five times the word count than I do for my more respectable book. Let's finish it, call it a novella and see what happens. I can't control if other people will like it. I can only offer it for them to make up their minds. Sounds good? SOUNDS GOOD!

But now the trick is finding the time to finish the book. I think I have more than half what I want to capture, but still that 40% I still have to write is going to take time. And then, because I am a total non-linear writer, there is the lacing back together of a story that right now looks like Frankenstein's monster did some LSD and painted a self portrait. Even I have no idea how these "chapters" all fit together. This is no bueno.

Right now, it's still hard for me to get time to write every week. And I only have one measly little "deadline" that I have self imposed for my website. And it's only a hundred words! With all the house and family obligations, I feel like writing is a dream, not something that I can honestly pursue. That makes me depressed. Seriously. My therapist and I talk about writing in every session. I can't not write. And yet I still haven't been able to find a way to consistently write. There are just too many things that I'm unwilling to give up. I wish I didn't have to sleep. Stupid sleep.

And I'm older and frumpier and apparently a lot more boring now, because I'm worried about offending people and being too graphic and whatever. Not that I'd just throw the porn up on my website unrestricted or anything. I do have a twelve year old and there is no way that he needs to be reading this. So I feel like if I do find time writing, do I spend it writing the porn book that is honestly close to being ready for beta testers (aka anyone here???) or do I spend it on the book that I haven't even burned five thousand words on yet? Do I work on my short stories or my more bloggy type posts or trying to find freelance gigs or literary magazines looking for submissions? Where do I start this thing? And should it start with smut?

Seven years ago, the answer to that was an unequivocal yes. Today, it's still a yes. But maybe not quite as sure.