I've an early draft story with a guy whose girlfriend is frustrated that he won't talk about their relationship. He doesn't want to lose her, so he vents to the female work colleague who he tends to unload with. She sends him a recommendation for a psychologist. He doesn't really believe in shrinks, but he doesn't want to lose his girlfriend, so there he goes.

I got the first session finished a couple of days ago. My character surprised me, first by having an anger outburst in the session, then by asking for a second appointment earlier than the one week later that the psychologist suggested. Then today it hit me - the colleague who gave him the recommendation, the woman I'd considered a throwaway plot moving device - she wasn't going to go away. I think she's Chekov's gun.

Quote by Chet_Morton

Casual prostitution in small-town New England, no big deal. (Update: this takes place in 1988, if you’re thinking twenty bucks is pretty cheap.)

Mr. Lamarr, you use your tongue prettier than a twenty dollar whore!

My drafts usually start with a short scene, as if I were a voyeur watching and listening. Then I hit the hard part - what happened before that scene? What do the people in it do next? I hear you about awkward.

But 1272 words last night? Way to go!

Quote by KimmiBeGood

Yup, I’m real good at starting stuff. It’s the finishing that’s the problem. 🙄

God don't i know how THAT works!

thanks, that clears matters up nicely.

I see that each of my stories has a score. Just over half of my stories have a score lower than 10. Is it documented anywhere how this score gets generated? I'm trying to determine if I should care about this metric.

Give it time. I've discovered the non-sexual segments of my current story are much more challenging to write.

Quote by rdodger
I have a half-dozen stories in much less complete status, there's no reason to mention those.

And I do need to submit Stacey's Mom to Lush so it can be seen and commented on.

Okay. Submitted Stacey's Mom. Let's see what I missed in my three editing passes.

Hmm, works in progress, I hope this doesn't jinx me away from being able to complete them this year.

Executive Re-Placement

A man gets laid off by surprise short of retirement; his wife pulls strings to get him another job, but the strings wind up entangling her husband in ways she wouldn't have wanted. [Just starting to write where the new job starts; some fetish expected]

Jessie's Girls

A young man (yes, 18+) wet behind the ears learns a lot about girls and himself when starting college, then leaves college to find out who he really is when on his own, and eventually comes full circle, [Still writing the in-college timeframe]

Breaking Balls

A mind control story; a techie for a hardware/software company is at a trade show when a strange woman captures his attention. His career takes unexpected turns, and that woman keeps showing up. [Finished two segments, have a plan for the next one, no particular idea what conclusion is approaching]

My Cousin's Housekeeper

Jake lost his job, his girlfriend, and his pet fish. Fortunately he located a cousin who would give him a place to crash while he looked for work. But his cousin doesn't seem to want to leave the house, and his cousin's housekeeper seems to be running things in the house. [not sure whether this will be mc or just power imbalance, there's something going on between the cousin and his housekeeper, but neither the narrator nor my brain knows what it is yet,]

I have a half-dozen stories in much less complete status, there's no reason to mention those.

And I do need to submit Stacey's Mom to Lush so it can be seen and commented on.

Quote by rdodger

My first writing name was "Major Havoc". But I decided after two stories that it was too juvenile a name, so I switched to Rajah Dodger and I've used that ever since. I think when I started writing I initially used whatever my CB radio handle was at the time, but I was concerned about overlap with that usage effectively outing me as a smut writer. So that's why I started officially with Major Havoc then switched to Rajah Dodger.

On reflection, I'm pretty sure my CB handle was "Music Man". On my big after-college road trip dropping off resumes, I must have chatted with a dozen other "Music Man" handles. So I retired it after that.

I ran Toad's Tongue through Grammarly which caught many of the things that the Lush moderators would have chastised me for. I'd recommend you split the story into either two or three pieces. I made it two 5K chunks because there was a scene break conveniently near that point. There are some Lush rules for stories (paragraphing, dialogue, etcetera) - I can never remember where they are so I scraped them and saved a document on my hard drive so I can check.

Evo, if you're still looking, my workload has finally dropped to the point where i can be active here again.

Are you looking for another set of eyes currently?

Thank you for the clarification - and Happy New Year!

Thanks to all. I'm partitioning into a Part 1 and Part 2, which means there will be a time gap between the parts showing up. Lush isn't approving stories again until after January 3 so the moderators will have to work through a backed-up queue before Part 1 shows up and probably still a busy queue before I can submit and they can review Part 2.

My next story is coming in at 10,000 words. Story action takes place over a couple of weeks. Logically it's 12 segments varying between 800 and 1200 words; I can group those reasonably into four chapters of roughly 2500 words each.

What is the preference of Lush management? What would be the preference of most readers?

I actually must correct myself. I decided to try grammarly on a 10,000-word story that I've been writing. When I went to create an account on the website, it turns out that I already had one - from five years ago when I wrote the first few paragraphs of this story. I'd completely forgotten about that. And from all the things Grammarly flagged this time through, I obviously didn't learn much from it.

Set the story aside, work on something else for a while. Or, if you're writing in a linear mode, try jumping ahead to a future action or scene that you have in mind, and see if that draws the earlier characters into the right direction. I currently have a 5000-word draft that needs some sex punched up and has two draggy middle sections, which I can't get myself reconnected with enough to deal with those. I also have a 3400-word where I tried to do too many things (age-difference seduction, mind control for starters) and while I know roughly what parts to rip out, I can't get myself to do it yet. Then I've got a 3800 word draft which is solid for about 2800 words then breaks into concepts and mini-scenes that I haven't been able to flesh into a flow.

So I went to my slush pile - a file of about 50 items ranging from six-line ideas to thousand word chunks. And as luck would have it, a story plotted loosely to have eight sections that I hit a wall after the third (five years ago I hit that wall), triggered something in my head and I got a few lines then a few more good writing rush and within a month got all the way to a proper end. So you never really know what draft or fragment may flip a switch and turn on the words.

Back in the day, there was "Ruthie's Club", and after that the Fish Tank. You joined up, then you critiqued drafts already posted by others, then you qualified to put up your own draft and get feedback. It was a great place, but Desdmona eventually shut down the website maybe ten years ago. I don't know of a similar place since then.

Quote by kiteares

I would also recommend using Grammarly, but use the import/export function (rather than copy and paste) to retain the formatting.

I just used the Grammarly website for the first time; I copied and pasted out of it back into Word and didn't lose the line spaces between paragraphs or the 5-character first line indents. But I didn't see the import and export functions, so I'll have to look for those the next time I try Grammarly.

Well, I'm waiting on a current story to be reviewed so I can submit this: I just recently completed a story a little over 10,000 words. It's the longest story I've ever written. I started it in 2020 so it's taken me a bit under 5 years to write. But there's an asterisk on that - I've been in something of a writing blockage since the start of 2021, and it only recently cracked open enough for this story to get completed. So we'll see if it gets through the review process.

My first writing name was "Major Havoc". But I decided after two stories that it was too juvenile a name, so I switched to Rajah Dodger and I've used that ever since. I think when I started writing I initially used whatever my CB radio handle was at the time, but I was concerned about overlap with that usage effectively outing me as a smut writer. So that's why I started officially with Major Havoc then switched to Rajah Dodger.

My last approved story was in July 2024 and there are two later submissions that are flagged with "you already have submitted a story". Is there a way to see which story is causing the backlog?

I'm not sure that I have a favorite or preferred length when reading. That said, I do hold off reading something labeled as first chapter if there are standalone stories with an equally grabbing title or summary.

I finally found it. I don't have the three-line "hamburger" menu, but the stories/activity thing is under the big banner.

I tried to upload a screen shot, there's no preview available so I'll see if it shows when I submit this.

Quote by MollyDoll

Hello. Go to LushStories in the upper right-hand corner. There you will see Stories and Activity. Click Activity. Once there you will see Post a status...

Hope this helps!

Huh. I don't have an "Activity" option.

What I see are:

Profile

Stories

Media

Friends

Interactions

Reading Queue

Favorite Stories

Matches

Get Verified

Report Bug

Settings

Logout

Maybe the "Activity" is only offered to paying members. Thanks for showing me where to look.

How do I update my status? It looks kind of like a "latest personal comment".

Here's the deal. If the UFO/UAP/whatever things are physical and real, then we're totally screwed. Congresscritters can wail about national security implications but we can't defend ourselves against something that (a) we can't come anywhere near replicating, and (b) breaks our understanding of the laws of physics.

So basically, this is all sideshow. The government can have rotting alien biologic material all they want, it won't tell them anything meaningful. Their best bet would bring in a few hard science-fiction writers. The only thing I agree with is not flooding the media with details of all the unclassifiable stuff they've got.