Uh, oh. I seem to have been outed. Either somebody posted a link to this blog somewhere, or there was a sudden influx of curious people to the experimental AI blog. In any case, to new readers, welcome! I'd tell you all about what I'm doing with this blog... if I happened to know myself, but I don't. I'm experimenting with this and that. It's a general writing blog, and while I'll probably post snippets here, it won't be a story-posting blog. At some point I may do that as well. The snippets are a way to deal with my difficulties writing when I'm not posting anything (yes, I know, this makes it hard since I also have trouble writing when I am posting something, but I've never claimed to be consistent!). My goal is to make it to the end of my current three projects (Bounds of Decorum, Morning Light, and a nameless short story) so I can take on something new.

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In From Lambton to Longbourn, Darcy and Elizabeth banter about practicing the virtues of self-control and charity. When it comes to each other, they're both better at charity than self-control. That passage keeps coming back to me lately because I've been thinking a lot about self-discipline - specifically how to make myself sit down and write. I feel better when I write, but I'm having trouble finding the motivation and perseverence to actually do it. I think I'd better go back to setting concrete public goals, which has sometimes worked in the past.

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So, everyone wants to know why I'm never at AHA anymore. I'm not there because my membership was suspended at my request. Why would I make a request like that at the site I'd poured my energies into for the last year? Well, the admin team and I had a long set of differences about the direction of AHA, leading to my removal from the MLS Board of Directors and from my tech functions at AHA, as well as AI leaving AHA and MLS. It was unpleasant and bitter, but I was willing to put it behind me and be a regular member at AHA.

Then the AHA team took away my ability to send and receive PMs and made it so that I couldn't post anything on the board unless it was pre-approved by a moderator. They were angry at me because of the previous conflict, yes, but I didn't feel those actions were appropriate. It was also rather silly, since I just went to another site and sent my PMs there. I gave them a few days to cool down, hoping they'd realize their actions weren't warranted (not to mention that it was a bad precedent to set), and communicated to them via another team member that I wanted my privileges restored. It didn't happen, and I got no explanation for why it didn't happen or whether it ever would happen, or even why my privileges had been suspended in the first place. None of the due process that we'd set up for when there were troubles with a member was used. I still haven't gotten an explanation for those actions.

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To those who have encouraged me to continue Bounds of Decorum, your kind words have brightened my day and reminded me that my writing may indeed benefit someone. My muse is more susceptible to reasoning like that than “Well, I ought to be writing!”

This is just the latest in the delays on Bounds of Decorum. It would have been done months ago if I hadn’t made the mistake of trying to write to someone else’s dictates. My publisher is only interested in publishing my stories if they have sex scenes in them, and Bounds of Decorum doesn’t. Now, I have no problem about writing sex scenes (you may have noticed that), but I just can’t write gratuitous sex scenes to save my life. BoD has plenty of mushy, romantic, and I hope provocative moments, but sex scenes just don’t belong in it by the nature of the story.

So I’ve been stuck on the question of whether to try to make myself write something that doesn’t come naturally (a big source of writer’s block) or to write something that’s destined to be rejected (also not a muse-friendly activity). What I need is to get back to the place where I feel it’s safe to write, and to remind myself that I write for the sake of writing, not to please a particular person or for a particular outcome.

I’ll try not to keep you waiting too long!