Putting it out there.

So, I write smut. Right? Right.

I even completed NaNoWriMo, this year, although I haven't actually finished the novel. It's a BDSM love story about a terminal woman who has traded in her assets for care and ownership by a widower. It's kinda' lovely, really. But I'm also not sure how someone would go about publishing something like that. Things that don't settle well in one genre or another are harder to get moving, aren't they? And gloomy love dramas may not pull the same audiences as BDSM stories. The Venn diagram has to have a fairly narrow center, doesn't it?

The bigger problem I have in the meantime, though, is my inability to finish the things I start. Publishing is a moot point when there's no finished work.

It's not that I abandon them permanently. Really. It's just that there are so many going at once that there's always something else to write before I finish the first. I have plenty of thirty and forty page starts to novels, fourteen or fifteen page starts to short stories, two or three page beginnings to any kind of thing. I really thought I'd finish this one, though. That I'd have finished it by now. It passed 50,000 words, after all. How hard is it to finish?

Hard enough, apparently. The siren call of everything else has dragged me away. 54k in one month, and in another 5 weeks since then, I've barely written 5k more for it. As much on three different other projects, I'll grant you, but it doesn't give ya' that sense of completion.

I did finish something else, though. I suppose it's actually my first finished, non-fanfic smut piece, now that I think of it. So the question finally does come to publishing--but it's in the badlands.

For one thing, it's a terrible length. About 40 pages. Long for a short story, short for a novella. Fine for a compilation or anthology, but who wants to include an unpublished writer in one of those? With something so long/short? With a taboo subject matter?

Because it's also in one of those "no, we won't publish it under any circumstance" categories. Unfortunately, a whole lot of my smut falls into one of those or another, at least for a lot of publishers.

Believe me, I don't mind writing for my own jollies and for the good of mankind, but... it gets to feel a little futile, you know? Fanfic is grand, until it's something you know you'll never be able to translate into original fiction. But I am a whore for praise. I need to be fed one way, or another, to keep writing. Feedback is as good as it gets for most of us, I think. Better.

So I sent it in, to Literotica. Free site, no compensation, but I've always loved it. And it's edited, and will (if they accept a story) let you be listed on a kind of writer's auction block (I need a Will Write For Food sign, I think). They do sometimes do compilations that get published, people sometimes leave feedback.. . . It's a good start. At least, if my story gets in. If I haven't made a huge blunder with how I submitted it. If people read it. If people vote, comment, etc...

I'm a good writer. I write cleanly, and I think--I hope--I write sexily. I think I'll get accepted. But... What if I don't?

And why am I so scared about it?

This really isn't like sending it in to a publisher who has rules against the things I'm writing about. It's lower stakes. But it is the first finished thing, the first non-fanfic thing. It's the first time someone has stood between me and posting/publishing (barring a couple poetry submissions Back In The Day--two of which did get in, tyvm).

Maybe it's my pride? Shuddering and stuttering before a fall? I know in my heart that what I write is a lot better than things I've seen published--even published properly, in books, for money. That doesn't bother me--I don't wish ill on people who do well in the arts, whatever they do. And the thought of rejection itself doesn't bother me--people get rejected all the time. Maybe it's the thought of them both coming together? I did read a lot on that site, today, saw a lot of poor spelling and grammar, a lot of weak dialogue and impossible measurements and clunky scenarios, and so on, but... what if what I do still isn't considered as sexy as those other stories? What if it's just not as sexy? What if I'm not loved?

Ah. There, methinks, is the rub.

I want to be loved.

I don't need a lot of praise, I don't think. It doesn't have to be profuse. But words want to be read, don't they? Words need reactions. They need to strike out and strike up.

I want to be loved. I want to excite, to thrill! Or, if not, to at least amuse, a little. Even if it's a cheap thrill.

I keep grabbing my head, wondering why in hell I let it roll out for the chopping block. I'm glad I can't snatch it back up, because I might have. But I am second guessing. I'm fussing, and worrying, and checking email more often than makes any sense. It'll probably be at least three days.

I'll let you know how it goes.

(Who am I fooling, really?)