Not For Me

I’m still having problems with my novel but that’s something for another day. For now, let me tell you how I prepared to write a steamy scene last night for my naughty pen. I figured if I can’t write as Liz then I’ll write something naughty. Maybe that would be just the boost I needed.

And so I went ahead and pulled up an image I found on Tumblr as inspiration. It’s not as NSFW but the intent is there.

And lo and behold, it got me writing.

One sentence turned into one paragraph and then I was off to the second paragraph.

Then my phone buzzed. I guess for some reason, I gave Youtube permission to send me notifications?

I shouldn’t have looked, but of course, I did.

The Handmaid’s Tale, it said.

The Hanging.

I shouldn’t have looked. But of course, I did.

If ever I wanted to stop writing my happy ever afters and steamy love scenes, all I have to do now is pull up any effing scene from this dystopian series. It’s a cockblock like nothing I’ve ever encountered before.

And it disturbed me so much that I had nightmares that I had actually changed all my naughty pen’s books to feature the stuff I just saw. That instead of HEA encounters, it was all the nasty things from The Handmaid’s Tale and more.

At 2:30 am, I almost got out of bed to hurry to my laptop just to make sure that I didn’t change all my stories to dystopian porn where no one has any fun except the ones who get a kick out of non-consensual crap. I almost checked my computer at 4am as well.

The nightmare just would not quit.

It went on until I finally got out of bed at 8 am because there was no way I was getting any sleep at all. And luckily, I found out that I didn’t change any of naughty pen’s HEA stories into dystopian non-consent porn.

Still… last night’s peek into Season 2 and a few peeks into Season 1 killed anything romance-y inside my head. And it made me wonder if I’d gotten so soft that such things distress me to the point that I actually have nightmares and experience real fear that seeps right into my bones.

So today, after a big cup of coffee, I pulled up that romance-y photo again and told myself that the only way to get all that dystopian crap out of my head was to write the stories I want to read even if it’s a fantasy. Anything if it means getting those visions out of my head.

Just one word, and then another.

I think it worked. I got about 1400 words in. A short story.

A naughty—and sweet—short story.

Turns out, that’s how I roll.