I've always had guilt when it comes to writing or creating. Just to be clear, while I'll primarily talk about writing today, I also mean creating caps. After all, the core of a cap is a very short story, right? Okay, so I've always had guilt when it comes to writing or creating. Way back in the very beginning, when I'd just started making caps, I felt guilty for building up what was called a "cap debt". You see, on Rachel's Haven, my original stomping ground, there was a cap trading gallery. You pick one of the artists there, use their preferences, and make a cap for them. They then 'owe' you a cap. I created fairly slowly, at least compared to some of the churning artists there, so it wasn't long before I owed two, three, four, or more artists a return cap. And that wasn't even considering the artists that I wanted to make a cap for or ones where I found an image that would be perfect for (for example, a goth girl on a park bench = cap for Dee!).
That was my early guilt.
About a year after I was posting at the Haven, I started my cap blog. I felt that I was reaching a different audience there, especially as Google was far more open and you didn't have to provide a phone or credit card number to verify your adultness. It allowed a lot more anonymity to the viewing audience. But the blog started its own guilt train. People could ask questions, suggest caps, and wanted to see 'blog exclusive' caps where it wasn't a trade on the Haven.
It should be said that at this time, I was at the very embryonic stage of exploring my femininity and/or gender identity. I considered myself a 'straight man' that had a kink or fetish. Much like a woman with a rape fantasy, I didn't want any of this to occur. And also, much like a woman with a rape fantasy, there were parts of the fantasy that deep down I DID want to occur. I mention that because I'd sometimes say I wasn't feeling "like Caitlyn" and couldn't write. That led to some guilt and would lead to a lot MORE guilt later on.
If I had a crystal ball back then and could've looked into the future of my creative process, I'd have called that time my golden period and probably lost most of my guilty feelings. You see, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, and the first half of 2013 were my most prolific years. More than half of the caps I've ever made were in that little less than 4 year period. Here's the break down of caps I made:
- 2009 (30)
- 30 caps
- It should be said that these 30 caps came between November 15th and December 29th of 2009.
- 2010 (43)
- 43 caps
- 2011 (93)
- 93 caps
- 2012 (191)
- 191 caps
- 2013 (89)
- 89 caps
- 76 were before July, only 13 after
- I got my first Nursing job in July, hence the big change
- 2014 (14)
- 14 caps
- 2015 (142)
- 11 caps
- 131 obscuras
- I started making the obscuras on May 28th
- 2016 (55)
- 5 caps
- 50 obscuras
- 2017 (23)
- 10 caps
- 8 of these caps were specifically for D+X
- 13 obscuras
- 2018 (22)
- 3 caps
- 19 obscuras
- 2019 (54)
- 29 caps
- 25 obscuras
- 2020 (61)
- 18 caps
- 41 obscuras
- I wrote and published both "Opals and Pearls" and "Thesis"
- 2021 (40)
- 25 caps
- 14 obscuras
- I started writing what would become "Just Dance"
- 2022 (43)
- 7 caps
- 5 obscuras (including "It's Not Fair!")
- 59 tumblr posts
- I started my tumblr in August of 2022
- I wrote and published the story/obscura/cap "It's Not Fair!"
- I continued to write what would become "Just Dance"
- 2023 (161)
- 11 caps
- 5 obscuras
- 143 tumblr posts
- 109 of these came in the first 4 months
- I finished and published "Just Dance"
- I started writing "Gamer Gurl"
- 2024 (14)
- 3 caps
- 0 obscuras
- 9 tumblr posts
- I finished and published the first part of "Gamer Gurl"
- I started writing "It's a Man's World"
- In case you're reading this down the road, I'm writing this on March 11th of 2024, so that's in just over 2 months.
A few random observations as that list took me almost two hours to put together.
- The number in parentheses is the number of 'creative projects' I worked on. That includes caps, obscuras, tumblr posts, and stories I worked on.
- It's a total of 1,075 creative projects which both seems like a huge number and a tiny one.
- I was absolutely gob smacked to see that I'd worked on 161 creative projects in 2023.
That first burst I had of 30 caps in the last six weeks of 2009 is probably my most productive time. But everything was new and amazing and sweet. If I could have kept up that pace for a year, I'd have more than 255 caps. But we can see that reality struck in 2010 with only an additional 43 caps made. Once I made the blog, the number went back up, giving me 93 in 2011. And then 2012.
2012 has to be peak creativity for me. That's 191 caps. Later peaks in creativity will come in with obscuras or tumblr posts but those require far less effort and are far less polished. I had graduated from nursing school in late 2011, took the NCLX and failed it in early 2012, and re-took the exam and passed it a couple months later. The rest of the year was spent looking for a job.
It took me about a year to get my first nursing job and that was a HUGE delineating factor. 267 caps in the 18 months before working as a nurse. 27 caps in the following18 months. During that time there was a lot of hemming and hawing on my side. I felt guilty as all hell as I wasn't producing any caps. I thought I was happy in my real life, therefore I didn't need the fantasy of caps. I thought my gender was halfsies, and I just didn't "feel like" my feminine side any longer, so I couldn't make caps as I was attributing caps to being/feeling feminine. And of course, there was simply the time gap. I had 48+ hours each week that were used to cap and now were used to work. Add in having real money for the first time, spending it on entertaining things, visiting more with friends.... and yeah, I just didn't have nearly as much time. Thinking back on it, it should be no surprise that the end of 2013 and all of 2014 would be an adjustment period.
Having less time overall means having less time to sit and not produce something. Before working, I could sit at my computer and try to make a cap for a couple hours and end up with nothing. No big deal as I could do the same thing later in the day and I still might make a cap. But now when I basically only had the weekends and evenings (well... mornings for me as I worked afternoons/evenings) if I swung and missed, I might not get another chance for days. So again, with hindsight, it makes sense that my 'creativity' was pushed into something that I could do faster and dirtier. Obscuras.
Obscuras started off as something short. Shorter than a cap, but with no size restriction. The 'shorter than a cap' quickly went out the window as obscuras became a longer form of writing. In that way, I think we can call 2015 the year that I started to think of writing long form. It just took me another 5 years to realize it.
2016, 2017, and 2018 were just low output years. I can say that those years coincided with my second job as a nurse. I didn't really like that job and at the end of it, it was actually bad as I feared the ineptitude of a nurse that I worked with at the time.
2019 marked a lot of things. I had my new job as a nurse manager and was getting used to it. Things were 'new' again. But just glancing at my posts, I can see a desire to be more creative even if I wasn't outputting anything. Yes, 2019 has twice the creative projects as 2018, but almost all of those are in the last two months. One thing I find verry interesting is that I directly start talking about writing a long form story. Talking about and thinking about writing that way occurs BEFORE my creative spurt at the end of the year. I think I was realizing my fascination with the obscura 'no word limit' format and seeing that it was just the first step. Writing out a longer story would be the next step.
2020 was going to be a good year! Nothing bad could happen.... right!? Right?
Sarcasm aside, 2020 had roughly the same number of creative projects as 2019 but two of them were long form stories that took weeks and months to write. Frankly, considering how bad 2020 was with COVID-19, I'm surprised I got as much produced as I did. Just about everything in my routine was uprooted. I had to move temporarily away from home to keep mom safe. My work schedule changed. I was on call more often, took more calls than ever, and had to cover more shifts at work as the nursing shortage hit us hard. And 2021 didn't get any better. In fact, I think the stress started to build up on me. There are a few gems in there, but most of the 25 caps and the 14 obscuras are crap. And while I started Just Dance, I couldn't keep it going.
I think if I look rationally at 2022, it's really just 2021 all over again. The work stress got so bad that I changed jobs, and it was a bad change. But instead of the minimal effort I put into obscuras, I put even less effort into tumblr posts. Don't get me wrong, there are some real gems in my almost 250 tumblr posts, but I mostly just throw something against the wall without any idea how its going to turn out or even going back and editing it so its a cohesive story from beginning to end.
Last year was bad. The job was terrible and causing me all kinds of stress. On top of that, the migraines started taking over my life. Yeah, that 161 creative projects looks good, but that is a whole lot of tumblr puke posts. Without the tumblr posts I have 18 creative projects.
And then we get into this year. I finished Gamer Gurl: Origins, started work on It's a Man's World, made a few caps and have gotten into re-blogging old tumblr posts (the 9 I mention ARE new posts though).
Here's the crux of why I wanted to make this post. I think I'm letting timing and fear stop me from taking advantage of all this time I have. For the first time since I started working as a nurse, I have a LOT of free time. So why aren't I producing more?
Here's my rough schedule. Obviously, things do get in the way of this, but this is the rough bones I have of a daily routine.
I wake up between 4 and 8 AM. My average 'feet out of bed' time is between 6:00 and 6:30. I get my cup of coffee, and read my emails. Most of that is taken up by reading the New York Times daily email which covers the big news stories as well as some other interesting reads. I try to always play the daily New York Times game 'Connections'. I won't go into the details, but it's a mind game that makes you think. I want to have that brain push on a daily basis and sort of use it as a measuring stick on my mental state. If I didn't get it and feel that I should have, then I'm not thinking clearly. Next up is my 'Calvin' social media. I separate Calvin and Caitlyn here more by subject matter and people I connect with. My 'Calvin' social media are my old high school and college friends, nurses I've worked with, and my very close friends. The twitter and threads side of it is keeping up with general themes like movies, star trek, star wars, politics, and really has no bearing on my Calvin/Caitlyn sides. Once I'm caught up there, I take a quick peek at college football news (there isn't much as its the off season) and then head over to Caitlyn.
This switch is a literal switch. I use multiple desktops to keep Calvin and Caitlyn separate. I do that because I live with my brother R and my Mom. If either were to walk into my room, I want a quick way to flip to a desktop that is 'safe' for them to look at. Realistically... this separations is becoming less and less about masculinity and femininity and more about 'family friendly' and 'adult' content. Caitlyn will often have images up to inspire writing or be checking out forced femme caps. That's what I don't want Mom and R to see. My bedspread, my deskpad, my windows backgrounds... these are all quite feminine. I'm not sure if they're taking these and adding them up to anything, but at least they're not seeing overt blow job pics.
Anywho, once I'm on my Caitlyn desktop, I catch up on Discord. That can take awhile, but mostly just takes a few minutes. I then go through a similar process as 'Calvin'. I check my Caitlyn email, and move on to her social media. Where my Calvin social media is Threads, Twitter, and Facebook, Caitlyn's social media is my main blog, this blog, my tumblr blog, twitter (mostly porn now that I'm done posting my caps there), CHYOA, and Fictionmania. The latter is there only because I recently posted Gamer Gurl: Origins and I'm keeping an eye out for comments. In a few weeks, I'll stop checking Fictionmania on a regular basis.
When all of that is done, I'm ready to start my day. That can be doing my bills, setting up my pills (a Sunday activity), doing my laundry, or any other set of tasks I have. If I don't have tasks like that, which is true on most days, I have a completely open time until lunch at 11:00.
When I find myself on a day without any particular tasks to get done, and I get to this point and see that it's 9:00 I'll almost always pull up my latest installment (was Gamer Gurl, now it's It's a Man's World) and start writing. I'm generally not going to get a chapter done before lunch, but I can get a big chunk done. Then 11:00 rolls around, I take my pills, have lunch with R and mom, and return to my desk around 12:30 to continue writing. I'll continue what a normal afternoon and evening looks like, but let's focus on the morning. Most of that is based on me 'starting' at 9:00. Lately though, I'm more likely to see that it's 10:00. I don't know if its because I'm taking longer to read, reading more, or just spending more time flipping through social media (both Calvin and Caitlyn social media), but I'm coming up closer and closer to 10:00.
Starting writing at 10:00 is vastly different than starting writing at 9:00. The early part of writing for me is getting into that adult/erotica/porn/sexiness/hotness mindset. I read the old post, get my inspiration images up (most of which are overtly porny), and start to plan out the chapter and see if I can slip some sexiness into it. That sexiness can be Sadie getting manhandled during her workout session, getting screwed by her discipline program, or having her nightly devotional. More recently its how Joy is going to start experiencing sex. I'll often start writing but end up tossing out the first few paragraphs as I was still working myself up into this mindset. Once I'm there.... it's just having my fingers keep up with my mind (typing... get your mind out of the gutter!). When I was in the heart of Gamer Gurl, I could write out three or even four chapters if I didn't have interruptions.
A quick aside, while I'm mainly talking about writing these long form stories, this is also when I'll write caps or obscuras or tumblr posts. Obscuras or tumblr posts almost always get done in the morning where caps will get written and the design will fall to after lunch. Okay, back to the daily timeline.
It's the lunch interruption that's the problem. When I'm in the mood and rolling with my writing, lunch is like hitting the pause button. Write write write, lunch, write, write, write. But when I'm still working up to that mood, it feels off. It feels strange. I'm in a very specific 'adult' mood but I'm also discussing chicken noodle soup and watching The Price Is Right with my brother and my mom. In other words, it ruins the mood. When lunch is over, I have to start over.
I've mentioned before, writing for me is erotic and turns me on. Well, that might be the most erotic. I was already 'in the mood' and now that entire mood is turned inward and I'd rather just look at porn and take care of the arousal. I can't turn it into energy for the story. And once I'm 'spent'... well, I have no interest in writing. Therefore, lately at least, if I see it's 10:00 and know I'm not going to get into the good writing part, I'll just head back to the safety of youtube and wait around until after lunch to try and start.
That gets me to the afternoon. I'm either picking back up with the writing, try to pick up the writing but end up jacking off, or try to start the writing. One thing that's true of my migraines is that they come into full bear around lunch time. That was true back when I was working and is still true today. Before lunch I'll often feel the headache portion, but it's around lunchtime that all the other symptoms start coming in. Light and sound sensitivity, brain fog, blurry vision. So when I get back to my room after lunch I can also be full into a migraine. If it's minor, I'll often try to write through it but that has as much chance of making the migraine worse as it does getting creative work out.
Before anybody steps in and says I shouldn't try to poke the migraine... I can't just give up on everything. I've given up on a social life, I've given up on working, and I've given up on most of my family activities. If don't try to keep up with my creative endeavors, I'd just end up putting on an old tv show or movie and listen to or watch that. Yeah, writing might make the migraine worse, but at least I might get something done. Plus, if the migraine is bad enough I can't even do that and just skip to this next part.
When I have a migraine severe enough, there isn't anything that takes the pain away, let alone the other symptoms. It took me awhile to stop trying, but I even stopped trying the ibuprofen and acetaminophen combination I used for so long. It's just going to hurt and run its course, so why bother taking something that I know won't work. The one factor that helps? A nap. So once I get back from lunch and I have a bad migraine, regardless of me trying to write or not, I'll end up taking a nap. This nap might be an hour or it might be three hours. Hell, it's been five and half hours before.
I mentioned the lunch interruption at 11:00. That's pretty well laid out in stone. I don't know how it happened, but it's very rare for us to have lunch start later than 11:30 or earlier than 10:50. The next expected interruption is dinner. This one's trickier as mom makes dinner. She tends to target between 5:00 and 6:30. She might start making it at 4:30, but she might not start until almost 6:00. And on her bad days, she might only realize she can't do it and decide on getting some delivery at 6:30. That's all to set up the same situation I have as before lunch. If its close to dinnertime, I'd rather not start to ramp up. If its well before dinner time, I can ramp up and be in the write, write, write, mode and dinner won't be a bad interruption. But since dinner is so variable, I have to play as though its at 5:00. That means not starting to write after 4:00. And then I might not get back to my room to write until 7:30 or 8:00.
The evening is for rest. Frankly, even on light days, I'm tired in the evening. And yes, even after napping for five hours, I'm still tired by the time 8:00 rolls around. If I'm in the mood to write or create, I certainly go for it but I'm just so rarely in the mood that it's hardly worth talking about.
I think, now that I laid all that out here, I can see several things that are holding me back. First, I do have to give consideration to the migraines. If they're bad, no writing will happen. Second, I'm giving more and more time to the lunch and dinner interruptions all because I'd rather not be in that mood while eating or being with R and mom. But that's kind of childish. I used to do this all the time before I was working. I'd be making caps all day and simply paused during lunch/dinner breaks. So why am I giving this 'one hour break' rule status?
I think what I need to do is make myself write. Whenever I hear authors talk about writing, the biggest or first advice they give to aspiring authors is to write. Write, write, write. If its bad, then throw it out, but don't let the fear of writing badly stop you from writing. There are whole days I'll go without writing and there just isn't any reason for it.
Obviously, I still need to give room to my migraines. And yes, they alone might make it so that I can't get anything out for several days in a row. But if it's just the headache portion, like it is most mornings, then I should still be able to get some writing done. I'll still do my morning routine, and I'll still let more important things (pills, bills, talking with friends/family) get in the way, but there's no reason I shouldn't at least try to write some each morning. And unless the migraine symptoms are bad after lunch, I should be trying again in the afternoon. Nothing will change for the evenings.
I don't think there are other impediments that I need to get out of the way.
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