The Middle Aged Freelancer's Life

My body hurts. I think it's all the sitting I've done in the last two and a half weeks; fourteen hours in a pharmacist's chair every day will do that to ya.

So I woke up this morning all bent over, unable to straighten up. Is it growing old or is it my body's way of saying, "Yo girlie! I need you to move around a little bit or else I'm locking up permanently."
Well, since I wasn't about to stay curled up in my bed forever, I got up, crawled/shuffled to the wall, struggled into my shoes and went for a walk.
It started out pretty awkward. I was walking like I'd been sodomized (excuse the crudeness) for a bit, struggling with every step. Then something happened and my body just...relaxed. And I was able to straighten up and walk like a human being.
My lower back still hurts LIKE A MOTHERFUCKER but I can move like a human being as opposed to a duck again.

It's a pain in the ass but I'm kind of glad that my body is built in such a way that it won't let me sit on my fat lazy ass too long without moving about and exercising a little. I don't know if it was because I was quite the sporty chick in my wasted youth or just everyone's built this way. Either way, I'm grateful.
The trials and tribulations of aging...so much fun.
Meanwhile, I still have a full workload to complete, books to market and apparently a whole group of literati to mentor.

I find it strange; some people have been coming to me lately to ask me about getting started as a writer; both in freelance writing and in novel writing.
I tell them all the same thing; you just have to do it. Just jump in there and DO IT.
And without exception I've been getting 'but I can't' responses. Like there's a magic formula or a bell that's going to ring to tell you that 'it's time; do it now.'
Okay, so newsflash? There isn't.
When I was in standard one, I had my first swimming lesson. The swimming coach told me to jump in the pool. No instructions, no nothing. Just...
"Jump in the pool."
Okay so it was the shallow end but I hadn't had a swimming lesson before that. I was expecting something along the lines of
"keep hold of the sidebar and kick your legs."
not,
"Jump in now."
Well, I took a deep breath and jumped. My heart also jumped. The water wasn't deep enough for me to sink, or even...you know, get completely submerged. But I was still terrified to jump. Still did it though. I guess it helped that I was an obedient little bugger at the time.
It didn't take me long to learn the basics after that, and pretty soon I was swimming lengths without effort.
What is the analogy here you say?
Well, it's simple really. You can wait and wait for instructions, you can hesitate at the edge of the pool, staring into the water, letting the ifs and buts stop you from getting in the water. Or you can jump in and sink or swim.
I understand fear. Okay, I understand the fear intellectually. My whole life has been about winging it and learning on the fly so I don't really understand the fear, but I get that people are fearful like that. But I have very little advice on how to overcome the fear of doing things.
Just do it.

What's the worst that could happen?
On a completely unrelated side note, I saw that Kendall and Kylie Jenner have superimposed their images on shirts of Tupac and Biggie and are now selling those shirts for $125....
I cannot tell you how...annoyed that makes me. Do whatever you want with Biggie, I don't really care, but putting your plastic asses over Tupac's face?....Man

Philando Castile

Just finished watching the Wild Thoughts video for the third time and as I am watching I was thinking that Philando Castile will never get to watch this. He'll never get to gawk at Rihanna's...er, bosom. He'll never get to wonder if he hates it or likes it. He'll never get to turn to his wife and ask her what she thinks.

Or wake his daughter up for school. Or call his mother.
He doesn't get to do all these things ever again.
Because he's dead.
His death was recorded live on Facebook by his wife while her daughter sat in the back and a policeman continued to point a gun at him.
 It was a slow death.
I watched it because I didn't think it would end that way. I thought emergency services would come and take him to the hospital like on Third Watch or Rescue Me. I thought the cop would drop the gun and try to perform CPR. I guess that's what happens when you confuse TV for real life.

I just happened to be online and she was filming and broadcasting every movement so the cop wouldn't shoot her too. She had to put her hands on the dash. She couldn't reach over to feel Philando's pulse or try to stop the bleeding. She had to stay still because it could become a bloodbath in there. There was a child in the car.
But the cop is the one who felt unsafe.
He's the one who felt like his life was in danger.
He's the one who gets to go home and watch Wild Thoughts like he didn't end a man's life in cold blood.
My soul is crying.
It's crying for justice.
I only had to watch that video and I feel like somebody should compensate me for the trauma.
How must it be to live it, day in, day out?
I feel that the juries in two cases, Philando Castile's murderer, and George Zimmerman's, have earned a special place in hell. In this place, they get to watch their loved ones shot in the heart, then slowly bleed out in front of them. Nobody calls emergency services. Nobody tries to help. Their hands are tied, they can't help either. Once every single one of their family members is dead, they get to be on the jury of the killer. And they get to return a NOT GUILTY verdict to that killer. A
And this goes on in a loop, over and over like that Tuesday on Supernatural.
Forever.

As for the cops who go around murdering people like they have a license to kill, I curse you to come back in the next life as a black man. Good luck with that.
Not.

Evolution

This has been that week...
Where everyone I know seems to be having a problem or two with the men in their lives.
And coming to me, a single woman, for advice.

It made me have a lot of thinky thoughts as I am wont to do when trying to solve a problem. And I came to some conclusions which I'd like to share with you.

1. We are not all at the same stage of evolution.
You know how we interact with people and expect them to behave a certain way? Believe certain things automatically? Have a certain standard of intelligence?
Then we just absolutely cannot understand why it doesn't happen that way? Well let me tell you a story and then  we can draw a conclusion.
Yesterday I'm in the matatu going to work and I'm sitting at the seat nearest the door. Now the conductor tells a kid who is sitting on a seat to stand up so an adult can take the seat. He then proceeds to lift the kid and put him in my lap...

I didn't say a word but my face must have said it all because the driver turns around and laughs like 'he put a kid in your lap' har har de har...
I did not say anything because;
- Anyone at my stage of evolution would at least have asked if I minded having a random child dumped in my lap.
- I had just been thinking about how tired I was scrolling down twitter and seeing angry black women angry at stuff men do; I always felt like these men cannot understand you anyway, so who are you ranting to?
- and thirdly the realization in two above let me know that I was dealing with exactly that situation. Men who were at a lower stage of evolution than me (I estimate Cro-Magnon) and even if I complained, they wouldn't get it anyway.
- I didn't really mind the kid on my lap. It's just good manner to ask.
Well anyway, the point I am making is, ensure that you're dealing with someone at the same stage of evolution as you before you proceed to be angry at them for things their minds ain't prepared for.

As if to illustrate my point about different stages of evolution, someone just commented beneath a link to my fanfiction about how the picture illustrates 'homosexuality' which 'we' don't approve of. Anyone who hides behind the collective mind is somewhere around the homo whatever with the club above, so they are not ready to appreciate complex thought processes. But me, being the 'benefit of the doubt' type person, I asked, "We, who?"
What did I get in reply? The name of my story. It's like I'm speaking French and she's still learning the alphabet. We cannot communicate.
So why try?
So if you have a man, who is at a different point of evolution from you; you have two options.
1. Dump his ass and find someone with whom you can connect.
or
2. Accept your situation and don't complain.

Cheers.

Drink to That.

p.s. Wild Thoughts is out and so are my books.

Writing Sex Scenes

Hi.
How have you all been?
My literati group and I try to do this thing where we report in each day on our state of mental, physical, emotional and psychological health. It's very helpful especially when you're having a bad day. Y'all should try it.
I've been swamped with work and that's why I've been kind of MIA but I will try to do better.
Today I want to talk about writing sex scenes.
What is the most favorite sex scene you've ever read or watched or written?

For me, both reading and watching? The wedding night scene between Jamie and Claire is my number one. Slow burn, minimal description of the mechanics, just putting the reader in Claire's head and making you feel like you were right there with her.
Seeing what she sees.
Hearing what she hears.
Feeling what she feels.
That's what a good sex scene is about to me.I've been reading a lot of fanfiction lately because it's usually less than 10k words that I can read on the matatu or on my work breaks or in between prescribing drugs at my locum (I todja, I been busy). So the nature of fan fiction being what it is, there is usually a lot of sex between the characters because apparently when 'fans' see actors fighting on TV what they visualize is them having sex with each other. My tendency to be judgemental aside, the point is that I've read plenty of sex scenes. The thing is, mostly I just skim through it because this is how most people write:
His leg moved up and circled around his partner's neck as his partner leaned in and licked his penis. He gasped and his partner stopped, glancing up at him with a smirk.
"You're just a slut for it right? You love it when I fuck you. Slut."
And he shuddered with ecstasy at being called a slut and got even wetter and couldn't wait for his partner to breach him and fuck him into the mattress twenty times.

What is this fixation with calling people you're having sex with 'slut'? It's not realistic. Do YOU like being called a slut in the middle of sex? It's just stupid, puritan bullshit that is now spreading like wildfire and infecting other people. Hi, Amerikkka.
In order to understand the purpose of a sex scene, it's imperative to know why sex scenes are written or portrayed.
1. To advance the story.
This is of course, the most compelling reason to write a sex scene. For example, Child of Destiny begins with a sex scene of dubious consent. This act sets up a domino effect for the rest of the book. I wrote it from both the point of view of the guy and the girl. Here's an excerpt:

Her lips are so soft. He wasn’t expecting that; almost unconsciously, his lips pressed down on hers. Now their tongues were intertwined, it was difficult to know whose tongue was whose.

She felt dizzy with shock and dismay like all the blood had left her head; she leaned into him to keep some sort of balance and her breast pressed against his chest.

Bigger than they look…was his incoherent thought as his hands rose of their own accord and circled her surprisingly tiny waist. Apparently underneath all the grandma sweaters was the body of a seventeen-year-old girl.

‘A hot seventeen-year-old girl’

The blood in his body was pooling a little lower than his head as he sank his teeth gently into her lower lip, pulling it into his mouth and sucking with lips gone suddenly hot. “I want her! “ He thought with surprise.’ how did that happen?’

‘This is crazy’ was her last coherent thought before she was surrounded by madness. She felt a sudden draft across her chest and realized that her dress was unbuttoned all the way down to the waist and Leo’s hands were everywhere – touching, caressing, squeezing, and pinching. Her nipples were painfully erect and seemed to cry out for his mouth without bothering to consult her. As if he heard their silent cry, his lips moved from hers and fastened themselves on her left breast. She felt dizzy and confused, as she pressed his head tight to her breast. She tried to control her breathing but it was impossible, and she was gasping like there was not enough oxygen in the whole world for a fortifying breath. Leo was making a low growling sound deep in his throat like a cat purring over a succulent piece of meat. Suddenly he picked her up and threw her onto her bed. A few seconds later, she was divested of her dress and the covering that her embarrassingly huge granny panties had afforded her vagina was replaced by his hot mouth. She froze in shock at the action and the sensation. She was torn between wanting to push him away and wanting to pull him even deeper into her. She compromised by moaning out loud.

The point is to follow the feelings and not the mechanics of sex. Because the mechanics are always the same. Point A goes in slot B. The rest is semantics. So to keep your reader engaged it's necessary to give them something more.
Emotions.

2. Gratuitous Gratification a.k.a porn without plot or PWP
Ah, erotica....what would we do without it? Men watch porn, women read erotica. So the purpose of writing this type of sex scene is to get people as hot and bothered as possible. Some do that by using explicit language.
Punani.
Pussy.
Cock.
Dick.
Not only that but by describing privates in a barbified, fantastical manner.
"His huge dick."
"Her wet warm pussy."
"His raging cock rammed into her warm wet center."
Describing sensation; taste, hearing, touch, sound, sight. Make the reader feel every thrust.
Sometimes you're writing about a sex scenario which the reader cannot relate to.
For example, the dom/sub scenario might be incomprehensible to some (me) and if you manage to describe what the participants are going through in a way that will make me 'get it' then you can tick the 'expert' box on the writing sex scenes questionnaire. Haven't yet come across a writer who has done that but maybe that is because y'all don't get that we don't need to know that 'he whipped her thirty times until the welts were apparent on her skin and she was wet and ready for him.'
Okay then...
Uh..?
What?

This is what I visualize when I read that stuff.

Other people prefer euphemisms to describe sex.
He touched her centre of venus with his strobe of fire and she felt her whole body yield to his onslaught. Sounds vaguely historian or British but it gets enough panties wet to be persistently popular. I'm pretty sure it's - again - the puritan crowd that influences this style of writing.

Personally I like to try this new thing where the description of sex scenes is based on reality where the sounds aren't always sexy, sometimes someone farts...the bodies aren't perfect and neither are the people involved. However, the feelings are real as fuck.

Whatever reason that you're writing your sex scene, you have to remember that the emotional connection is the key. Whether it's love, hate, lust, desire, neediness...You need to find a way to bring that out. Make your audience feel that connection, and get invested in it. That's how you draw them in.

Speaking of fanfiction, I just recently finished the third part of my War of the Winchesters fanfic. I'm so proud of how it turned out. Exceeded all my expectations. Go read it.