I'm Normally Perfect (re-upload)

Introduction (important!)

I'm Normally Perfect was my first serious attempt at writing a novel. I had been writing plays, poetry, sexy vignettes and other things for years, but I finally had a full plot idea for a years-long relationship between a historically heterosexual woman-a professor at Oxford-who eventually finds herself in love with a much younger woman.

The first draft of the piece was 2,400 pages long, by the time it was at the draft you'll read I had it down to a slight 1,914 doorstop. It suffers from some First Novel Problems that I do not have the time, energy or interest in fixing, but it's still an entirely decent, worthwhile piece of writing. Especially for people who never get to see the sort of relationships they (we) are interested in.

This was written when I was in my early-to-mid twenties, which was twelve to fourteen years ago. I'll be re-reading it for the first time in over a decade as I post each chapter for formatting (and heavily restraining myself from editing, I'm sure).

This is also not erotica. While there are sexy scenes between the ladies it's some time into the story before they get to that point and those scenes aren't graphic. Though I do now recall a sex toy arriving at some point far down the line. Oh lord, what did I write.

There is a rape scene many hundred pages in. I will put a trigger warning in prior to that chapter.

That's all I can really think of now, having not yet re-read any of it. I'm excited to share it with the world and other young ladies who appreciate an older woman and I look forward to feedback.

This story begins in the early-to-mid-nineties. So, people don't have mobile phones and the internet is not nearly as ubiquitous as it is now or would even be five years later.

Victoria

14 September 2017

An addendum, after many...many...many...responses, I need to clarify some things about the protagonist. Cate is an undiagnosed autistic person with (also undiagnosed) ADHD--because that's what I was at the time and I was writing about my own experience of the world.

A common experience of people with these disabilities is high anxiety and, therefore something now called maladaptive daydreaming. Cate wouldn't have called it that because it didn't even have a name at the time, it was just super-intense, living in your own mind to cope with the stress of being in a world that was confusing and impossible. You really only see this in the first 3-4 chapters. She's not dangerous or a stalker. She's coping with trauma.

Finally, this story isn't typical of the platform. It's important to see what the protagonist's life was like before meeting her crush so you can see her development. The point of the story was to work out how a large age-gap relationship would realistically develop over years--it's not a fantasy story in that particular way.

V. 22 April 2021