No Mercy (and the dichotomy of deadline relaxation)

As most of you know, I’ve been moonlighting for the last couple of Mondays over at Rebecca Black’s site, with a (two-part) story called No Mercy. I’m very grateful to Rebecca for hosting my work, and for featuring a bunch of my old (and slightly less old) stories on Cliterati in recent weeks.

I’m grateful to her for another reason too though. On the Erotica page of this blog, there are three unfinished stories – in the Documents folder on my laptop there are at least a dozen more. Some of them I’ll go back to one day, but most I won’t. They’ll sit there, unloved and incomplete, till I’ve forgotten why I even started writing them in the first place.

In some ways that’s just what it is to be a writer. You have an idea, you run with it, and the story either goes somewhere or it doesn’t. Every now and then I’ll come up with what I think is a fantastic scenario, or I’ll stumble upon two(/three/four/…) characters who I really love; and for 500 words, or 1000 words, or even 1500 words, my fingers will dance across the keyboard. And then…and then, I’ll hit a wall. I’ll realise that actually, I’ve told the whole story before any sort of natural endpoint is in sight, or I’ll just lose whatever enthusiasm I had for the project in the first place.

Sometimes it’s circumstantial. I do go through periods of not being able to finish (or indeed start) anything at all, and in some of those cases I’m sure the ideas I have really are fucking fantastic – I just don’t have it in me to follow through with them. Whether I’m busy at work, dealing with personal crap, or just not in the right headspace to write smut, there are times when I do just need to take a step back and focus on other things.

Every now and then though, I look back on something I’ve half-written, and have to acknowledge that fundamental laziness is to blame for my lack of staying power. Unsurprisingly those are the really frustrating ones, because they feel like they ought to be within my control: I have an idea; it’s good; it works as a story; I give it a good crack; and then…ooh, something shiny! Or, more to the point, ooh, I have six hours of Masterchef to catch up on and my bed is fucking comfy…

That’s just who I am though. In most situations, I will generally default to the most enjoyable option…unless there’s a strong imperative to stay the course with something more stressful. That contrast pretty much defined my academic career, which ultimately worked very well; the Oxbridge (Arts/Humanities) system is set up to reward people who perform at their best under regular spikes of pressure, and even when that reached its extreme form during Finals, I greatly preferred it to the more sedate, low-energy rhythms of my Durham Masters programme.

In short, I need a deadline. Whether academically, professionally or creatively, I find deadlines to be relaxing, not restrictive. They liberate rather than suffocate, and the shot of adrenaline they provide is often enough to see me through a sleepless night or a finger-burning keyboard frenzy.

When Rebecca asked me to write a guest post for her blog – and for the Masturbation Monday meme – I agreed without even really thinking about it. The date we’d settled upon was weeks away, and as a result I put the whole thing squarely on the back burner..until, with a couple of days to go, the fear finally kicked in. I had no ideas in mind, no characters, no plan for how I might structure it, and very little time in which to resolve all of those issues; but for some reason that momentary panic was exactly what it took to kick-start the creative process.

Most pleasingly of all, once I’d written part one, Rebecca came right back at me with a request – verging on a demand – for the rest of the story. Without her push, I doubt I’d have finished it, because after submitting the first half a part of me felt like I’d already said the most interesting things I had to say about that scenario – the rest was ‘just’ sex.

Sometimes though, it’s good to be reminded that the sex matters too…even if Erotica as a genre doesn’t always require it! It also felt great to be pushed like that, and to force myself to find ways to extend a story that I might otherwise have wandered away from, or written off as a lost cause. I enjoyed a sense of purpose that can sometimes be elusive with writing; as a result the whole experience felt far more natural and relaxing than has often been the case over the last few months.

I was happy with how No Mercy turned out; and if you’re reading this but haven’t yet checked it out, I hope you enjoy it too. Most of all though, I’m pleased to discover that I can still hit a hard deadline (outside of those I’m being paid not to miss), and that I still find it strangely relaxing to operate under that particular form of pressure.