The MILF List Diary

News from Contrasting

First a big thank you and an apology to all those who over the last years of silence and inactivity have inquired after my inspiration and health. Neither were very good and the silence is the evidence. The struggle to return to form has been long and difficult and it may be in vain, that is yet to be seen. The desire to "finish" the MILF List and other projects has been present and though the spirit were willing, the flesh has been weak and the muse capricious. Sorry for the absence, it was not by choice or inattention or indifference. Thanks to all for the care and concerned expressed for whatever reason, for it does serve as some impetus to return at all, even at the risk of proving less than before if not less than the task requires.

In truth, the main reason I did not attempt to renew the List was the real fear and potential to fail to do it justice. Whether I have rebuilt what was lost is yet to be known, but hey, what is life without a little drama, right? So we'll find out...at this writing I have at least 2 more installments of Extending the MILF List to post and they should appear presently. So there's that. How they fare is the thing and I am ready to find out. Thank you to you all for whatever you have found here, I hope what I offer next will not disappoint.

I thought to use an essay to answer a few questions that have been posed in comments. Yes, I read comments avidly, though a few trolls have been dismissed with prejudice. I have taken no few suggestions to heart, put my "Sonny spin" on them and submitted them for consideration, so comments can and do affect the work.

One question I find interesting regarding if I had this plotted out from the start. No. At the start, I wanted to discover I could write a good story that I'd like to read, written as I liked with what aroused me, me! Beyond that, I wanted to see how long I could keep a single story going without getting boring and/or repetitious. The "insert tab A into slot B" plot is pretty basic but reduced to those basics, that is all these stories are. However, to be fair, the emotions and thoughts of the bodies that are being so assembled are where the interest, variation and artistry lies. And that provides truly infinite possibilities. My intent was to see how many episodes I could write and not become bored. I did okay in that regard. With some notable exceptions perhaps, I have managed to extend the MILF list well.

If we ignore the stamina required to be Sonny, which I admit I may have over estimated, certainly compared to my own, but shoot, we still like to read about Superman and the others and that hasn't gotten old. Sonny in truth displays many of the attributes I wistfully wish I'd have had at his age, or even now in my waning years to be honest. He has been a joy to write.

One of the best comments made has been that he is just a good guy. I faced quite a challenge to make a "good guy" who could have many women and do "right" by them each and every one. How in the world could one guy manage that and not be destroyed by the green-eyed monster along the way? Or succumb to conceit and turn into a duffus or worse, a bitch boy? I find Jealousy, as I have written, to be the least attractive expression of the human heart. Sonny is both the embodiment of that sentiment and the results of it. He exhibits a singular desire to give as good as he gets and is unconstrained by preconceptions of what others should want, seeming nearly always to want to offer what is desired, even if he had to expand his repertoire to do so. That is called "growth".

This created a problem. Growth meant that things change. So given who and what Sonny was, what would growth lead to? That was a puzzle that the MILF List tended to avoid. I did have an "ending" of sorts in mind somewhere in the midst of "Sharing" but it took much longer to arrive there than I ever expected, mostly I confess, because I just didn't want to stop writing about Sonny and his approach to life as a rabid cocksman. Ending this sort of story, without a central plot question, tends to be difficult. I was utterly unwilling to stop writing a character I came to find such a delight as often seems to occur, and dissolve the delight of his exploits in a disaster that leaves everyone doubting that such an adventure could ever be allowed by the cosmos or the powers that be. This seems like an overly moralistic view, that disaster must follow delight, like winter following spring, eventually. The happily ever after, optimism didn't match either so I needed some other option. So far my solution has been to not stop. We'll see how that works.

Part of my silence has been a personal journey that took me off the path that Sonny walked into my own shadowed darkness, sexually speaking, that has changed and altered my feeling and view of sexual life for humans. This change has been profound so I am not sure if I can return to the more or less consistent view of Sonny's world at the outset. A vista has opened.

This creates a whole other problem. In this genera, it is unnerving to start reading one sort of story and find an entirely different kink added into it. It can be at best irritating to find some untoward addition that does not match how the story began or what was promised by its category cropping up after being invited into a story by good writing or an interesting character. This proved difficult as I embarked on a personal journey of sexual discovery of my own, not to attempt to blend that journey into my writing. That contributed to the silence for sure. Knowing how such mixing and matching affects the unsuspecting reader left me inarticulate for some time, unable to write about sexuality without addressing my growing list of questions and the confusions they bespoke. I hope to be emerging from this confusion to the point that I can partition off various elements of sexuality so one is not ambushed by the appearance of some unexpected luridity (I know, not a word), that dampens the sensation of an otherwise well-told story. I honestly don't know if I can tell a singular story any longer. The impact of a deep dive into the warrens of BDSM and d/s in particular has lefts its mark on both my writing and my psyche. But fascinations pass, passions cool and equilibrium returns, but it hasn't happened quite yet, so we'll see what develops.

It may be that the narrow vision of singular stories may be a past fancy for me. I may have transformed into a storyteller focused on a journey that includes a greater variety than I began with and I won't be able to shelve that variety for long or perhaps at all. It's an adventure. While I am not apologetic about this, I can apologize in good faith. I may go where you have no wish to go and that is a hazard. My journey may not be yours. Or I may just be out in front a ways and you will catch up in your own good time. Either way, I may not write the narrow limited stories that focus on a single erotic version. My present opinion is that such stories of change can be styled as "growth" to justify the addition of a myriad of sexual behaviors. Such is the nature of exploration and if that is not the path you are on, what the future holds for me may well be unsettling if not just irritating. We love what we love. If I can continue to write the cloistered stories with singular focus, I shall but in this moment, I find that unlikely, but then this entire journey was impossible to conceive before it began. Surprises do happen.

As I said, I am still emerging so I don't know where this will lead me. I do want to put some sort of conclusion to the MILF List and other projects I have started and not completed to any satisfactory end, but that may be a vain hope in some cases. I continue to put the onus on the capricious muse(s) and not wear the blame like my own private scarlet letter.

One other thing I'll address and that is my use of words. One reader listed a rather long list of words not usually used. So, okay, I confess I do love words, and making them fit together in funny, odd, even twisted ways is part of the joy of this for me. Beyond that, I try things, and yes, sometimes my attempts fall flat.

One thing I have set out to learn is how to write characters speech patterns differently, so that all my characters do not sound like me when I talk (or write) but develop idiosyncratic ways of speaking. I have had variable luck in this endeavor I confess, but I keep trying. Part of the hazard is that I have a shitty memory so even when I find something that works in one episode, I may forget all about it by the time I get to the next or the third one removed. The lack of a good memory is a real hazard in this context, so recalling and linking all the hooks I dangle while in the throes of inspiration may prove difficult, variable and only erratically successful. Sonny talks about his memory the way mine works. Erratically and without discernible pattern. I am happy when I can be consistent and not change someone's hair color from scene to scene. Consistency matters but it is not simple in a long form story, that's my story and I am sticking too it.

One of the most difficult things to write is a large group scene, the orgy at Sonny's house for example because writing is linear and in a group scene things are happening concurrently. To recount them is to defy that concurrent reality because of this medium and its limitations so getting things consistent is a real chore. Not to mention figuring out what to include, what to leave out, and more to the point, the order to present things in, even if point of view constraints aren't present to help narrow the options. Writing any scene that includes many characters is difficult, orgy or battle or party or riot or dance...and many writers flinch away from the task but simply skipping it and writing about the main characters reaction in retrospect. This is a sure sign of a lapse in ability, talent, or courage on the writer's part but it is not a surprising lapse to surrender to. One of the "rules" I set for myself is never to "skip the sex". These are sex stories and giving short shrift to the sexual experience makes the story itself nearly irrelevant.

This leads right to the ability to tell about fucking, over and over and over and over again in ways that does not get repetitive and thus boring. Such an ambition remains a goal and readers judge my success, or failure in this regard. But keeping that fresh was an honest ambition, succeed or fail. One approach then, was to expand the likely words that told of tab A inserted into slot B, which, went the theory, gave a different feel to the telling, differentiating it from the one before. This created a technical if not artistic need for more and different words. This was not a slavish reliance on a thesaurus as some have speculated so much as an effort to keep the telling of what is basically the same action over and over, fresh and interesting. This should not be surprising since fucking never really grows old. Using the same sorts of words over and over, however, does, at least for me.

In like manner, the effort to make characters "sound" the same emerged and experiments with phrasing, sentence structure and length, as well as vocabulary became part of the process. This accounts for some notably intentional abuse of the language, those in quotes allow me to claim both intention and valid license. Beyond this, I never found using an "editor" to be comfortable as it took away control...I'd finish a chapter and want feedback right away and waiting for an editor to get around to finish a once over was too difficult to endure. So I had to learn to edit my own work myself, which was a skill I had to learn. And it is just difficult. No matter how many times I read work over, typos and homonyms often kick my butt, hiding from the pollyanna eyes that insist I write perfect English and so just go error blind. I take it right up the geeky. I am sorry for that but I can only say I did my best but editing is a skill and it varies with exhaustion and focus. I can only ask for mercy if I leave "than" when I mean "then" and claim my idiot fingers did not type what my mind was thinking and thereby avoid the more obvious option that my mind was irrational and untutored in the perfection such work demands. If to err is human, why must I be so human? It is a real question.

As for timing, delays I have blamed on a bitch muse and so it is. When a story goes into the ditch, there is little awareness of WHAT the problem is, but only a surety that something is not working. After the depression passes, which can take a long time, then the tricky task of flexing out various aspects of a story to find where I ran off the road and into a ditch that got me stuck begins and that is no easy endeavor either. Finding the ditch does in no way guarantee the ability to find the path out of the morass and to a good resolution for the scene or story. That is a whole other process.

Why this can't happen in the blink of an eye or after a good nap is utterly beyond me, hence the intuition of a muse that brings the inspiration but who, when she dallies and fritters away her time in a bar shooting darts, leaves me panting for something I have no idea how to obtain and no surety that any solution will be forthcoming. I have learned to not panic when I have no idea how to get out of the ditch or how to proceed once the flaw is identified. Panic rarely if every helps the cause. Had to learn THAT too. The net effect is delays that I simply have no control over. Inspiration is the in-breathing of the divine, even when writing erotica. There is a muse for the erotic and she's just as nuts as all the others. It is no accident that the muses began as the furies and end benign and blessed, but begin as torture and angst. Out of the chaos comes order, but chaos is often the price the orderly mind must pay. And that tax is always paid and collected.

I may add to this along the way. If other questions arise that seem fun to answer in a longer form than in comments. Always seems a little irrational to add my own comments to the comments sections under my own work. Like writing my own review, which seems fully conceited. Well, I hope this offers some perspective on the MILF List and if you have questions, feel free to send me a note, but include an email address or I can't respond. I haven't much lately for complicated reasons but perhaps I can in the future. Regards, -C

PS. I have reposted a version of Extending Chapter 5 which I think is much better than the original. 2 new chapters will be forthcoming in the near future, both are done, just editing them.