Dear God, what did I just write?

Sometimes, whilst reviewing your work, you'll find something at which you can only stare in horror, embarrassment, or utter bewilderment.

Off the top of my head, there are a couple of times when this happened to me. One was when I noticed that a passage about a psychotic twelve-year-old girl devouring someone's heart was uncomfortably suggestive of oral sex, whilst another was the creeping realisation that an entirely disproportionate number of my female villains (as opposed to the male ones) were utterly Axe-Crazy.

So, you folks had any experiences like this during your own writing?

Why do you think I need to re-write my introductory chapters?

I want to share my account but if I did I'd be stoned to death...

Not really. I've only vaguely had this feeling writing pornography, but the feeling passed pretty quickly.

I once wrote a small fictional piece for a class that would workshop it. I was in a hurry, but I liked what I had done. However, I struggled with plot, as it was a meta piece. I tacked something on, knowing that I could get back to it later.

I went to class, and while everyone loved the idea, everyone mentioned the complete lack of plot. Cue me being rather surprised by that point in the critique. I took everything in stride, save for that, as I thought I put something in I could work with. Sure enough, I get back home, look it over, and everyone was right: there absolutely no plot in it whatsoever.

First thought: What in the hell was I doing?

Yeah, 10th grade, had to write a 10-15 page short story. What began as original fiction (and inspired the opening chapters of my Na No Wri Mo novel) became a Forgotten Realms fanfic at about page 4.

Not to mention my first Naruto fanfic, which was pretty much an Excuse Plot to get Sakura and Hinata in bed together.

Nowadays, I tend to think ahead a lot more before I start writing, though I'm still building on a lot of the old ideas that sprouted in my head as a teenager.

I get this sometimes when coming up with metaphors, the most recent example being comparing magical light to spaghetti. After typing one of those, I generally have to sit there for a minute and just stare at it, going "Wut."

Usually I'm pretty good with metaphors, but sometimes... I don't know man, I just don't know.

A few months ago I wrote a flash fiction of a rapist, hist last victim, his note, and him pulling the trigger into his own skull.

More recently I wrote a long non-structured poem about... you guessed it... a guy fighting with the idea of some serious fantasies involving less than consensual acts and the complications he is having dealing with them.

One Idea I never wrote but made an outline and plot for was that of a serial killer who lured cheating people into a sexual situation (both men and women and killed them in Las Vegas. He didn't sleep with them, but he completely mutilated them with stab wounds.

When I did Nano Wrimo I wrote a story set between my most recent draft of chapters 5 and 6 in my book (Nightmare). In it near the end Jason (the protagonist) has a flashback/blackout in the fire and in a blood lust goes machete crazy and in vivid and morbid detail I with great joy and glee I will read with emphasis how Jason at one part in the flames of a napalm literally hacks and dismembers people in the most gory prose i have ever written in my life.

I've written many, MANY poems about self-mutilation and me experiences with it, and a few of pure hatred and rage, and some other terribly disturbing metaphors. I think I have only wrote one poem strictly and explicitly about suicide though.

Over all, I would say that I am a "sick" person, if by sick you mean find comfort in pain and in characters I despise in universe getting killed (though that pleasure is from behind the fourth wall). though when depicted in movies I find it upsetting sometimes. I only like it when it is written, or on paper in some other form (picture). The real thing sickens me to the core as well as true stories and that terrible show like "A Thousand Ways to Die", considering it is a re-enactment of the real thing and then they mock and make terrible puns about people's death. If I had any power I would have it canceled.

... ...

Does that make me twisted? I'm really one of the most honest and compassionate guys you will ever know despite this...

edited 11th Apr '11 2:53:38 PM by jasonwill2

Frankly, no, I've never experienced anything like this and I don't understand how anyone could. I mean, how do you write something without thinking it through? Going back to something you wrote a long time ago and realizing it's an Old Shame is one thing - having that feeling instantly after writing something? That's something else entirely, and I'm not sure how it could happen to anyone.

Oh, you have no idea.

My "oh god" moments is because I am VERY MUCH ENJOYING what most humans would be repulsed by or at least pretend to be repulsed by.

edited 11th Apr '11 3:28:37 PM by jasonwill2

Oh don't worry. I would draw and write graphic rape scenes if it wasn't for the fact that I'm lazy.

You like writing something. Get over it, it's not that big of a deal.

I don't think you understand, I actually get off on writing about it. Like, purely psychological pleasure from the SUFFERING and powerlessness of the bad guys getting chopped up or the 'writer' of the poem.

I go to as far as sounding like a man man sadist when I go on about it and I scare my friends, family, and other people with how much I get into it, literally.

Basically put, I enjoy it too much.

edit: sometimes though when I am near a relapse i will write about the self-mutilation, which for me is more often than not a substitute for the real thing. Those are the funnest to read for shock value since they know I'm F***ing serous about the glorification of it (cutting).

edited 11th Apr '11 3:37:44 PM by jasonwill2

I understand completely. I just said I would write rape if I wasn't so lazy. People have fetishes. Mine is non consensual sex. Yours is pain and suffering to the max.

It's OK.

There have been tamer, there have been weirder.

Nobody really cares, so long as you don't post porn outside of certain threads.

edited 11th Apr '11 3:41:29 PM by MrAHR

We should talk about this some time else (im into that a good bit too).

edit: but I don't like pain and ravishment together... that I keep separate, together they are.. weird. Fear and ravishment go great together for me though.

edited 11th Apr '11 3:42:48 PM by jasonwill2

I still don't understand how you can be disturbed after writing something but not until then. That is, if your reaction is "There's something wrong with me for writing this Squicky scene", then why don't you have the same reaction when you came up with the scene in the first place?

This is fairly pedantic, but I just don't understand how someone can have a "what did I just write" reaction without having a "what am I planning to write" reaction first.

Because you didn't realize until after you wrote it how bad it was. With said scene of protagonist going machete crazy, I was into displaying his rage personified in killing the enemy in combat in such a brutal and overkill method that I didn't realize how bad it was till I went over it a day later.

I just wrote, and during it I was like "more anger and hate" and didn't think a lot of how bad it was, I just tired to write a heart-gripping scene. Not till I went back over it did I notice all those little little details I put in to full effect;

how do you think someone does a crime, and later goes 'what did I do?!' the answer is they were so caught up in what they were doing their perception was turned away from the act, and just to the emotions. It was warped.

A writer can get just as much into his writing, and later after the inspiration fades off they go, 'what the hell... this is AWESOME'

My character will angst about it, but I'm loving it.

You see, part of me letting myself be disturbed but captivated/into it at the same time adds to the angst, and I get off to angsty media. This makes it so it is MUCH more potent. Part of me lets myself be disturbed. Bonus points if I show it someone and I get a kick out of them being disturbed.

You really do not want to know how far this went (shocking people) when I was into cutting.

edited 11th Apr '11 3:56:52 PM by jasonwill2

as long as you keep fantasy and real life seperate, there is nothing to worry about

true. still gives me more kick though when I let myself have a tiny lingering feeling of disturbance in a morbidly fascinated/obsessed way.

The reason one can be surprised later is because writing it, you're in the middle of things, you're likely taking on the state-of-mind of your protagonist; you don't have distance enough to see what you've actually made.

That, and it can take a while for alternative meanings of what you've written to make themselves apparent and for patterns in your writing to become more visible.

"Bound to a Stream of Consciousness," the 48th landmark (actually prolly higher number than that) in my 2010 Halloween story for my loverly fanfic series. I didn't think. I just put Earth Bound music on in the background and wrote. Eventually, I hit a solid Mind Screw topic to write about, and I didn't lose my drive until I finished writing the several paragraphs of.. of.. whatever you'd call it.

I looked back at the whole thing. It terrified me to write what I wrote. It terrified me to read it back. It terrified me that I was taking such a serious topic and almost carelessly placing it in such a silly series. I highlighted the entire segment and seriously considered hitting the Backspace key. I did this more than once in the week it took me to write the final act of the Halloween special. The final act wound up being equally bizarre, but compared to "Bound/Stream?" It's a children's book.

It was all inverted, though. I may have written it in one take, and it may have been unexpectedly disturbing, but I think my story needed a kick in the balls like that. The story up to that point had just been five hours of typical horror movie stuff. It needed a blast of reality. So I kept it. But I still find it to be horrific. I can't believe I actually wrote that. I can't believe I released it to the public.

Well there is one but I wrote it as a Joke, it involed 10 yearlds getting married.

oh goodie! I want to share my poem about rape now.

I did that two, by a wereolf