12/14/15
Song on repeat in my mind: Nas – “New York State of Mind, PT. 3”
Mood: Pensive ebullience


As a writer, and as a person, I have a great malleability, which is both a gift and curse. Sometimes, a gift is also a curse, depending on the degree of it and the angle at which you look at it.

So, as a writer, I have a narrative voice that shapeshifts—especially this year—from project to project; month to month. Yet, it remains—no matter what style I absorb into it—pretty uniquely, sometimes frustratingly, my own. Even if I beat it into a shape with entirely new priorities, cadences, sentence structures, it always yearns to retract to the “home” shape. To be the familiar animal. And, sometimes, I feel like I miss the window of furthest change, and the missing is a matter of speed. I’ll be on my merry way, but I’m not fast enough. And so the door closes; so the light that came from that door fades, thus does clarity.

To think—how many more destinations of form could I reach, if I could merely speed through all these windows before they close! Think the driver who’s got nothing but green lights ahead of them. No traffic, just green, green, green. I often feel as though I’m in such a situation; I feel like getting satisfactory momentum on stories and completing them in rapidity is like getting green light after green light, and sometimes the difference between getting stopped by all of them or by none of them is but a few miles per hour. If I could just get this engine, that is myself, to go a few miles per hours faster, then the destinations to reach—the shapes to change into—could be fully reached; fully realized. In that sweet difference, that space of a few miles per hour, lies the bridge between realities.

So, this shapeshifting voice is certainly a gift, albeit one that is frustrating in its difficulty to master.

Some other gifts—other strengths of mine as a writer: my thoroughness, my affinity for editing, my control of cadence, the connectivity of my imagery, my metaphors, my symbols. My ability to create novel ambiences for each story. To design “palettes” of tone, textures of narrative.

You could call a lot of these strengths the “forest”; the “big picture.” The setting, the mood, the voice through which these characters are brought to life.

I often feel, though, that my shortcomings lie in my characters and my conflicts. It’s not that these aren’t dynamic enough. I think it’s that there are only so many words that you can fit in a story; and what I traded for thoroughness (which I did obtain, thoroughness, when I became insecure of my pacing—which is kind of married to my tangential asides)… what I traded for thoroughness to finer details was, perhaps, attentiveness to breadth of details? As well as a more organic back-and-forth rhythm to conflict, which I do think seriously forges stakes and character relationships.

I want greater stakes, and so deeper relationships. I think “Journal of a Kobold Turned Dragon” is an excellent example of those two. It makes me happy that people always break down that story, discuss it as they do. I think the reason why I’ve never really referred to it as a reference for writing is because the voice felt too linear; too “borrowed.” But, perhaps, that is how things must always feel for me until I grow into them? Have I not borrowed a book, borrowed a voice, a thousand times, times a thousand, and then become the book? Become the voice? What is not borrowed, that is of this earth?

Anyway, there is a third shortcoming, although it’s not related to an element of writing. I just have a deep fucking thirst to write more female predators. Specifically, more canines, more dragons, more kitsunes. Koda and the female form of Sini are a couple of my own characters I’ve underwritten (and the spirit of Sini’s tree, Ness, is just in the nascent stages of development)—and, honestly, I’m still trying to get them right! But it’s a matter of timing; and it’s a matter of fulfilling some obligations first before I can really dig into that. Like, trust me—lady Sini is coming. The backstory just needs to be fucking finished. Which, trust me, nobody, almost nobody, wants that done more than me.

But, honestly, yeah: part of the lady deficiency goes back to time (I’m not writing fast enough, hitting enough of those green lights [yet] to tell these stories). Writing female preds, though, always reconnects me to… to some of the lusher aspects of vore the act and vore the interactions I’ve just been feeling divorced from.

Furthermore, I’d eventually like to share more of my process with you folk! The story blueprints released years back played a part. But since then, my process has honestly developed in micro and macro. I’d love to distill some of this knowledge and share it for the next storywriters of our community. Especially for the often-writers, the commission writers—anyone who writes furry smut and gets lost in the sea of submissions, search results, story potentiality… We have really got to share what we know. Nonetheless, I’m a fairly open book... Writers of vore—of any kindred kinks, really—can feel free to DM and converse with me about such things at any time…

But yes, shortcomings: Awareness of them is a call for reinvention. And however I can reinvent myself? I would very much like to.

-Sini