Believability

A recent post by Lafemmeroar (http://lafemmeroar.wordpress.com/2011/11/11/protest-letter-from-a-blog-reader/) sparked this particular blog,  Hers is about a reader who believed what she was blogging about and it conjured up some memories of similar stuff that’s happened to me.

Okay, y’all know I write erotica (and if you didn’t, now you do); I have a site where a lot of the stuff I’ve written resides (email me if you wanna know where it is) and I will openly admit that I write about some very raunchy shit; if it’s taboo, I’m writing about it.  One of the things I’ve learned about writing is to make what you’ve written believable and while I’ve not quite mastered this as much as I’d like to, well, it became apparent to me – via some really interesting emails – that I must be on the right track.

Most of the time, I’ve received positive reviews and even suggestions on how I could have made the story better – and this is fine.  I’ve gotten emails from people who’ve asked if I was writing about something that really happened; this, too, is good – the believable factor is in effect and working well.

But I’ve also gotten threatening emails like you wouldn’t believe.  At first, I was shocked that someone would actually threaten my life over a figment of my imagination – and some of the threats were interesting, from submitting myself to 100 lashes to being castrated and other forms of punishment that I found rather creative.  Some people were downright offended by my writings; this made me laugh because the fact that they read it speaks volumes about them more than it does about me.  Yeah, sure – I admit that I have a very filthy mind… but if you’re peeking in there, well, you do so at your own risk or caveat lector – let the reader beware.

I never took any of the threats seriously… but it made me aware that I had the ability to write about stuff and in a way that some might take for the real deal and, for a while, I wasn’t sure if I should be bothered by this or take it in the sense of a job well done, so to speak.  It did make me stop and think about the fact that I could write something… and someone would get it into their heads to actually do what I wrote and, yes, it does happen although I can’t say it’s happened to me; if someone’s done what I’ve written, I’ve not heard about it, like, the cops come knocking on my door and wanting to take and examine my computer because something I wrote caused some bad shit to happen.

I thought, for a moment, that maybe I shouldn’t write about the stuff I was writing about… but I said, “Fuck that; it’s not my fault that they believe what I’m writing!”  But, yeah, really, it is my fault and simply because I wrote it and, for some, I did a really good job writing it.  It’s both kinda scary and flattering all at the same time… as well as the reason why writers have disclaimers in place.

One story I wrote generated an email from a guy who questioned me about how I knew about what he was doing with his sister – and you can imagine the look on my face when I read his email!  Even funnier, he wasn’t angry – he actually felt that I portrayed his situation quite well despite some “facts” not being exactly right.  Again, I was stunned as I got email after email from him containing his exploits so that I could continue writing that particular story; it got to the point where I had to instruct my Outlook software to treat his emails as junk and delete them before I even saw them.

In my blogs, yep, I often write some raunchy shit… because it’s fun and, most of all, it represents my honesty when I’m talking about myself; if you’re gonna do it, be for-real about it.  So when I’m ranting and raving about sex and sexuality, I actually don’t get anyone commenting that I need to be drawn and quartered or something equally painful.  That some people might disagree with me about the sex I write about here is fine – and I do appreciate them saying what they object to.  And, of course, all positive comments are always welcomed and if we agree to disagree, that works, too.

It made me realize that while I strive to write believable erotica, there is such a thing as being too believable for some – and there’s nothing I can do about that other than to tell people right up-front what the deal is – this is fiction and figments of my very naughty imagination.

It also reminds me that I have about a hundred stories I need to add to my site… and I’ll eventually get around to getting them there… I think… maybe…