Adam Phillips

Readers Who May Yet Stumble Across This Story, I get an email every now and then from new ISWB readers who want me to convey a message to John ("Brian"). I have to say with a great deal of sadness that I no longer can. I'm sure he and Chris are doing well. It's just that our communication back in the day was limited to Yahoo Messenger, which I no longer have, and Yahoo Mail, which I also no longer have. The last I heard from them, Chris was in college and doing well. I expect he's graduated by now. John had moved across the country and was working in a field in which he had knowledge and experience. We were great and deep online friends; it was never our karma, destiny, or, even, interest, in extending it beyond that. Maybe some day I'll stumble across John again and we'll get updated with each other. I know he reads these reviews and comments from time to time. Time will tell. In the meantime, if you haven't already, you may want to read my story Crosscurrents here at GayAuthors. Solivagant's (pretty on-target, I'm afraid) comments above re: the protagonist's (aka "my") less-than-stellar character notwithstanding, this is also an autobiographical coming-of-age story about young men whose affections don't fit the neat binaries that the culture tried for so long to pigeonhole us into. I'm in the Classic Authors section because I haven't written for GayAuthors in ages; I hope to change that this year, but I'm not making any promises! Thanks for following ISWB; I miss "Sam" dearly, and you're all correct; he was a saint of a man.

Echo, I'm glad you enjoyed the story. I'm in "Classic Author" status simply because I haven't had the time or life-space to do any more writing yet, so it didn't make sense to keep me in Signature Authors...but I have about 15 other stories rolling around in my head that I'd like to put out there some time, to say nothing of the 4 that are out there at different places on the Internet in partial stages of completion. So I hope do something before too long to accommodate your wish for more.

Fair enough, Briansboy. I appreciate that you liked what you did, and I understand why you disliked what (and who!) you did. Andy IS privileged, smug, entitled, and gloating. It's over-compensation to some degree, as his protracted doubts and agonies illustrate, but that's not an excuse. I can only plead that Andy was in the process of growing up in the narrative and that he's grown more still. And that even though he is all those negative things, he also loves deeply and is loyal to a fault. 😉 The ending ended the way it did because there aren't very many roadmaps for bisexual polyamory, or at least for how to do it within the context of trying to live what would otherwise be an unexceptional suburbanite life in a heteronormative culture. The epilogue concludes with Andy uncertain about everything except for the fact that somehow his trust and love for Matt would allow things to work out, though he didn't know anything of what that sort of "working out" would mean. Along with you, Andy himself was wrestling with finding unbelievable the frankly-unbelievable situation he was in. All I can assure you is that down the road the parties found their respective ways and that Andy and Matt are still good. I'm taking the time to reply to this because after a lengthy absence to live life, work, and be a family man, I'm kind of itching to do some more writing for Gay Authors! And I hadn't seen your comment until today, so I thought I'd reply. It gets kind of dicey for a guy to read somebody saying what a prick he is, lol, but if the shoe fits...in any case, thanks for your ongoing interest and warm words about Crosscurrents. It truly was a labor of love for me.

Yeah, it's my biggest enemy too. The reason I don't write as much as I do is that I won't continue to sit down and work with it if I don't feel I'm In the Zone. If it feels second-rate as it comes off my fingers, I'm outta there and off doing something else. And I know that This Is Not Good. So I'm trying to change... But I hate it when I write crap.

I had writer's block once when I was writing Crosscurrents, and it wasn't because of "story" issues; I knew the plot like the back of my hand. It's that there was no blood going to the writing; it was cadaverous. A writer friend of mine said, "Put it away. Write something else. Anything else. Another story, I mean. Keep it short, start a long one; just write something else!" I did. I started Brushfire (Which, uh, I've not picked up with again until this week.). And I looked at the writing and saw that it had energy. I also saw that the writing was better than my writing on Crosscurrents. but that's another topic for another time. In any case, once I had my groove back, I returned to Crosscurrents and--no writer's block! So. Write something else. Anything else. Another story, I mean.

I had an English teacher in high school who'd draw a red line at her first sight of a "very." She'd refuse to read anything below the line, and she'd give the paper an F. That cured me of "very." Rules are made to be broken, and they're subjective, and there's (surely??) a reason "very" is in the language. But I don't have any use for it, and I haven't missed it.

Yep. I'm picking up my writing again after a long, long halt. And I'll never commit a write-and-post crime against my readers again. I am Perp #1 in this regard, and I'm determined to Change My Ways. It's my goal never to have readers wait more than a week or two from now on.

Thanks for the birthday greetings, guys!

Happy Birthday, James, and thanks for your ongoing presence here!

Thanks for the kind words about Crosscurrents...but it really wasn't my intent to leave the ending of the story inconclusive. I just didn't want to beat the reader over the head with it. Go back and read it another time. :-) As far as any other writing is concerned, check out the Interview Cia did with me for this month's Signature Author focus at http://www.gayauthors.org/forums/blog/258/entry-15595-author-interview-adam-phillips/ And thanks for reading!

There are books that are now among my favorites whose first two chapters I didn't like. Don't let that make the decision regarding how to write. Write the story for you, not in anticipation of what your audience might like. I guarantee that'll make your story stronger too.

Freakin' With Trust. Dammit. I want the rest of that story!!! Lol

Lots on on-point posts here. As a guy who took a decade to write and post a story, I feel grateful that I hung onto the readers I did. On the one hand, since (s)he's sharing free reading material, an author doesn't "owe" anybody timeliness, or even a story's completion. On the other, there is an at-least implied covenant between writer and reader. If the writer has, in effect, solicited the reading attention of a reading public by offering a story, I think there are some implicit promises made to said reading public. One of those promises is a conclusion to the story. Another is reasonable timeliness. With Crosscurrents, I would write and post. Write and post. Write and post. It wasn't a good decade for me to be trying to write regularly, though, and so it took as long as it took. These days I'll be producing a lot more, and a lot faster...but I've decided I'm not going to post a single paragraph until I've finished at least 80% of the story. Maybe 85%. My first experience with this sort of frustration as a reader came many years ago when I was reading a delightful and erotic novel at Nifty called Vermont Summer. I got to the end of the extant chapters, and then... Nothing. Ever again. That's a distinctive kind of disappointment, and the level of frustration a reader has in such a situation is directly proportional to the quality of the story. I won't do that to my readers yet another time. Thanks for staying with me as readers, all you who did.

Thanks for your thoughts on this and your suggestions. I need to go back and take care of this in my work.

I've told this story before, but there was a period while I was writing my only-completed-so-far novel Crosscurrents where the writing just hit a wall. Every word felt like an iron weight, and it was dull and slow and had no life. It wasn't that I couldn't think of what to write; it was that I felt the writing had no life in it, no blood going to it. I mentioned this to a fellow writer, and he said, "Write something else. Write anything else. That'll fix it." So I did. I sat down and started a short story, and the words came zipping off my fingers, easily and rapidly...and it was good. Somehow the experience of finding my "writing groove" again helped me go back to Crosscurrents with that newfound creativity and life, and I was on my way once again. (The end result is that I left that story hanging, and now I have to finish it; it's sitting there at my page, waiting for me to finish it. It's called Brushfire.) Your mileage may vary...but it could be that the story and the burden of telling it are weighing you down. If you just turn away from it for a while and write something else, your muse may come back to life.