The guilt is in the wine
Jan. 12th, 2022 02:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
deemoyzaAnother no-writing week, which is fine. January's usually pretty slow, anyway.
Going through my 2021 fics a while back, I noticed a trend that's both interesting and slightly concerning for me. When I began writing fic a few years ago, I was a dedicated gen writer, mainly of the belief that I couldn't convincingly write relationships. Now, about a third of my fics from last year include a makeout or sex scene, whether implied or explicit, which is a fun development, no doubt, but also leaves me wondering whether I've found a new crutch. Looking back on these stories, not all of these scenes are necessary--in fact, very few are--and I'm left to wonder exactly why I thought it was a good idea to include them. You know, aside from hormones.
And I do feel a little bit bad, for two reasons. One, readers who enjoyed my earlier works now find themselves walloped with largely unnecessary descriptions of intimate physicality, and I feel I have betrayed them. Two, good old Catholic guilt. I'm not in the church anymore; in fact, I left right after I made my first communion, out of sheer boredom with its rules and proceedings. But somewhere along the line, I was infused with the guilt that seems to permeate the church as a whole. Guilty for feeling, guilty for thinking, guilty for simply enjoying being alive. I hate it, but it's in there, a teeny-tiny little disapproving nun in the back of my brain. Obviously, I'm able to override the angry nun for the most part, but in quiet moments, when I reflect on what I've done and thought and created, her whispers still echo.
Going through my 2021 fics a while back, I noticed a trend that's both interesting and slightly concerning for me. When I began writing fic a few years ago, I was a dedicated gen writer, mainly of the belief that I couldn't convincingly write relationships. Now, about a third of my fics from last year include a makeout or sex scene, whether implied or explicit, which is a fun development, no doubt, but also leaves me wondering whether I've found a new crutch. Looking back on these stories, not all of these scenes are necessary--in fact, very few are--and I'm left to wonder exactly why I thought it was a good idea to include them. You know, aside from hormones.
And I do feel a little bit bad, for two reasons. One, readers who enjoyed my earlier works now find themselves walloped with largely unnecessary descriptions of intimate physicality, and I feel I have betrayed them. Two, good old Catholic guilt. I'm not in the church anymore; in fact, I left right after I made my first communion, out of sheer boredom with its rules and proceedings. But somewhere along the line, I was infused with the guilt that seems to permeate the church as a whole. Guilty for feeling, guilty for thinking, guilty for simply enjoying being alive. I hate it, but it's in there, a teeny-tiny little disapproving nun in the back of my brain. Obviously, I'm able to override the angry nun for the most part, but in quiet moments, when I reflect on what I've done and thought and created, her whispers still echo.
