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Year: 2013

Are You a Plotter or a Pantser?

by | September 23, 2013 | | 2 Comments

By Lucy Felthouse

Are you a plotter or a pantser? First, I’d better explain what that means for people that may not know. Basically, it’s whether you plot something when you’re writing, or just fly by the seat of your pants/make it up as you go along. I’m interested in the answers various writers have to give on this topic, which is why I thought I’d write about it.

So, personally, I’m both. I used to be a total and utter pantser, but the longer I’ve been writing, and the longer works I’ve been writing, the more I’ve plotted. I plotted my first novella, then made my second one up as I went along. I plotted my first novel, then the one I co-authored with Lily Harlem we made up as we went along. For the most part, it depends on the project. I plotted my first novella and novel because it was a big jump for me to go from short stories to longer stuff, so I needed to make sure I had enough material for the length of the story, and I also wanted to ensure things didn’t get boring in the middle, and that the thing had a beginning, a middle and an end. Now I just use a mixture of both, depending on what feels right.

And here’s what some other writers had to say…

K D Grace

I’m a plotanster. I never start a novel without a working blurb and a chapter by chapter synopsis. It usually takes me several days to come up with a blurb and chapter by chapter that I feel I can work from. That few days usually involve a lot of walking in the countryside and talking out loud to myself and alarmed glances from the people I meet en route. The blurb is only a short paragraph and the chapter by chapter is only a few sentences for each chapter. I’ve worked out roughly how many chapters, averaging 2500 words, I need for an 80K or a 100K novel and write the synopsis accordingly. It’s very loosely planned and very much subject to change.

That’s the plotter bit of my process. Once the actual writing begins, I’m happy to take detours and side trips all over the place, and I often end up on a very scenic route to the end of the novel. I leave lots of room for the muse to kick me in the arse and point me in a different direction. I think the blurb and the synopsis serve as a writer’s security blanket for me. Once I have those two things in hand, no matter how far I stray from the original plan, I KNOW there’s a novel in process, and I KNOW I’ll get to the end of it, even if the route’s not the one I started off on.

Kay Jaybee

I must hold my hands up to being a pantser.

I try to be a planner- I really do- I even go as far as to make nice neat chapter plans for all my novels each time I start one. Then, inevitably, the plot slowly begins to go out of the window as my characters take on lives of their own. I swear they look me square in the face and say, “Come off it Kay, we’d never do that. Let’s do this, it’s much more fun!” And off they go, dictating their own literary destiny, and recklessly flying by the seat of my pants!

I’d get cross with my imaginary protagonists, but so far this ‘not quite managing to hold onto the plot’ policy seems to be working for me.

So, what about you, folks? What works best for you?

*****

Lucy Felthouse is a very busy woman! She writes erotica and
erotic romance in a variety of subgenres and pairings, and has over seventy
publications to her name, with many more in the pipeline. These include Best
Bondage Erotica 2012, 2013 and 2014 and Best Women’s Erotica 2013. Another
string to her bow is editing, and she has edited and co-edited a number of
anthologies. She owns Erotica For All,
and is book editor for Cliterati. Find
out more at http://www.lucyfelthouse.co.uk.
Join her on Facebook
and Twitter, and subscribe to her
newsletter at: http://eepurl.com/gMQb9

The Perils of Perfectionism

by | September 21, 2013 | | 6 Comments

By Lisabet Sarai

“The good is the enemy of the
best.” Anonymous proverb

I’m sure most readers have encountered
the maxim above. The point? That it’s a mistake to be satisfied with
“good enough”. By exerting only the minimum effort needed
to fulfill the requirements of some task, you’re missing out on the
opportunity to produce something truly great.

Personally, I subscribe to this
philosophy―up to a point. I believe that when you commit yourself
to something, you should be willing to devote 100% of your effort to
meeting that commitment. That means not making excuses (except of
course in extreme situations like illness or family crises). It means
seriously applying yourself to the problem you’ve shouldered,
spending whatever time is realistically necessary to solving it.

In the so-called real world, I’m a
teacher (among other things). Nothing upsets me as much as a student
who’s happy just to “get by”. That sort of student is wasting
his own time as well as mine. (Please pardon my choice of pronoun. I
don’t mean to imply that this pattern is limited to males.) I don’t
know why he bothers. Sure, he may get a passing grade, but aside from
that, what will he have to show for the months he’s spent in my
class? I’d much rather put my own effort into a poor student who is
really trying to understand the material despite the difficulties
than a more talented individual who isn’t willing to work.

So I definitely think it’s important to
do one’s best―up to a point. At the same time, as an author, I’ve
seen many examples of the perils of perfectionism. I have writer friends who
have been working on the same novel for years, rereading, revising,
going through periodic crises of confidence about whether their book
is really worth publishing. It’s sad. I feel like shaking them.
“Stop already!”, I want to say. “Submit the darn thing! You
can’t publish your work unless you submit it!”

New and aspiring authors, pay
attention! You can’t publish your work unless you submit it. Which
means that at some point you have to stop polishing your prose and
say enough is enough.

The French playwright Voltaire is
credited with the reverse of the saying above: “The best is the
enemy of the good.” When it comes to writing, I think this
statement holds a good deal of truth. There’s no such thing as a
perfect story. If you’re like me, every time you re-read one of your
manuscripts you see some change that might improve it. Don’t give in
to the temptation. Decide ahead of time how many drafts you’re going
to do and stick to that decision. Otherwise, you’ll get bogged down
with one tale and never get a chance to write the others that are
clamoring for your creative attention.

One thing I’ve learned is that it’s not
worth agonizing over a single book. You have to submit it, let it go
and move on to your next. If I don’t like what an editor or publisher
has done with something I’ve written, I don’t get my knickers in a
twist. There are more stories where that came from, or at least I
hope there are. This attitude helps me deal with rejection, too.
Maybe I’ll find another home for a rejected tale. Maybe I won’t. In
any case, I need to move on.

Readers are hungry. You have to keep
them fed with a continuing stream of good material. Good, not
perfect.

Please don’t misunderstand me. I’m not
excusing sloppiness, poor grammar, spelling errors or wildly-veering
point of view. If you’re a professional writer, you have a
responsibility to learn your craft and apply it to the best of your
ability. The fact is, though, the more you write, the more you hone
your technical skills. If you get hung up revising one work to death,
you’re missing the opportunity to keep learning.

Compared to many authors I know, I do
relatively little editing. I rarely do more than two drafts. I do
have a tendency to edit as I write, reviewing and modifying material
from my last session before settling down to attack the day’s goals,
so my first draft is probably more highly polished than some
authors’. I’m also pretty good with the nuts and
bolts―grammar,spelling, punctuation and the like―so I can focus
on higher level issues like characterization, pacing and emotional
impact even during the initial pass.

Deadlines are a huge help, by the way.
If you’re new to the writing game, let me assure you: deadlines are
your friends! Once you’ve made a commitment to submit a work by a
particular date, you can pace yourself. You can make rational
decisions about how much editing is feasible. You’re not likely to be
caught in the perfectionist trap.

So now I’ll make a possibly
embarrassing admission. I just submitted a 17K story after producing
only a single draft. Am I being lazy? I don’t think so―and in any
case, I didn’t have a choice. I’m leaving in two days for a three
week foreign trip, and I promised the story by October. Plus I have
more deadlines stacked up when I return. It will simply have to be
good enough.

In any case, I’m pretty happy with it.
I’ve found that my best stories tend to be the ones that I write
quickly, the ones where inspiration carries me along. This tale is no
literary masterpiece, but it fits the call for submissions to a T.
And, after reading the blurb, the publisher has asked whether I’d be
willing to write a 60K novel based on the same characters.

I’m going to wait a while before I
commit to that deadline! 

Is Sexual Fantasy Hazardous to Your Health?

by | September 18, 2013 | | 6 Comments

Sexual fantasy is dangerous.

Or so you’d think if you look around at the way this common human indulgence is handled in the media. My first realization of the way sexual thoughts were treated as incendiary was the uproar over Jimmy Carter’s confession in Playboy:

“I’ve looked on many women with lust. I’ve committed adultery in my heart many times. God knows I will do this and forgives me.”

In retrospect, I’m not sure if the hubbub was just about Carter’s mental adultery or his rather chummy understanding with God to give the lustings a pass, but even as a freshman in high school, I sure remember the buzz. This was way back in 1976, but our attitude towards sex in the mind has hardly changed.  We’ve all read how internet porn is highly addictive, destroys real-life relationships and has created an upsurge in pedophilia (fears not born out by statistics), but even a happily married woman, as reported in Daniel Bergner’s What Do Women Want? can be faithless enough to fantasize about baseball star Derek Jeter while in bed with her spouse—proof indeed that all women are naturally polyamorous.

In her recent Kinkly column, “Fifty Shades of Abuse?” Rachel Kramer Bussel discusses a study published in the Journal of Women’s Health, “’Double Crap!’: Abuse and Harmed Identity in Fifty Shades of Grey” in which the authors studied the mega-bestseller for evidence of intimate partner violence and concluded that the novel “adds to a growing body of literature noting dangerous violence standards being perpetuated in popular culture.” Even friendly sexual self-help books, which nominally accept the healthy existence of sexual fantasy, abound with advice to cleanse the mind of any self-indulgent imaginings and be with your partner in the moment. It’s as if having sexual thoughts that aren’t explicitly about how much you spiritually love and honor your partner somehow taints the encounter with, well, something dirty like eroticism.

I’m willing to admit that an actual sex act could have serious consequences. Infidelity can stress or destroy a relationship. Power is often abused in human relationships whether sex is involved or not. And totally erasing your partner’s existence in bed probably indicates some intimacy problems that would best be addressed. But let’s remember that other kinds of fantasy itself can have negative consequences. The lottery, the diet industry, and pretty much every advertising campaign out there feed our fantasies about being effortlessly rich, thin and lovable while they slip their hot hands into our wallets.

But what’s so scary about merely thinking about sex?

The assumption seems to be that fantasies represent something we actually want to do and would in the blink of an eye if given the opportunity. Once we imagine, on a lazy Saturday afternoon, being intimately massaged by eight nubile members of the opposite sex all dressed in matching loincloths, we’ll jump up and start recruiting a merry band for the weekend’s pleasure. Maybe you’ve heard the story that all of the feed stores in Iowa sold out of rope after Fifty Shades hit the bestseller list–clear evidence of monkey read, monkey do.

Let’s just say I won’t believe it until I see the inventory statements.

It is perhaps worth pointing out that not all fantasies are treated so literally. If we experience an urge to eat a whole pan of brownies, but don’t, the guilt stops there.

In pondering the reasons why sexual fantasy is regarded as so dangerous to our souls, I remembered an observation in Michel Foucault’s The History of Sexuality, volume 1 concerning the evolution of confession in Catholic Europe. (As an ex-Catholic, this passage made an impression— the book is dense, but I do recommend the book for anyone interested in the topic of sex, language and power). By the 17th century, priests were urged to use indirect language when questioning the penitents about sex, even as the scope of the confession increased.

“According to the new pastoral, sex must not be named imprudently, but its aspects, its correlations, and its effects must be pursued down to their slenderest ramifications: a shadow in a daydream, an image too slowly dispelled, a badly exorcised complicity between the body’s mechanics and the mind’s complacency: everything had to be told. A twofold evolution tended to make the flesh into the root of all evil, shifting the most important moment of transgression from the act itself to the stirrings—so difficult to perceive and formulate—of desire.” (History of Sexuality: 1, 19-20).

All the major religions have figured out this trick—make a natural human experience sinful, and the believers will always be sinning and on their knees in need of forgiveness. And no doubt, the confessions of their more articulate congregation members provided a forbidden pleasure of its own to celibate priests. But where does that leave erotica writers, who create sexual fantasy for shameless public consumption? Are we hazardous to the mental and moral health of decent citizens everywhere?

My answer? Nah.

In fact, I’d argue that fantasy offers a healthy outlet of expression for desires and dilemmas that are otherwise repressed from ordinary discourse. Too many ostensibly responsible, educated people read fantasy like a road map when it’s usually more like a fable, a fiction that offers us a coded story of our deepest desires. And here I’m talking especially about the weird stuff that embarrasses us, the dark and “dangerous” fantasies. I’d also argue that the erotic appeal in Fifty Shades and Derek Jeter fantasies is the power more than the sex. While sexual attraction doubtless informs many of our interactions throughout the day, as human beings, power informs all of them. In the highly indirect language of fantasy, the pleasure in being ravaged by a powerful man is less about rape than the desired object’s own power of attraction in trumping his worldly might. Imagine—a pretty, naive college student can captivate one of the richest men in the world and make him focus all of his billionaire attention on the humblest details of her life. Fantasy of every kind delights in overturning certainties, violating taboos, weaving images of absurd abundance, relieving us of all obligations and restrictions. As much as we might wish, rarely does it come “true.” For most of us, the pleasure lies in watching the transgressions unfold in our heads.

I find it interesting that as the legal and social restrictions placed on sex acts are loosened, the attempts to control sexual thought seem to be increasing. Fifty Shades of Grey, whatever its flaws, opened up the world of erotica to millions of readers. In response we have an apparently serious scientific study that tells us a fantastical novel promotes delusions about the romance of BDSM that could harm female identity. Surely there are more effective ways to improve female self-esteem on a societal level. Studies showing the benefits of equal pay? More status for female-dominated professions? The benefits of treatment for both partners in actual cases of abuse?

And last but not least, don’t we all have enough trouble switching from the stresses of daily life to passion in bed with our partners without having to worry that a fleeting hankering for a sweaty baseball star is the equivalent of a full-fledged affair? Attention sex journalists and self-help gurus: leave my imagination alone!

On the other hand, if sexual fantasies are so powerful, well, my fellow ERWA writers, that means we can and are changing the world with our stories. That’s a power play we can all enjoy.

Vampire Lesbian Girl Scout Nymphos From Venus in Bondage

by | September 15, 2013 | | 8 Comments

Or:


“The Day Your Humble Servant hit the Big Time”

The old lady’s voice is buzzing in my ear giving me information I should be writing down.

The little cell phone beeps. Low battery.

It’s getting late and I’m pulled over to the side of the Raceway Gas station on the exit ramp for Gordon Highway near where I work and my heart is pounding.

Its Tuesday, March 5, 2013, 3:45 in the afternoon, rain is running down the window of the driver’s seat which I’m staring out of as the traffic whizzes by and something is seriously happening.

“Yeah . . . okay . . .” I nod my head vigorously, even though the voice on the other end of the cell phone can’t see me. “No kidding . . . shit – I mean – sorry! I mean wow. . . yeah. “

BEEP

I’m hearing something impossible this afternoon, something I absolutely never thought I’d hear in a million years.

“”Thursday. 7:30 . . . Is that. . . wait, no . . . Is that across from that little coffee shop? Yeah . . . I think I know. That’s on the hall to the auditorium, right? Okay. . . I was scared I was going to do the auditorium. I’m not . . . No, no wait, yeah but I . . .  yeah but . . . okay, but . . . well I like hearing you say that but. . .  I can’t fill an auditorium, lady, I don’t think so. . . uh huh . . . Thanks, but I really doubt that. . . .  uh uh . . .”

BEEP

“yeah . . . Well, that’s true. . . No, I’m really excited.  Anything I need to bring with me?  Yeah?  Okay, I can do that, definitely . . . whoa . . . Sure. . . I’ll be ready. Seven thirty. Okey-dokey.”

BEEP

“Looking forward to it. Okay, bye bye.”

BEEP

Excited, yeah.  Scared green is more like it.  This will be a debacle.  But still.

I get to read my shit.  Out loud.

The phone dies just as she hangs up. In the old days I would have considered that very spiritual to have the phone last just until she says goodbye. The will of God or something. The finger of fate.  Now I think of it as just batteries, held up maybe by interaction with air waves, or maybe Jungian synchronicity. Not so much god or angels or the Trumpet of Destiny calling my name.

Holy fuck.

I’m going to give a book reading at the Columbia Fucking County Library. The Jabez Auditorium.  Thursday. Seven thirty  and don’t be late.

Holy Moley.

This stuff just doesn’t happen to me. No way is this stuff supposed to happen to me ever. This is not life as I know it. I sit looking out the window for a long time, not thinking. Just breathing and watching the rain run down. I want to tell somebody – but wait a minute. They probably have me mixed up with somebody else, somebody good. We’re all gonna get burned, I just know it.  I need to keep this under wraps until it happens.

Holy fuck.

Me. A book reading.

How did the Columbia County Arts Board even find out I write stuff?

What if nobody shows up? I think the librarians will show up anyway. I think they have to or something. It must be them. It must be them, they’re always seeing me check out writing craft books and short story collections. I know who it is! Jesus – I know! It’s that librarian, the one with the tits and the British accent and the tight sweaters. I started showing off to her one afternoon when she was talking about local writers with me. Her tits got to me, I couldn’t stop myself.  I told her about meeting Dacre Stoker. I gave her my pen name and I’ll bet she looked it up. That’s what happened. She looked up my damn pen name. How many writers can there be in my little town? They were scrounging the very bottom of the barrel for just anybody to fill a slot  and sonuvabitch – that’s right where they found me.

Jesus H Christ on a tricycle.

I get to read my stuff – MY stuff! –  in front of people!  A couple of people at least.

Thank you god . . . thank you for every blessing.

Thursday night arrives and I shuffle in a side door and it’s raining again. There’s nobody milling around in the hallway. When Charlaine Harris was here, the hallway was packed to the walls and out to the sidewalk. Now I know for sure nobody’s going to show up for me, especially if it’s raining. I won’t be able to get a big enough crowd for a card game much less a book reading. As I come down the marble hallway, with my print outs in a plastic Kroger’s grocery bag – I’m such a class act – the British librarian with the dazzling chest and her signature tight sweater is there by the door to the auditorium watching for me.

” ‘ello!” she chirps up and smiles.

I remember from my street preaching days in Milwaukee, when I would stand on a plastic milk crate on a corner and get up a crowd. It’s not that hard. You look for that one face. That’s how you do it. You have to know your first sentence, and look for The Face. One friendly face and you sort of preach to that person. If Jugs here is in the crowd I’ll read to her until I get up to speed. That’s how I’ll do it.

Garce, you’re so full of shit. There’s nobody here. You’re going to speak from a podium like some pompous doofus to one person?  Really, real world, maybe there’ll be one more library worker, some hapless high school kid who can’t get out of it, and if I’m lucky there could be two, maybe three people tops sitting all in the back row of Jabez Auditorium, so that I have to ask them to sit up front or something, who came across my stuff somewhere, god knows how. We’ll all circle our chairs together for coffee and cookies and have a few laughs and go home.

Goddamn I’m nervous! Was it like this for Charlaine Harris? Is it like this for Ashley Lister when he reads his poetry in front of people?

She jiggles buoyantly alongside as she leads me to a glass door down the hall from the auditorium.  The Promised Land.

She opens the door and holds it for me. “After you.”

I go into the bright room and freeze in the doorway so suddenly her chest, which precedes her by a good six inches, crashes into my back.

The room is full. That’s not possible.

She turns towards me and I whisper to her “Who else is speaking tonight?”

“Just you.”

I shake my head, I can’t believe I heard her right. I should have brought a camera. Nobody is going to believe what I’m seeing without a picture. They need to see this. This is my time. This is my moment in the sun. Lisabet! I wish Lisabet could see me! There’s 20 rows of ten plush chairs. That makes 200 people sitting. And people standing against the wall. Where the hell did they get all these people?

I’m overcome and I can’t speak. My eyes water and I’m trying not to choke up. I look down at my pants to make sure this isn’t one of those goofy dreams where you show up to give a lecture and discover you’re naked.

Wait a minute.

Oh no. Oh hell no.

I know what’s going on now.  This is very bad.  Bad enough to make my life pass in front of my eyes.  And I stepped right into it.

These people, there’re not here to be nice to me. This is going to be some nutty fundo Christian group, some happy horseshit Baptist Bible Camp thing come here to lynch the pornographer, get the guy who writes naughty stories and hang the cringing little bastard high as a lesson to American youth.

I look at Double Dees for help but she looks truly happy for me and she’s blocking the doorway. As far as she’s concerned she shares my joy.

Okay.

I take a step towards the podium and the plastic grocery bag tips over and dumps my stuff all over the floor.

A young woman with an odd pale complexion jumps up and helps me gather my papers together in a pathetic wad, as if I’d dropped a baby on its head and there’re whispers and snickers. I bring my pile up to the podium which has this little desk light and a thin microphone. Who knew I’d need a microphone? Who knew there would be a crowd? Some of the printouts have gotten rainwater off the bag and the ink is running on my fingertips.

While people cough and wait, I wade frantically through the mess and gather up the kick off scene from Father Delmar’s diary that starts “The Dying Light”.  I should have stapled the shit.  Why didn’t I staple this shit . . . ?

“Good evening.” A soft feedback whine. “Thank you for coming here tonight. My name is C. Sanchez-Garcia. I’m a writer.  More or less.”

Applause. Oh my god. Oh my god. They like me.  They’re not here to lynch me.

I say some polite words, a couple of self deprecating jokes. The crowd is getting a little restless. Then I notice – there aren’t any men here. These are all women. Now I know I’m dreaming. It’s a lucid dream.

Hey –

If it’s a lucid dream I can screw with every woman in this room.

I know how to find out. I put my stuff down and raise my arms up and lift up on my toes. If it’s a lucid dream I can will myself to rise to the ceiling. Nothing happens. People are looking at me funny. I’m not naked and I can’t fly. Probably not a dream.. C’mon Garce, pull your shit together.

“How many of you here have read my stuff?”

Almost everybody’s hands go up.

Standing against the wall are some young ladies in prim looking green clothes. They’re the only women wearing skirts. Their skin has an odd pallor I can’t seem to place. Foreign students. One has a sort of Aunt Jemima checkered head scarf and the others have baseball caps. They raise their hands.

“Yes?” I point at one because I want to hear if she has an accent. I think they’re going to be from the Middle East.

“We read your book, the ‘Mortal Engines’ when we were at Girl Scout camp. The leader thought it was a car repair. We didn’t tell her it was a dirty book.’

Now that is rude. To hear it said right out loud like that. That’s what we’re going to talk about tonight. I won’t embarrass this girl with the funny accent, but I’m going to steer this thing towards some elevated conversation about the difference between cheap pornography and erotic literature. There is a difference.  I write respectable literature by golly.  They need to know that.

“I’m going to read a scene none of you will have read yet, it’s from a vampire novel in progress. This scene is from a chapter called “The Dying Light”. Ahem “I like writing with a fountain pen best. A fountain pen like this one suits me. . .’ I go on with that for a while. Then a couple of poems.

The rest of my stuff is a mess. The pages are out of order. I’ll do a question and answer now and wrap this up and shoot an email to Lisabet to celebrate my triumph. I want to get back to that dirty book question somehow. “We’ll take some questions now. Who wants to go first? First question?”

The librarian raises her arm and I gaze as her breasts shift and elevate heavenward. Now I know why romance writers like to use that stupid word “gaze”. Brother, I am gazing. “Yes?”

“Where do you get your ideas from?”

Ah ha ha, modest me chuckles. “I get them from different things. Some of the stories I don’t even remember where the ideas came from. You start out with a scene sometimes and build up.”

A young woman, maybe a college girl raises her arm. “No – she means where do you get your ideas for fuck scenes from?”

She’s being crude to shock me, or maybe show me that she’s on my side. I can’t tell which. She talks like I think. “What do you mean?”

“They get me off. They sound like the way people really fuck. Is that from your real life?”

Now, O Friends of The Inner Sanctum, my pathetic real world sex life wouldn’t fill up a tea cup, much less a novel. I open my mouth to confess this with thrilling and noble frankness but what comes out is “Oh yes. All of its real.”

I get this feeling.

It’s this feeling you get when you’re walking across a grassy lawn barefoot and your toes come down hard on something in the grass which is warm and gooey and pungent and very, very natural and it squishes right between your toes.

A moan goes over the room. Dozens of female hands shoot up into the air waving furiously. I pick one at random. “What about vampires? You fucked a vampire?”

“Yes,” I say to her. “I sure did. All night. It was fantastic.”

I’m hoping this sarcasm will make people laugh, but instead a Goth girl dressed in black I hadn’t noticed before jumps up and throws her head back defiantly. “I’m a vampire.”

Whoa. I glance over at the librarian but she is looking at me with something like feral heat in her eyes. She runs her tongue over her lips. I can make out the big nubs of her nipples poking against her sweater.

“Well,” I stammer, “I mean figuratively. Not literally. The vampire is a poetic metaphor for relationships that -“

“Fuck metaphors! I’m a vampire goddammit!”

Another woman jumps up. “Me too!”

“Listen, there isn’t any – “

A third woman jumps up. “My name is Natalie – and I’m a sex addict.” Everybody claps supportively. “And I’m a vampire. I pick up strangers and take them home. I fuck them and then suck out all their male psychic energy from their chakras when they cum. That’s how I steal the yang life force energy from stupid men.”

I look over at the librarian again, the one I was reading my Father Delmar stuff to over the heads of the crowd. She’s got her sweater off. What’s she doing with her blouse? Can she do that here?

“Wait!” I yell, shaking my head like a baby rattle. “How can you be a sex addict vampire?” There could be a story here someplace. I should be writing this down. I start fumbling in my shirt pocket for a pen.

The librarian’s blouse is gone and the bra is on its way. She steps up to the sex addict vampire girl who sucks people’s life energy out of their chakras – and shoves her down on to her chair. Her righteous Working Class breasts are out and they’re bigger than the British Empire. She straddles the poor girl who stares up at her stiff brown nipples in fascination and terror.

“You little ghost whispering tart -” yells the librarian “I’m a lesbian vampire sex addict!” She shoves the girls face between her breasts and for an instant every human being in that room including me wishes we were that girl. Then she fastens on the girl’s neck and the poor thing sags in her chair.

I start getting my papers but I’m shaking and a pile of them fall on the floor. I kick them away from me. Screw this, I’m getting the hell out of here.

The four foreign looking women standing against the wall – all of them like some weird chorus line – tear off their blouses and their underwear. They’re nude. Their skin is a strange bluish color I hadn’t noticed before. They tear off their baseball caps and big phallic antennae pop out. “We’re lesbian vampire sex addicts from the planet Venus! And you are all our human sex slaves!”

“Get them!” screams the librarian, spitting drops of blood into the air. The crowd mobs the four women, tearing the bunting from the wall and tying their arms behind their backs. “Bring me an encyclopedia!”

Girls dash out and come back with a couple of encyclopedias, and a big coffee table book of Ansel Adams photos. The topless librarian swats a Venusian Girl Scout on the ass with the Ansel Adams book and the girl whimpers and begs for more. The girls line up and begin spanking the Venusians asses with the heavy books. Their erect antennae waggle with pleasure as they scream their defiance for all earthlings.

I throw my stuff on the floor and run like a rabbit.

Outside the rain has stopped and distant sirens are approaching. There is a girl under the street lamp in a denim jacket waiting for me on the sidewalk. She’s short with a bright mane of silver hair glistening with rain and her hard blue eyes for the moment are smiling. “There you are,” she says with that thick German accent I know so well. “So then (‘zo zen’) how was it?”

“We need to go. We need to go now.”

“These Girls Scouts I met, they were there, jah?”

“They were from Venus.”

“Did they have cookies? Those nice little chocolate ones with the coconut?”

“There’s a Kroger’s down the road. I’ll get you any cookies you want. Or a Mounds bar. But we have to go now,”

She laces her arm in mine. “Let’s go, stud.”

In Defense of Long Sentences

by | September 13, 2013 | | 18 Comments

Composition classes have been lauding the short sentence for
about 80 years. I’m not going to tell you the short, sweet and tight is bad; it
isn’t. I love it, often employing a consciously clipped style myself. It’s
effective for the gritty, brutal narrative and it affords a great deal of space
for the reader to root around it.

It’s been Hemingway vs Faulkner in the world series of
wordsmithery forever  but, if you do
a little investigation, you’ll find that Hemingway wrote some very long
sentences and Faulkner wrote some very pithy short ones. That’s probably why, even
after all this time, they’re still considered paragons of literary style.
Because, although they are each known for their radically different sentence
constructions, they both knew when to switch gears and break out of their own
stylistic niche to good effect.

Just the facts, ma’am and no purple prose. The popularity of
the short, sweet sentence arose with the emergence of the journalistic style,
evolving the way it did, partly due to technological limitations and partly for
clarity. When news stories were first transmitted by telegraph, there was a lot
of drop-out on the lines. The shorter the sentence, the less likely it would be
cut off. Hence the inverted pyramid format. And, hard as it is to believe now,
literacy was still relatively low at the dawn of the 20th Century. The press
was part of a democratization of information – particularly in the US – and
that effort included writing in plain, simple language.

Now it’s simply a matter of acclimatization to style. In
genres that place an emphasis on hard and gritty, you see the preference for
short sentences and unadorned language. Thrillers, horror, hard crime fiction
and any other genre that relies heavily on action tend to preference the short
and sweet. Unless the writer is very skilled, too many sub-clauses can gum up
the tension and slow down the pace. But allow me offer you an alternative.
Here, from the master of the short sentence, is a long one, pure action, with
all the tension and fluidity you could ever hope for:

George was coming down in the telemark position, kneeling,
one leg forward and bent, the other trailing, his sticks hanging like some
insect’s thin legs, kicking up puffs of snow, and finally the whole kneeling,
trailing figure coming around in a beautiful right curve, crouching, the legs
shot forward and back, the body leaning out against the swing, the sticks
accenting the curve like points of light, all in a wild cloud of snow.

Yup, that was Hemingway with a 75 word sentence.  Did the sub-clauses slow it down?

There is a place for short, staccato sentences in erotic
fiction, but when I encounter erotic writing devoid of any long sentences, I
find it effective but not affective. My intellect engages, but my emotions and
my senses don’t. Lots of erotica leaves me not very high and literally bone
dry. Writing style is often the prime culprit.

Long sentences with a kernel or root clause and subsequent
sub-clauses that elaborate on the main one are a way to pull the reader into
the moment affectively. They offer substance, direction, rhythm and texture,
engaging the emotions, the senses and the reader’s ear. It complicates ‘the
facts’ with the meat of human experience; it offers shades of meaning to what
is happening in the story.

For those of you went to school after they stopped teaching
grammar, the kernel or root clause is the main subject, very and object of the
sentence.

Tracy adores cunnilingus.

 Now we’ll add on a sub-clause:

Tracy adores cunnilingus, since it’s the only way she can
orgasm.

Now a one more:

Tracy adores cunnilingus, since it’s the only way she can
orgasm, regardless of her lover’s technique in other areas.

We’ve put significantly more substance in the sentence, and
you’ll notice, there’s also a direction. 
We start out with the root clause ‘Tracy adores cunnilingus’ and then we
are elaborating by adding modifiers after that statement. But we could easily, perhaps
more elegantly, shift things around and add a little more:

Regardless of her lover’s technique in other areas, Tracy
adores cunnilingus, whining for it like a persistent cat in heat, tugging on his hair to drag his face down to her cunt, since it’s the only way she can orgasm.

The problem with long sentences is that there are a lot of
words in them to misuse. Run-on sentences are often painful because they’re
poorly constructed. The reader loses her grasp on the kernel clause, even on
the subject itself, and can’t remember what all this modification was actually
modifying. But, as you can see above, we haven’t lost the plot. This is still about Tracy’s love of a good licking.

Well written long sentences should enhance the reader’s
depth of understanding of the subject, not lose it. The addition of sub-clauses, either
free modifiers or bound ones, should deepen the in-the-moment ‘thereness’ of
the reader instead of jerking him out of the narrative in a tizzy of
‘lost-the-plotness.’

No matter what composition teachers tell you, language is
not like mathematics. In mathematics, elegance is based on simplicity and
compactness, but language is an additive beast. The more details you get, the
more you know.  I’m not saying that
the mot juste is not important. But
when language gets too clean, too pithy, too simple, it can lose its humanity.
It can also lose its rhythm.

This is particularly true when it comes to writing sex
scenes with a view to arousing the reader. Literary fiction writers will often
stick to a description of the mechanics in a sex scene. It’s about as sexy as
jumping jacks or watching dogs fuck. The whole thing is rendered like a series of
short, sharp stabs. All showing and no telling. If they’re scared of being
accused of purple prose at any time, they’re terrified of being accused of it
during a sex scene.

But erotica writers know better. When you write a good sex
scene, you fuck the reader. And good erotic fiction writers are, at least
mentally, accomplished lovers. They vary the pace by varying the length of
their sentences. They vary the sensory experience by glancing the subject in
some sentences and going in for the hard and deep plunder in others. They’re
not under the illusion that a ripped body and a 8″ cock used artlessly is going
to ever compete with the delicious rollercoaster ride of a well-executed
mindfuck. A hot quickie is pleasant, but a good erotic literary mindfuck is a
memorable thing. It requires that you make ingress into the reader’s affective
mind, not just their imagination of the narrative physical event.

The chief problem with long sentences is that people feel
they need to use prepositions and pronouns. If they don’t bind all those
sub-clauses together, it won’t be logical.  So, you get this:

 He
pressed his open mouth over her left breast, then stroked the tip of his
searing tongue around her nipple in a circular fashion before sucking the
entire area into his mouth, afterwards leaving the indentation of his teeth
behind on her skin.

Admit it, you felt the need to take a deep breath,
right?  It’s cludgy. When possible it’s better to set your modifiers free (bound modifiers attach to the sentence using joining words or prepositions, free modifiers don’t use them).

You need to trust that your reader is smart and with you.
They understand that the progression of words is the progression of events, and
they know enough about anatomy and how tit sucking works not to need half that
crap. You’ve already established who is doing what to whom, so you can be a little less concerned with locating everything in time and space.

 Pressing an open mouth to her breast, he circled her nipple with a
searing tongue and, sucking hard, marked her skin with his teeth.

You can’t get rid of every pronoun or every preposition, but
you really don’t need most of them. 
Although a good deal shorter, it’s still 25 words long . Not exactly short. I admit to having written much longer
sentences and I could easily slow down the pace and be languid in my
description of this, using more adjectives, an adverb or two if needed. It
depends on how I want the reader to experience this particular piece of intimacy.

Sentence length should be about depth of knowledge, direction, pace and rhythm.
Just as there is a place for the short, hot, meaningless fuck, there’s a place
for the long, slow, pulsating, eviscerating annihilation of the flesh and mind. And your ability to execute either of these
depends on your ability to be flexible in the way you construct your sentences.

If you’re up for it, there is rather deeper examination of the topic of sentences and especially of modifying sub-clauses written by Frances Christensen. “A Generative Rhetoric of the Sentence” linked here. It’s a pdf file.

Confessions Of A Literary Streetwalker: "Oh, how beautiful."

by | September 10, 2013 | | 1 Comment

Funny that these columns are called Confessions of a Literary Streetwalker because … well, I have a
confession to make. 

I’m very much on the fence about the whole thing, and am
still dealing with doubts about whether or not I’ve made the right decision but
– in the end – I think it will end up being a good thing.

I’ve joined Facebook.

I know, I know: I’ve been a rather vocal – if not strident –
opponent of that particular corner of the social media universe, but a very
good friend of mine pointed out that, to call down The Bard, I “doth
protest too much.”

It hasn’t been easy: I tell ya, nothing like having a nearly
(gasp) twenty year writing career resulting in only 433 ‘friends’ and 68’likes’ on my author page to really make the dreaded depression demon really
flare up.  

But I’m sticking with it – not because I think that I have
to, or that Facebook is the end-all, be-all solution to all my publicity needs –
but because it was something I really, honestly, didn’t want to do.

Obviously, explanations are in order.  See, I’m a firm believer in pushing
yourself in all kinds of ways: as a person and, particularly, as a writer.  Sure, you have to like what you are
doing – both in how you live your life as well as the words you put down on
‘paper’ – but growth comes not from comfort but from adversity, from
challenge.  

I didn’t set out to be an pornographer, but then an
opportunity presented itself and (surprise!) I was actually pretty good at
it.  I didn’t plan on being a ‘gay’
writer – because, no duh – I’m not, but (surprise!) I not just did it but came
to really enjoy it.  I didn’t think
I could be a teacher, but (surprise!) I’ve found that I really get a kick out
of it.

I may have hated Facebook – hell, I still hate Facebook –
but I had to at least try it. 
Maybe it will work out, maybe it won’t, but at least I’ll have stretched
myself.
 

For creative people of any ilk, that’s extremely important.  For one thing, it can keep your
creativity rip-and-roaring, key to avoiding deathly boredom and staleness.  Professionally, it’s essential: writing
just what you want, what you’re comfortable with, can really limit where you
can sell your work.  That you love
to write, say, erotic romances is fine and dandy but if you do then there will
only so many places to show off, or publish, your work.  

You want examples? 
Fine: I’m now on Facebook – we’ve already discussed that uncomfortable
fact – but since I’ve written quite a few queer novels I’ve decided that my next
one is going to be (you ready for this?) straight – and not just straight but
with a ‘happy’ ending.  My short
story work, too, has a tendency to be, let’s be honest here, bittersweet at
best – so my next collection is going to be much more uplifting.  I’ve never written a play, so I’m
planning on writing one sometime this year.  I’ve never written for comics – well, I wrote one – so I’m going to work on more.  Will these projects be tough?  Sure they will: but who knows what I may
discover about myself and what I’m capable of?

Who knows, maybe even Facebook and I will become fast and
good friends and will walk down the social media aisle together, skipping
merrily and holding hands.

And if not … well, I tried.  There is nothing wrong with giving
something a shot but then
deciding it’s not for you.  Rejection,
both internal as well as external, is part of a writer’s life.  There’s
nothing wrong with it.  Trial and error is how we learn, how we
grow.  

Writers far too often think that the ‘names’, the
celebrities, the legends sat down and created wonders of the written word,
masterpieces of story, with no trials and tribulations.  But – as I’ve said before – writers are
liars and very few will admit that they might have been an overnight success
… after failing for decades.  

For example, take a look at the subtitle of this little
piece: “Oh, how beautiful.” 
It comes from a wonderful quote by one of my favorite authors, Rudyard
Kipling.  The whole thing reads: “Gardens are not made by singing
‘Oh, how beautiful,’ and sitting in the shade.”

In other words, to bloom you have to work; you have to be
brave and try new things, to push yourself, to challenge yourself personally
and professionally – and, equally, you have to accept that periodically things
just won’t work out.

Back to Mr. Kipling. 
Sitting on my desk is a reproduction of a letter he received after a
submission to the San Francisco Examiner:
a reminder not just to keep trying, to never give up, but that you have to be
willing to face, and surpass, internal doubt, outside criticism.

The letter reads: “I’m sorry Mr. Kipling, but you don’t
know how to use the English language.”

Writing Exercise – the villanelle

by | September 6, 2013 | | 20 Comments

 by Ashley Lister

 The villanelle is
a nineteen-line poetic form consisting of five tercets followed
by a quatrain. There are two refrains and two repeating rhymes, with
the first and third line of the first tercet repeated alternately until the
last stanza, which includes both repeated lines.

This is a
complex form – but it’s worth persevering.

The
villanelle has been used for such memorable poems as Dylan Thomas’s ‘Do Not Go
Gentle into that Goodnight’, Theodore Roethke’s ‘The Waking’ and Sylvia Plath’s
‘Mad Girl’s Love Song.’ Writing a villanelle is not easy but, once you’ve
accomplished it, you’re in good company.

You may do me, and I will owe you one

Or until then I shall owe one to you

This lovers’ trade is really not a con

I guarantee it will be lots of fun

For me, at least (which might be nothing new)

You may do me, and I will owe you one

We shouldn’t start a sexu’l marathon

I know we’ve both got other things to do

This lovers’ trade is really not a con

But I’d like it if you could get me done

I don’t care if you suck or if we screw

You may do me, and I will owe you one

We’d celebrate with chilled Dom Perignon

I’ve brought a demi and champagne flutes: two

This lovers’ trade is really not a con

To get me off we’ll have to get it on

My need for satisfaction’s overdue

You may do me, and I will owe you one

This lovers’ trade is really not a con

There is a
formula:  A1 b A2 / a b A1 / a b
A2 / a b A1 / a b A2 / a b A1
A2. Here the letters (a and b) indicate the two rhyme sounds.
The use of upper case letters indicates a refrain. And the superscript numerals
indicate the different use of refrain one and refrain two.

Would
another example help to illustrate the form better?

You ask me if I’d like to be restrained

A1

You think our love could flourish with me bound

b

You claim you want to see me being chained

A2 

This interest in restraint is unexplained

a

And I think our relationship is sound

b

You ask me if I’d like to be restrained

A1

You say I should be physically detained

a

Or tied up like some safe/secured hound

b

You claim you want to see me being chained

A2 

I say, “Perhaps I might like being caned?”

a

Your eagerness does not get off the ground

b

You ask me if I’d like to be restrained

A1

You say my problem is that I’m untrained

a

You bring out rope next time we fool around

b

You claim you want to see me being chained

A2 

We tried it way back once and I complained

a

But with a gag I didn’t make a sound

b

You ask me if I’d like to be restrained

A1

You claim you want to see me being chained

A2 

The
villanelle is a lot of fun to work with. It is a complex form but I figure
those who’ve been reading these columns over the past year or so will be ready
for the adventure of a greater challenge.

As always, I
look forward to reading your villanelles in the comments box below.

Ash

Erotic Lure Newsletter: September 2013

by | September 3, 2013 | | 0 Comments

From Erotica Readers & Writers Association
By Lisabet Sarai
_______

Dear Erudite Explorers of Eros,

Are you excited? I’m back with September’s Erotic Lure, and if you’re not feeling – um – stimulated at the moment, I guarantee that you will be by the time we’ve finished our tour, especially if you take the time to follow my recommendations as we go along.

How could anyone *not* be thrilled by this month’s Erotica Gallery? With every Lure, I think, “this month has got to be the best gallery yet”. Then the following month, our authors up the ante. For September, they’ve produced ten amazing stories – eleven if you count C. Sanchez-Garcia’s outrageous assault on poetic forms, WABI SABI GIRL – plus six fabulous flashers and a whole page of Truly Horrible Erotikishka Pomes which you honestly have to read to believe. The fiction offers humor, pathos, insight and pure heat. A nudist funeral – a student stripper – a well-satisfied submissive – a post-apocalyptic rock star – two old friends who share literally everything… It’s like getting an award-winning anthology for free. The poems – well, they’re pretty much indescribable.

A feast for the literate lecher:
https://erotica-readers.com/story-gallery

Now that we’ve got you all fired up with our free tales, you might find yourself looking for some stories to keep you satisfied when you can’t get to the Internet. Our Books for Sensual Readers pages offer a plethora of pleasurable perusals. (Ouch!) For a touch of the taboo, pick up a copy of Rachel Kramer Bussel’s new anthology of anal erotica, BABY GOT BACK. Want to live lustfully ever after? I recommend Kristina Wright’s steamy couples collection, BEDDED BLISS. Elizabeth Schechter’s HOUSE OF SABLE LOCKS is a twisted, passionate steampunk thriller. If you prefer the promise of a happy ending, CAKE by Lauren Dane serves up a tattooed bad boy artist and the art student/bicycle messenger who wants to do more than just satisfy his hunger for sensation. Looking for gay erotica? Circlet Press has just released WIRED HARD 5, a collection of gay scifi/specfic tales edited by Joy Crelin. Meanwhile, what you see is what you get with Elizabeth Coldwell’s lesbian anthology GIRLS GETTING OFF. We’re not talking about buses here!

These are just some of the September featured titles. If you’ve got the time, delve deeper. We’ve got arousing anthologies, naughty novels, risque romance, concupiscent classics, hunky homoerotica, luscious lezlit, sexy self-help. (Okay, okay, so I’m going overboard a bit…) If you see anything you like (and honestly, I can’t imagine how you could help it), just follow our links to your favorite bookstores. As you undoubtedly know by now (unless you’re new to the ERWA or have been living under a rock), every purchase you make using our affiliate links helps support the great free content we offer every month here at the Erotic Readers & Writers Association.

Grab yourself a randy read:
https://erotica-readers.com/books/

In the September Sex Toy Playground, our focus in on male pleasure. Charlotte from Bondara offers an informative summary of the wonderfully varied options in male masturbatory devices. If you want more details, browse the reviews and articles listed in the sidebars. The Scuttlebutt column features some fabulous products, too. I want one (at least) of those cute Pyxis Finger Vibes. And guys, check out the racecar-inspired Cobra Libre Stimulator. Vroom!

You can’t win if you don’t play:
https://erotica-readers.com/sex-toy-playground/

You might think the season for summer blockbusters is more or less over, but our Adult Films section is chock full of great flicks to keep the heat turned up high as the weather cools. My top pick (as anyone who knows me might expect) is the BDSM extravaganza “Fifty Shades of Bizarre”. Filmed in Budapest and featuring Euro-porn pretties and Hungarian hunks, this movie’s more than enough to make poor little Anastasia run and hide. Then there’s “The Temptation of Eve”, starring the striking Remy Lacroix, the tale of a woman torn between loyalty and lust. Brad Armstrong is back, along with the always alluring Jessica Drake, in “Sex”, a futuristic vision of commoditized desire. Check out the classics page, always one of my favorites (being a classic myself). This month we feature the sensual Annette Haven, with a remastering of her second film, the hard-boiled, hard-pumping espionage drama “China Girl” (1974).

We’re not just teasing you with all these tantalizing titles. You can have any film that you want, just by clicking through to our affiliates. Go ahead – you know you want to!

Visit our Cinema Sensualismo:
https://erotica-readers.com/adult-movies/

Inside the Erotic Mind this month, our topic is “Sympathy Fucks”. Read our members’ varied stories of pity-inspired sex – some given, some received, some that turned out well, others that were disasters. Have a tale of your own to share, or just an opinion?  Click on the Participate link to add your contribution.

Arousal begins inside the erotic mind:
https://erotica-readers.com/inside-the-erotic-mind/

Writers, I haven’t forgotten you. Our Author Resources pages adds a new section this month: details on companies you can use to self-publish your work. Scroll down to the bottom of the left hand sidebar. And for more information on the topic of self-publishing, click on the Archives link to read William Gaius’ excellent series of columns on the topic, “Kill Electrons Not Trees”.

Calls for submissions include GLBT holiday stories from JMS Books, the anthology Me and My Boi, to edited by Sacchi Green, and the Red Room Journal, focusing on erotic for couples.

If you’re new to publishing, don’t be shy. The markets for erotica and erotica romance are booming. Publishers want to read your story. Whatever subgenre you write, you’re bound to find promising targets for your work at ERWA. We update the listings several times a month. In addition, we post all new calls at the ERWA blog, where you’ll also find fabulous articles about the philosophy, craft and business of erotica.

Be brave and submit:
https://erotica-readers.com/erotica-authors-resources/

I wanted to share the link to a site I expect many readers might enjoy. The Erotica Bibliophile is a compendium of information and illustrations related to vintage erotica and erotic art, between the 18th and early 20th century. If you’re looking for a story idea or a wank prompt, check it out. I find some of the images quite – um – inspiring.

I don’t know about you, but my pulse is elevated, I’m breathing fast, and I’m distinctly moist in various intimate areas… I hope you’ve enjoyed our monthly jaunt through the ERWA site as much as I did. I’ll be taking October off; distinguished author and poet Ashley Lister will be stepping into my shoes (the red patent leather stilettos, if I’m any judge of character) and I’m sure he’ll – um – perform admirably. I’ll see you November, with more alliteration and double entendres, including my traditional jokes about turkeys and pillories.

Until then, don’t do anything I wouldn’t do. (That should give you a lot of leeway.)

Excitedly yours,
Lisabet
_______

Visit Lisabet Sarai’s Fantasy Factory   
Check out blog
Join Lisabet’s List           

Write, learn, and play on ERWA. Details at:
erotica-readers.local/erwa-email-discussion-list

Sex, Chaos and Story

by | August 30, 2013 | | 7 Comments

By K D Grace

Happy Birthday to me! Well ERWA birthday at least!
As of today I’ve been writing for ERWA for a whole year. Where has the time
gone? So much has happened in a year, and yet it seems like only yesterday I
wrote my first post about inspiration and mythology. Traditionally birthdays
are a time to celebrate, let your hair down, wreak a little havoc and raise a
little hell. Oh wait a minute … That’s writing I’m talking about, not birthdays.
Writing, plot, story — there’s no place better to raise a little hell, and we
writers know it’s the perfect place to let our hair down vicariously.

In my opinion, there are few things a writer can do
to a story that will kick-start it quite as much as creating a little chaos. A
calm and happy life in the real world might be just the ticket, but in story,
there’s one word for it – BORING! A story is all about upsetting the apple
cart, breaking the eggs, turning the bull loose in the china cupboard and —
heart racing, palms sweating – seeing what happens, while we’re safely
ensconced on the other side of the keyboard/Kindle/book.  Oh yes we do love that adrenaline rush — at
someone else’s expense!

One of the best tools for dropping the character
smack-dab into the middle of the chaos  –
and the reader vicariously – is sex. And the more inconvenient, the more
inappropriate, the more confusing, the more SO not what the character was
expecting, the more delicious the chaos will be.

The thing about those big brains that I spoke of a
few posts back is that they like to make us think we can control all the
variables. The thing about the biological housing for those big brains is that
it doesn’t always want to be controlled. Oh and that big brain, well that means
there’s all sorts of stuff going on up there that can lead us down the
havoc-wreaking road to sex and chaos. It wants what it wants. And the ole grey
matter can be so damned stubborn at times. Oooh! I get goose bumps just
thinking about what happens when the big brain gets a hankering and the
biological soup starts overheating and sex happens.

If we look at Western history from the point of view
of religion and its effects on culture, there are few things the religious
powers that be have made more of an effort to control than sex. And in story,
in myth, there are few things that have caused more chaos than a little rough
and tumble in the wrong place at the wrong time. Troy lost war and was
destroyed over it, King Arthur’s realm fell because of it, David had
Bathsheba’s husband, Uriah, killed because of it.

The resulting chaos that sex unleashes in a story
can be nothing more than to create self-doubt in a cock-sure character, which
is always a delight to see. Or the resulting chaos can be world-destroying, and
anything in between. Sex can cause the kind of chaos that will make the reader
laugh, or the kind of chaos that will make the reader say, ‘if only they hadn’t
done that.’  However, the one thing sex
should never do in a story is leave things the way they were before it
happened. Can it be used for bonding? Of course! But the tighter the bond, the
more chaos can be caused if that bond is tested or broken. I shiver with
delight at the thought.

And because our big brains don’t give a damn if our
sexual thoughts and fantasies are ‘socially acceptable,’ nor is it
discriminating about who we might have those thoughts and fantasies about, the
resulting internal chaos can be almost as delicious as the external – maybe
even more so. That lovely mix of guilt and desire and self-loathing and arousal
and denial and shear over-heated lust. OMG! It’s a total writer’s paradise
there for the taking.

I’m sure I’m like most writers in that I analyse
what I read for pleasure in terms of what worked and what didn’t, what I would
have done if I’d written it, and what I’ve learned from the author’s writing
skills that can be used to make my own writing better. I have to say one of the
biggies for me is how well the author uses chaos to move the story forward at a
good pace; and especially how effectively sex is used to create chaos.  I’m sure I pay a lot more attention to how
sex is used in a story (or not) now that I write erotica, but it’s the
resulting chaos that fascinates me and keeps me reading in almost any kind of novel.
The world is not a static place, and especially the world of story should not
be static. Happy endings are called happy endings because they are at the end.
They follow the chaos and happen when the story is finished. There is no more
story, or at least none the reader wants to follow. It’s the chaos that pulls
us in and keeps us turning the pages, and when that chaos is directly tied to
sex, hold on to your hat!

A Necessary Evil For Writers: Does Social Media Make You Crazy?

by | August 28, 2013 | | 2 Comments

Elizabeth Black writes in a wide variety of genres including erotica, erotic romance, and dark fiction. She lives on the Massachusetts coast with her husband, son, and four cats. You may find her on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/elizabethablack.

From the “Duh! Tell Us Something We Don’t Know” department: a new study has found that Facebook may drive you nuts. According to the ABC News article “Facebook May Be Making You Sad, Says New Study“, social media such as Facebook has a negative effect on our emotions.

“Everyday Facebook use leads to declines in subjective well-being, both how happy you feel moment to moment and how satisfied you feel with your life,” says Ethan Kross, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Michigan and a co-author of the study, told ABC News.

Kross and the other researchers analyzed the moods and habits of 82 young adults — active Facebook users with mobile phones whose average age was 20 — over the course of two weeks. They texted each participant five times a day, at random intervals, and got feedback about their feelings, worries, loneliness, Facebook usage and real-life interactions with other people.

They found that Facebook users were more connected with their friends and acquaintances than those not on Facebook,
but the more frequently people used Facebook, the worse they felt immediately afterward. Additionally, the more they used Facebook over the course of two weeks, the less satisfied and happy they were with their lives as a whole.

The social medium I use most often is Facebook. I’m on every day, and it’s an easy way for writers and readers to contact me. I have found Facebook to be irritating at times, but not depressing. I don’t feel lonely or sad from being on Facebook. Quite often, I find it boring. There are only so many updates about what’s for dinner and baby’s first poop I can take on a given day. However, I never get tired of cats. 🙂

That said, not everyone else has such fond feelings about Facebook. Writers who use social networking look at it as a necessary evil. We need to get word out about our works somehow, and that means tweeting about our latest release, updating our Facebook timelines about our backlist of novels, avoiding flame wars on Goodreads, begging for reviews on that vast wasteland that is Google+, and posting images of what our characters like on Pinterest.

I interviewed some writers on Facebook to learn if they found Facebook to be stressful.

In a word, yes.

GIFSoup.

It may not be easy for writers, who tend to be introverts, to be social in general. Facebook does offer some anonymity and distance since you’re on your computer or phone, but the stress is there.

Aaron Smith said: “As a writer, I consider Facebook to be a necessary semi-evil. I hated it when I first signed up, as it seems to go against all the instincts of an introvert like me. But I realize it’s needed for promotional purposes, especially for authors who don’t have the support of major publishers. Over time, I’ve come to enjoy it and interacting with old and new friends as well as readers of my books. But it does get annoying at times, though I can’t honestly say it’s ever made me depressed. Perhaps the most frustrating part of it is that, due to the casual nature of Facebook, a post about something trivial like a Simpsons line or a baseball game can sometimes get more attention than something we, as writers, consider incredibly important, such as the release of a new book or a good review.”

One big problem with Facebook is envy. You see others talking about their endless Silver Stars on AllRomanceEBooks, their latest five star review, their awards, and their great sales, and you – who may not be doing as well – feel the green monster creeping up your spine. The thing is, success doesn’t happen out of the blue. It takes hard work and much rejection to get there.

I’ve noticed that writers on Facebook tend to not talk about the less successful aspects of their careers. You will always hear about an acceptance, but you may not hear about the ten plus times that same writer submitted that particular story to other publishers and was rejected. Tessa Wanton said: “Sometimes we get bound up in what we see out there and especially those who are so very confident when you feel so unconfident yourself. The problem I’ve found is that some people just constantly go on about how successful and brilliant they are, and I have no reason to disbelieve them. Even if I’ve found out later that what they’re saying isn’t true, the initial feeling of inadequacy still presides.” I saw a comment, possibly at the ABC News article, stating that people who needed to constantly talk about how successful and brilliant they are are probably overcompensating for an extreme lack of confidence. Tessa agreed, saying “very true, yet even still the damage is done at that point. I would say artists in general lack confidence in what they do, seems to go with the territory I guess. Such a funny place social media, I do find I have to stand back at times, it can be utterly all consuming.”

Kathleen Bradean discussed her experiences with envy on Facebook, and it’s similar to other tales I’ve been told. “I know I’m making the huge mistake of comparing my writing career to another writer’s.  We all have our own definition of success.” She said. “So why do I make myself miserable seeing that someone sold their third short story this year when I haven’t even written one? And I guess the answer is that I’m not seeing the success I want. It doesn’t seem as if I’m making progress.”

Angelica Dawson has avoided Twitter for reasons similar to Tessa’s. “Either I feel inadequate, envious, or guilty and NONE of those help me.” She said. “I will keep my twitter account as one of the easiest ways to get a hold of me, also because I’m in a number of very busy tribes when I get back to blogging.”

Limiting time on Facebook is a popular way of dealing with being sucked in and occasionally sad.

Some have gone as far as leaving some social media sites altogether.

Taking a break often results in better writing, better sanity, and sometimes more money since you spend more time writing than hanging out.

Ashynn Monroe limits her time. “Face book makes me feel like that sometimes, that’s why I disappear for a while.”

Gemma Parkes said. “I read comments and they are not very helpful and a bit bitchy sometimes and I let it get to me, it stops me writing and that isn’t a good thing. Writers need to write.”

Tessa Wanton said: “I nuked my Twitter account for good, and concentrated on blogging a little more instead. And now, I feel a lot better and, I’ve had better results from concentrating on my website too.”

Noir writer Trent Zelazny has closed down his timeline on several occasions. He points out that some people say and do things on Facebook they would never get away with in real time: “It’s depressing. Text is not the same as speaking, and things can easily be misconstrued.” Zelazny said. “Add to that the people who love to attack others while from the safety of their home. People who would never have the brass to do it in person. An innocent statement, observation, or general feeling about the day, with one comment added, be it insensitive or simply misconstrued, can suddenly turn one’s Facebook page into an unfriendly or even hostile environment.”

Publisher Warren Lapine recently temporarily left Facebook because it was interfering with his work. “For me it comes down to the fact that I like Facebook too much. I find myself on it when I should be working.” Lapine said. “If I’m working on a particularly annoying or complicated book I spend time on Facebook avoiding the work. That needs to stop. I have a contract that calls for me to publish 400 books a year and that doesn’t when I’m online interacting with friends. I’ve tried to tell myself that it’s networking, but my income goes up whenever I get off Facebook and down when I spend too much time on it.”

Not everyone is affected by Facebook in a negative way, though. I’m one person who has never really had a problem with Facebook. I enjoy posting in the mornings, and lurking later in the day, but I suspect I don’t spend as much time on Facebook as some others do. Jacques Gerard doesn’t let Facebook get to him. Neither does Linda L. Barton. Devon Marshall “stopped giving a rodent’s behind what people thought” when he hit his 30s. Jacques Gerard doesn’t let envy ruin his enjoyment of Facebook. He enjoys seeing others succeed. “Mainly I realized my life/journey is my own and should not be compared with anybody else’s life/journey.” He said. “I’m just happy with other’s blessings and successes as well for my own. On the other hand give comfort and prayer for those who are experiencing a tough time or sickness. I learned very early in life that worrying about keeping up with others only creates unhappiness for yourself.”

Social media sites like Facebook are a mixed bag. Depending on how you choose to look at Facebook, it can be the ninth circle of Hell or a great place to network with writers, publishers, editors, and readers alike. It may even be both on occasion. The key seems to be knowing your own limits, and pulling away when you feel yourself getting sucked in. Remember above all you are a writer, and writers write. However, writers also need to make themselves available to the public in order to be seen, and that includes engaging in social media as well as attending book signings, book readings, conventions, and the like. Could the key be balance? Although social media in general and Facebook in particular may be stressful, according to that new study, it is a fairly new medium. Once you master it, it probably won’t own you any longer.

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