Thread by @KrystleMatar, I don't know why I'm having such a hard time revising this [...]

I don't know why I'm having such a hard time revising this sex scene. (I know no one actually asked, but I'm talking about it anyway.)

Maybe it's because I've taken a few shots to the confidence lately, or maybe it's just the nature of who is in this scene. 1/?

I like the scene. Every time I revise it, it gets better. There's so much tension and anger in it, and so much character growth. It's steamy and aggressive and important for the arcs of both people involved.

And yet I STILL question if it belongs, every time I work on it. 2/?

"If you're worried about it, does that mean you're right? Trust your instincts."

Right?

Normally I'd agree, but this time, I dunno. Because I do love it so much. It's not a darling, I don't think. It has really important aspects. 3/?

You see, I made a deal with myself about halfway through revisions of Brightwash. If I was going to build my career on this book, I should write it the way I want. Some people don't like sex in their fantasy, but I do and I have to read the thing a million times to publish. 4/?

I turned up the intensity of the sex scenes. I made sure they were so important to the arcs that I wouldn't be a chicken and cut them out. There is so much said in the way Tashué interacts with his partners that those scenes HAD to stay to tell the story fully and completely. 5/?

But... the other decision I made, about Tashué being bisexual, about having these characters live and breathe in the fullest extent of themselves, about letting them represent me and my writing history fully and completely, instead of having a separate head canon... 6/?

...that decision came LAST MINUTE. Brightwash was days away from being shipped to my wonderful editor, and I was all in knots over will-I-won't-I and I was SCARED. I was scared it wouldn't be enough, I was scared it would be too much. But I just wanted my book to be mine. 7/?

So I went for it. He got a kiss on the page, and his relationship with Ishmael is canon. He's officially queer and I'm liberated, right?

Not really?

Because I have this sex scene now. This one that I love and that I wonder if it belongs. 8/?

The reason I haven't cut it yet, even though it scares me, is because instead of a man and a woman, the scene has two men. (No, Tashué is not one of them.) And I ask myself, if one of these characters was a woman, would I flinch so hard? 9/?

Probably not. I have sex on the page with two other characters. Kaz & her partner aren't exactly romantic either, it's more a situation of convenience in a trying situation. So it's not the last of romance that bugs me, it's that it's Ishmael and another man. 10/?

And so I go spinning off into those brain weasels that nibble on the confidence.

What will readers think?

Will I alienate people who liked the first book?

But then there's that advice that I give so easily to other writers when they're doubting themselves: 11/?

"Write the book of your heart and soul and you will find your audience."

Sounds so great, but to write the book of my heart and soul I have to nail that heart and soul to the pages of this book and bleed everywhere and it's SCARY. 12/?

And I WANT to do it, I want to bleed my very identity into these books because this is why I write. I started doing it to process myself and who I am. To offer people these books that are a reflection of me and know that they feel seen too is MAGIC. 13/?

But magic is still scary. I feel like Legacy of Brick & Bone is trying to run and be amazing, but I only JUST came to the decision of writing stuff like this visibly instead of keeping it hidden in my notebooks and I'm tripping and fumbling, trying to keep up. 14/?

So anyway, here I am on Twitter, making long threads about revising a scene, instead of actually revising it. Because I know this scene isn't going to work for everyone. Ishmael is A LOT. But he earned it, you know? There's a reason for this to happen the way it does. 15/?

The thing is, no book can please everyone. There's nothing objective about it, because we're all different and we see the world through our own experience, and that's okay! That's the beauty of it! For every book, an audience; for every audience, a book. 16/?

So here I go, revising my sex scene again, obsessively trying to make it perfect so I can convince my brain weasels to shut the fuck up about it. Weasels wouldn't be weaselling if this scene was heterosexual. So even though I have fears and doubts, it's staying. 17/?

Because I have to write the books of my heart and soul. To do anything else is selling myself short. It means I have to accept that I might lose readers who just weren't ready for that, and that's okay. Bless you all for taking a chance on me in the first place. 18/?

Tl;dr: Ishmael be raunchy and YIKES DUDE but also, he earned it; I decided that this was the way I was going to build my career, but it's scary being this vulnerable; I'm so grateful to be in the position to even be making this choice because it means I'm finally published. /end

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