How Bound Came About (Guest Post by Chinggay Labrador)

How Bound Came About 
Chinggay Labrador

I'd been suffering from a too-long bout with writer's block—the last work of fiction I did was in 2012 and has remained unpublished and unreleased. When I came across Mina's post on #buqosteamyreads, I decided to take the challenge and try my hand at fiction again. My previous works have all been PG-13, so I knew I would have to take a leap of faith to work in a genre that is unsettling for me! (I don't even read romance books!)

I tried to come up with a list of ideas, but it proved really difficult for me, even when Mina assigned us specific tropes to work with. The deadline neared and all I had with me were about three half-started stories that I was nowhere near happy with. I told a good friend of mine about how much of a fail my steamy writing challenge ended up, and she told me she'd find a way to help kick me out of my writer's block for good.

My friend, who works as an artist, decided to pull me and another friend for a rope-tying session. She joked that if anyone needed steamy-inspiration, there would be no better way than to jump into some risqué Japanese art. The tutorial turned out to be fun, interesting (to say the least) and we weren't even halfway through learning how to tie ropes on each other before the idea for Bound finally came to me. (Success!)

Funnily enough, my short story wasn't exactly conventionally steamy—but it at least was "adult" enough to get into the NAQR2 anthology. After being so used to writing long books, the short story format piqued my interest because it forced me to stay concise and stick to only the details that really mattered to the whole.

NAQR2 cover by Martina Bautista

I've been on a writing roll since Bound and I'm really grateful for the opportunity to be part of All This Wanting—not only because I know I'm in good company, but because it stoked my creative process again. I can't wait for our next collaboration to come out (soon!) and for the new stories that'll come up (and who knows—maybe more surprising, art adventures too! Haha!).

Read "Bound" by getting All This Wanting on buqo (http://bit.ly/ATWbuqo)