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…

 

Writer’s Block

As much as I’ve been blogging, you’d think this is something I’d not suffer with – but I have been.  I haven’t been writing any erotica lately – I can usually turn out two or maybe three writings a week but the last time I started writing something, I got half-way through the story and two things happened; one, the computer I do my writing on started acting more insanely than it usually does and two, my train of thought got derailed – I just couldn’t think of where I wanted to go with the story.

Image via Wikipedia

Fortunately, the story survived the computer’s brain fart; I was thinking hard drive failure but it was really the motherboard quitting on me.  Lately, I’ve been writing stories centered around the swinging lifestyle and I’ve even shared some of them with my site members and the reviews have been good.  I think the stories have been insightful and quite lusty, if I may say so myself, casting a light on the lifestyle and then putting twists on it to create more, ah, realistic scenarios.

When I write erotica, I just don’t write stuff to jack off to; it’s nasty with a purpose and that is to “educate” readers about aspects of sex they might not otherwise think of.  I like to put my readers right into the minds of my characters so that they can see the sexual situation through the character, feel what he or she may be feeling, know what they’re thinking.  For me, the challenge isn’t as much about putting A into B or C; it’s about capturing the moment and all the thoughts and feelings that might go with it.

I am, in fact, a published writer!  I’ve written several stories that publishers of erotica jumped all over and the pay wasn’t bad – but it wasn’t about the money more than it was the bit of visibility in the market I got.  Really kinda cool to pick up one of the magazines I was published in and see my name and knowing that people were reading my stuff and, yeah, probably whacking off to beat the band.

I haven’t published anything on the market lately and, at one point, I was going to start a project to self-publish the stuff I’ve written; however, I haven’t been able to figure out (yet) if what I’ve been writing can be published like that.  I get the sense that the self-publishing market ain’t quite ready for what I have to offer – but I could be wrong.

So, I brought up the last story I was working on and gave it a quick glance… and if I’m going to finish it, I’ll probably have to scrap maybe the last eight or ten pages of it because, as I remember, I wasn’t happy with the direction the story was going in.  It’s no big deal; it’s something I’ve done hundreds of times before either to sections of a story and, yeah, to entire stories.

But I’m at a rather odd impasse at the moment; I can think of all sorts of stuff to blog about and some of it could be seen as quite salacious… but I just can’t get my mind far enough in the gutter to get the one story finished and be able to write more and, for me, that’s unusual. I can blog but I can’t write and I find that a bit bothersome.

Usually when hit with a dose of writer’s block, it’s a “simple” matter of just relaxing my thoughts and letting them come up with something hot and juicy.  But this is like someone’s turned the heat down or something!  I do, in fact, think of stuff to write but since I require my writing to be in a certain form – and I don’t want to wind up writing too many similar stories – things keep being rejected.  I’ll have a “what if” moment and think, “Yeah, this would be good!  Oh, wait, no it wouldn’t…”

I want to write about the stuff people don’t want to talk about but I want to do it intelligently.  I want and need it to be real and then so much that a reader will come back and ask me, “Did this really happen?”

I’ll never tell…

The sex has to be real, right along with the aches and pains, thoughts, and other feelings, like what runs through a character’s mind at the moment of orgasm.  It’s a challenge to try to capture such things with words because we all know what it feels like – and can’t say much more than, “It felt good!”

The situations have to be real or plausible enough for a reader to say, “Yeah, it could happen like that…”  Even when a story line takes what might be an unrealistic path, the thought here is to illustrate that, as humans, we can get ourselves into a lot of shit that, normally, we’d probably never get into – and all for the purpose of getting our rocks off.

In my stories, I’ve ruined marriages or have changed them in ways some people wouldn’t dream of being possible.  I’ve awakened hidden desires of the flesh as well as made them go away.  I’ve made my characters see and understand things about themselves and their partners, some good, some not so good; I have sent them deep inside their own heads to figure out how or why they got to wherever it was I put them.  I’ve put my characters through every range of emotion I can think of; I’ve fucked with their logic, intelligence, and even their common sense to illustrate just how the need to get laid can unhinge someone… or make them see the light of day, as it were.

Personally, I think I’m rather good at it but I know I can do it better which is probably why I’ve got a bad case of writer’s block for this.  I say to the people who might comment on my writings that if you read this and have to, um, handle some immediate business, then I got it right.  If it makes you think or maybe rethink sex in your life, kudos to me.  Hell, if I turn myself on while writing, damn, it must be pretty good!

I will go back and re-read something I wrote and if I do this and ask, “Wow, did I write this?” then I know I’m on the right path.  My harshest critic and editor, Linda, will scrutinize everything, point out any errors I made or missed and question what the characters are doing or thinking.  Her input is fantastic and my recent stories have benefited greatly from her critical eye.

The writer’s block will eventually clear up, as it always does, and everything will be okay.  I just might get the unfinished story finished but, until then, I can blog until the cows come home – and I hope they never really do.