The Apocrypha

Writing To Match Your Own Freak

Hello beauties! I hope you’re keeping well here at the last gasp of the year. I’ve been away from this newsletter for a while doing back-to-back developmental revisions on ASCENSION (Summoner’s Circle Book 2) and then on SAVAGE BLOOMS, my 2025 erotic fantasy romance, and the end is in sight! But I couldn’t let another day pass without bringing you into the wisdom that had been powering the engine of my career this year: writing to match your own freak.

Credit Where Credit Is Due

A disclaimer right at the top: A lot of what I’m going to share in this essay was influenced by Dr. Jennifer Lynn Barnes’ classic lecture Writing For Your Id, which used to be available for purchase on the RWA website, but has recently been taken down. I won’t be rehashing the finer points of Dr. Barnes’ research here, as she absolutely deserves to get paid for her work and for people to engage with it directly, through her, but here’s the part of the lecture that resonated with me most: The Id List.

The principle of the Id List is simple: keep a running lists of the tropes and twists and story details that delight your lizard brain, whether it’s masquerade balls or knife to the throat or sibling banter, whatever lights your fire! That list is there for you to reach for shamelessly, to fill your work with all the elements that delight you, and the combine them in new and interesting ways. I always make sure my books are peppers with moments that scratch my id as little treats to write towards, which I’ve discussed when I’ve chatted about what it means to write towards joy.

The Id List is the foundation of everything else I’m going to say here, and it’s really, really fun to make and maintain, so if you’ve never given it a try, pull up a word doc or get out a journal! Tap into the deep well of your subconscious mind and jot down everything that lights you up, no matter how trivial or silly it may feel.

Communing With Your Inner Freak

Who among us is a freak? Well, all of us — if we can rise to the challenge of being shamelessly honest about the weirdo cravings of our bizarre little brains.

I’m a firm believer that whatever story element you feel like is “too much” (too horny, too nasty, too tender) is actually precisely the element you should put into the book. I’m not talking about an element you think won’t serve the narrative or will hurt your pacing or tone. I’m talking elements you think will expose too much of yourself, go to too deep of an emotional place, invite too much speculation from the faceless mob of your audience, or just, well, make you feel too much like a freak.

Newsflash baby: we’re all freaks! And human love it when we realize the characters in our favorite book is a freak like us, or that the author themselves might actually be a little freaky, not to mention daring and confident enough to show it. Honestly…that’s hot.

When I first published my sapphic Snow Queen retelling ROBBERGIRL in 2019, I was scared to the point of being sick to my stomach about publishing an f/f romance. I was healing from a lot of conservative Christian programming that made me feel like if I published a lesbian romance novel, I might actually die. But taking that freaky leap of faith helped me connect with other sapphic authors, and find some of the my earliest and most dedicated readers, and to lay the foundation for a career writing queer romance. Since then, I have talked myself into everything from knifeplay blood orgies and alarmingly uneven student-professor dynamics to heartfelt conversations about feelings and boundaries so saccharine I was afraid of giving myself cavities. Every time, that was the right choice. Right now I’m hyping myself up to put a metric ton of psuedoincest into SAVAGE BLOOMS (don’t call the cops 🔪), which will also probably be the right choice for this book. We won’t know until it’s out, but even then, at least I kept my own freaky promise to myself.