Your Vision or Popular Opinion

Write for the Thrill

I write what I want for the thrill of it.

Unfortunately, there are few thrills in edits but I do it.

I still care about the feedback. I ignore the trolls and focus on what they say and the score. If the score is higher, I did alright.

But I only write what I want.
 
Interesting, the number here who seem to be saying, yes, I'm changing what I do because of my audience... when the audience merit is set of numbers and a 1:1000 comment. Curiouser and curiouser, said Alice.

Well, I did and have, largely because a sort of explicit sex / romance combination is what I enjoy writing and most websites that do romance aren't so hot on the explicitness I enjoy doing. Literotica fitted what I was looking for - I don't say it's readers fit my target demographic in the long run but it's a good audience for me, although I have to say my next step is Wattpad, coz that is my target readership in the long run, and that'll be interesting. That website has 40 million plus active users and it's a perfect stepping stone for me - and they are accepting far hotter stories now, just not nothing but sex.

Anyhow, yes I do look to write what the audience is looking for, but in the one t of the audience that I am looking to write for, so it's kind of win win for me.
 
I started with writing for specific fetishes because some of the Adult Yahoo Groups I had found were complaining about the lack of stories for their preferred version.

For Unbirth, for example, there is one odd book - Rosa by Maurice Pons and almost nothing else.

I still write fetish and have a very small number of people who like SOME of my stories. That is a problem with fetish. One fetish - one small group of people like it. Another fetish - a different small group. The more obscure the fetish the more the followers will appreciate a story about it but the appeal will be very limited. (Unless it is South Indian Aunty Hairy and Sweaty Armpits - the Yahoo Adult Groups have tens of thousands of members!)

But mainly I like writing something different, or a story in which sex is part of the plot but not the sole reason for the story.
 
I (try to) write what I would like to read, so it's basically for myself. There were two reasons why I started to write: to better my English since I'm Swedish, and as an outlet for my creativity.

Erotica is actually not my thing really, romance is, so in that respect I adapt to at least some degree to the readers expectations.

Anyway, I've come to realize that even if I did write for the readers, there would still be down-votes and 'unfriendly' comments. If you write short some will say it's like twitter, if you write long others will comment they didn't come here to read the bible. If you describe character backgrounds you'll get to hear 'get to the action, damn it!' and so on.

We can't please them all but with some luck we can at least please ourselves, and that's what I'm trying to do. (Before anyone say it: no, I'm not referring to masturbation!)
 
Shrug. I think you'd be hardpressed to identify more than a couple of posters who have been more help to newcomers on this discussion board over the last decade than I have. If you want to just backbite about that, that will have to be your little hurt. Also, my writing pretty much covers how my background can be what it is--not that it has much to do with posting to the discussion board other than folks wanting to feel threatened by it. I'll not apologize for the life I've had.

It's true, though, that one of the foundations of Internet discussions boards is favoring the blind leading the blind. Again, I won't apologize for have taken the time and effort to learn the publishing industry as it really works.
 
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classic truism

Internet arguments are like the Special Olympics.

Even if you win, you're still a retard.
 
What do you care about more as an author: publishing work that fits your unique vision, even if it's not accepted very well, or publishing work that's very popular, even if you had to stray from your initial design?

I definitely write stories the way I want to without any concern for how they'll be accepted. My writing is entirely for me; publishing is just a fun thing to do.

My way of looking at it: I (and I venture to say others too) am pretending there's a real bookstore somewhere out there... And each read of the title/subheading here is like someone flipping through the book at the store. Each read of a whole page, etc. is like someone standing in front of the shelf perusing. And each vote (even a 1) is like someone bought the book.

Forget about the obligatory comparing ourselves to great authors as some do from time to time. I just pretend I have a couple books on a shelf in a bookstore, and maybe someone buys a copy now and then.
 
Far more CIA men flew the SR71 than Air Force men did. (The bird was developed by and paid for by the CIA and, like the U2 before it, flew only civilian pilots over denied areas--to avoid the flights being considered acts of war under the Geneva Convention.) The planes were hosted and maintained by the Air force--but the CIA paid for them and flew them as well. The lists the public can see isn't a comprehensive list of who flew.

Zeb once dug out a list and linked it to the discussion board to "prove" you had to be Air Force to fly the bird. The affiliation given for most of the names on the list was civilian, not Air Force :)D). Even earlier, only civilians flew the U2 over denied areas. Francis Gary Powers had to give up his commission to fly his ill-fated flight over the Soviet Union (see Operation Overflight).

(And for Dream Operator, I'm 71, and the SR71 was being flown into the twenty-first century.)

The POINT, though, is that this has just about nothing to do with the writing of erotica on Literotica or much of anything I discuss here, and I wasn't born knowing I was bi. That didn't happen until I was twenty-eight, after I left the SR71 program--to activity that would really curl your toes if you can't believe I flew the SR71, and activity that gets covered in some of my stories. You really just want to hate to let the account name I've picked bother you that much.
 
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Internet arguments are like the Special Olympics.

Even if you win, you're still a retard.

That may well be the most profound thing I have read on here for 10 years or more.
 
That's sounds pithy, but I think that depends on what the issue is, who brought it up, and whether one side was initiating and maintaining an attack. You aren't a retard just because you don't let someone walk all over you without challenge. Not even on the Internet.
 
The proverb dates back a couple of decades often captioning an evocative image. The point was that our little online squabbles don't amount to a hill of beans on this crazy mixed-up world. We are legends in our own minds. I'm in there somewhere.
 
I started with writing for specific fetishes because some of the Adult Yahoo Groups I had found were complaining about the lack of stories for their preferred version.

I guess you could say that about my stories ... not the fetish aspect, but simply because I was not finding stories that turned me on, and suspected that there were other people out there like me.

I still write fetish and have a very small number of people who like SOME of my stories. That is a problem with fetish. One fetish - one small group of people like it. Another fetish - a different small group. The more obscure the fetish the more the followers will appreciate a story about it but the appeal will be very limited.

I have only one story in the "fetish" category, about a woman who tortured herself to an orgasm, and I was surprised when Laurel put it there (I had proposed BDSM). But you're right about the limited audience, When I posted it on this site, it got one of my highest ratings. On another site, it got one of my lowest. Go figure.
 
What do you care about more as an author: publishing work that fits your unique vision, even if it's not accepted very well, or publishing work that's very popular, even if you had to stray from your initial design?

I definitely write stories the way I want to without any concern for how they'll be accepted. My writing is entirely for me; publishing is just a fun thing to do.

Actually, I try to find story lines that are rarely if ever the subject of a story. I am always searching for unique plots and twists.
 
The day hasn't arrived, after 15 years on this site, when Ive read something here that's both popular and also turns me on. So I will never give a shit about popularity.
 
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