Writing Update: 21-03-25

Change: +5, 807

Year to Date: 56,379

A lengthy update this week, apologies!

This week I started a new short stort, working title Who Made the Lamb. I sketched it out over the weekend and started writing on Tuesday, and the first 3,500 words came out in a rush. The inspiration was exhilarating and I thoroughly enjoyed the writing. The initial idea emerged from a session with ChatGPt. I’ve got a OneNote file filled with ideas, but this was my first attempt at writing short fiction in a long time; I didn’t want to squander a good idea on poor writing.

I led with the following prompt:

“Readers completed a poll and the top three topics for the story were: "Tricked or Secretly Forced", "Crossdressing" and "Deals, Bets or Dare". I'm aiming at a story about 5,000 words in length.”

ChatGPT generated five ideas, all fairly generic stuff, and I chose the following:

2. The Internship

A college student desperate for a prestigious internship applies under a gender-neutral name. When the CEO assumes he's a woman and hires "her" for a female mentorship program, he panics—until his best friend dares him to keep up the ruse for the full summer. Between office politics, growing attraction to his boss, and the ever-present risk of exposure, he begins to wonder if he really wants to go back…”

I had it generate some more ideas first, then prompted it to develop the original concept a little further: “Give me another one, with more focus on unwillingly going along with it. Maybe after the first day at work, he visits a flatshare in disguise and gets stuck that way, too?”

At which point, it generated the following:

Title: Double Life

Premise:
Fresh out of university and struggling to find work in London, 22-year-old Ryan finally lands an internship at a prestigious law firm. But there's a catch—his best friend, playing a joke, "adjusted" his CV and application to present him as a woman. When HR calls to offer him the position, they refer to him as "Rachel." Panicked but desperate for the opportunity, Ryan shows up on his first day in a borrowed outfit, fully intending to correct the mistake.

Except… nobody seems confused. His new boss, a stern but charismatic lawyer, welcomes him as the firm's newest "diversity hire." HR seems pleased with his professional appearance. His new colleagues accept him without question. Before he can explain, he's sitting in orientation, wearing heels, being handed paperwork with "Miss Rachel Carter" printed across the top.

The Flatshare Twist:
After surviving his first nerve-wracking day, Ryan—still in disguise—heads to a flatshare viewing he scheduled earlier. The group is looking for a female roommate, and, to his horror, his friend submitted his application under "Rachel" as well. The other tenants, thrilled to have found a perfect match, practically beg him to move in. Exhausted, flustered, and not wanting to argue in public, he stammers out a yes, planning to fix everything later.

But one night turns into a week. His boss is warming up to him, his flatmates adore him, and with every passing day, it becomes harder to reveal the truth. Worse still, his attractive, annoyingly perceptive mentor at the firm is showing an increasing interest in "Rachel"—and might be onto his secret.

… there was little more after that, but by this point we’d arrived at a core concept I thought might be fun to explore, even though it had clearly disregarded the 5,000 word guardrail. I gave it a final prompt: “How about if the manipulator in the background was his older sister? She helped him get the job, secretly to avoid hurting his pride, but also to get him for some of his homophobic or misogynistic views,” to which the overly-enthusiastic language model responded: “That’s a fantastic twist! Making the older sister the mastermind adds depth—her motivations are layered with both care and a desire to teach him a lesson.”

At this point, I had a story concept. I sketched out the main characters but when I went to start writing, I drew a blank. I couldn’t find a way ‘in’ to the story. ChatGPT was happy to generate a full outline, with story beats and everything, but I didn’t want that, especially as it all felt very rote. At the same time, what could I bring to the story to make it worth writing? I didn’t want to revisit topics I’d already covered in Constant; nor did I want to rehash common tropes.

The breakthrough for me came from an utterly unexpected place: a poem, called Not Yet My Mother by British poet Owen Sheers. It begins:

“yesterday I found a photo

of you at seventeen,

holding a horse and smiling,

not yet my mother.”

The photo became my way in, and now it wasn’t just a story about being tricked into crossdressing for a job but also a story about a brother and sister’s relationship with each other, and the shadow of their deceased father. From that, the tension between the characters developed naturally: the father was a dominant figure at home, who seemed to favour the son; home life was traditional, conservative and patriarchal. The sister left at nineteen, keen to escape the oppression of her household. The son enjoyed the benefits of this upbringing, but with his father recently dead now feels adrift. The siblings love each other, but there’s all this resentment to resolve.

Anyway, that brought me to the opening of the story, and from there the rest flowed naturally. I decided to set the story in London, because I wanted this to take place in a big city, both for the job opportunities but also the anonymity a population of millions offers. Also, I wanted to try my hand at writing something set in a specific, real location, as opposed the purposeful vagueness of Constant’s “The City”. Background details popped up as needed: aiming for a certain level of “realism,” I hinted at previous cross-dressing experiences so that the current effort felt a touch more believable and also introduced the ambiguity as to whether this is all something the protagonist really wants but can’t admit or accept because of his upbringing.

The first part—up to the point where he is offered and is forced to accept the job—is pretty much done, at least as a first draft. I’ve really enjoyed writing it, though the initial pace has slowed. One thing I’ve learned this week is that I really don’t have a clue what I’m doing when it comes to writing short fiction. I keep trying to lean into the ‘long’ write and have to drag myself back and rewrite and delete to trim back the length. I definitely need more practice, and need to teach myself to be more concise.

In any case, I’ll either tackle the next part of the story next week, bringing it up to the point where the protagonist moves into a flat share with a group of women, forcing him to live his disguise nearly 24-7; or I’ll go back to Constant.

I’m also starting to put together a little ramble on my take as to how the genre has shifted and the current state of stuff posted to FM, but that might take a bit of time to write.

Oh, and finally, a little shout-out to a fan. Under the name Victoriadaisylicious on Instagram, they’ve created a lot of AI-generated Constant-inspired fanart. I posted some of this last August, when I polled members on their view of AI art. Anyway, they really like Cindy and you can check out their stuff on Instagram under their name. (I originally had a direct link here, but I don't think Patreon liked that.) I quite like the new graphic-novel style they’re exploring. For now though, my Patreon remains an AI art-free zone, at least until the industry finds a more ethical approach to scraping artists’ work from the ‘net. I appreciate it’s a losing battle.

Next Week:

Monday: the next part of Constant, Book 5, for all paying members

Wednesday: a sneak peek at Who Made the Lamb

Thursday: hopefully, the completed first draft of Who Made the Lamb