Chapter four of Follow the Leader is now up! I want to keep this momentum going and get a more consistent schedule, and am optimistic that the next turns of events for me will be reassuring and stabilizing.

One of the things I love the most about writing is how it can surprise me. It’s one thing to plan out your story and know every plot point before you start writing, but it’s quite another to have the starting event, one or two future events, and let the writing process be all about defogging how the story gets from one event to the next. It’s a lot of fun getting to feel the characters’ decisions alter what the story becomes with time. It’s fascinating to think about what could have been with a few small choices.

Follow the Leader is a less conventional story, but it’s also one I’m finding decently fun to write. It deals with a less conventional story than a traditional romance, or even an untraditional one, and it’s clear the story is more modeled around a specific dynamic than something like Being More Social. No doubt BMS is and will remain the more popular story, but certain types of people might find the former more compelling. That’s a tradeoff with using more trope-y stories versus using very specific ones with specific fetishes.

Aside from learning how commas work in dialogue, I don’t honestly know how much I’ve learned about writing stories from writing stories. Maybe I haven’t, and maybe what I have learned isn’t always good. Who’s to say? The fact I’m happiest about, when it comes to writing, is that a decade on, I haven’t lost the enjoyment I get from writing. It’s nuts to think that I’ve been spending the last ten years of my life writing these erotic stories, and even more nuts to know I’ll happily continue. It’s no secret I have my more active and less active periods, though I am determined to get more control and say over when those moments happen. It’s all a work in progress. I’ll talk to you all next week.