Inspiration strikes and I wrote a quick story called Jersey Girls

You can find the story at fictionmania at Jersey Girls or in the link in the margin.

This story was definitely a spur of the moment.  On Saturday afternoon I was cleaning the house wearing a shirt, a pair of shorts, a wig, a pair of black 3 inch heels, a bra, and my breastforms wearing clearcoat nail polish and dark lipstick.  One thing I like about this outfit is it is easy to transition to a more normal look if someone comes to the door (all I really do is take off the wig and high heels as my shirt is loose fitting and the lipstick is close enough to my own lip color that it is hard to notice - the key is I know it's there).

It's hard to explain the moment when inspiration hits and I'm not exactly sure of how it works.  On Saturday I think it was the combination of wig, breastforms, and shoes that conspired to a genesis thought of 'woman gets guy to wear a wig to transform his hair, then high heels which transform his legs'.  The trope is common in many TG stories as stories are boring without some sort of confict and changing someone against their will is a common theme in many of these stories.  I have struggled writing a story like this as I think I'm too nice so all of mine were about men that wanted to change.  That's why I made the man as despicable as I could imagine with an overwhelming sense of superiority that made his eventual comeuppance easier to write.

I started writing about 1pm on Saturday and before I knew it, the sun was setting on a good 6+ hours of writing.  Father's Day was Sunday and I missed writing it though my brain was churning all day filling in the gaps and fleshing out the story.  On Monday I started writing about 9am and didn't stop until I was finished around 4pm.  The final word length was a little over 5000 words so I was able to write around 300-400 words per hour.

That's fast for me and I suspect fast for most people.  Keep in mind that this time includes editing it for about 2-3 hours though it is hard to judge what part of the process is writing, what part is editing, and what part of re-writing.  I've hesitated to re-read it because I felt the story came together nice though once again I'm not happy with the ending.  It felt tight on my 4th read through though I know I should have set it to the side for a few days for a final re-edit as it is too easy to fall in love with your story as written and a day later I've already found a few holes in the universe I created that I wish I'd tightened.

I don't want to give away too many secrets before the spoiler section but the story started as one where the clothes were changing the man to an entirely different mechanism I like better.  I hope people like it though I suspect I'm going to always wish I'd taken more time.  The problem was this story burst out of me and I felt like I needed to publish it ASAP.  I can't explain why.

I am anxious to see the reception and seeing as it is only 5000 words it will most likely get a lot more page views and while I know I could have improved it with another 10 hours of work I think its still a pretty tale.

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Spoilers:  At the end of the story I really think I messed up by not being clear why the main character will enter a life of prostitution.  I'm also not sure if I made it clear that the woman couldn't do anything she wanted could only use her powers when someone wished for something.  My original intent was that the main characters memories were going to be wiped (s)he'd think she was born to a life of prostitution.  This path seemed to go against the principles that the 'genie' claimed to follow and did little to punish the man as he needed his memories to truly be sorry.  Identity death punishes the innocent so I changed it near the end of my writing process.  This was not a minor change as there are about 5 storylines coming together and a change like this meant changing the wording throughout the story and I hope I didn't miss anything.

I did think about writing a prologue with the (wo)man working the street but everything felt off.  The fact that she didn't have any memories made it difficult and it felt mean to write something about a woman in a desperate situation.

• My first thought was of her smoking a cigarette with needle marks in her arms as she watched the news crawl that the police were presuming that the man was dead before she went out to the streets.  
• I didn't explore the idea of a prologue after I gave the man his memories and that opens up a few more possibilities and makes it easier to be mean.  I would have written it with his sense of superiority as he complains in his mind that he's better than the other women and the fact that the boss is only sleeping with him is proof (similar thoughts the woman had that he killed).  The last shot would be him going out to the street bruised and haggard with track marks on his arms wondering if the woman was ever going to keep her promise and offer him a way out of this life.  In hindsight I'm wishing I had explored this and might for my private copy (I don't like to resubmit to fictionmania as they discourage the practice).