I'm a wanker

No, I mean it. I think I'm quite a decent writer of fantasies and erotic fiction, but I can only do it while I'm sexually aroused and masturbating. It just helps me to delve in my over fertile imagination for dirty, vivid metaphors that I couldn't find otherwise.

I'd love to be able to be a 'normal' or mainstream writer but I just don't see how. I can't seem to apply myself when writing non-erotic stories.

If anyone can think of a way forward I'd appreciate it (and you'd get an acknowledgement).

Px

I have the same issue. I usually have to end up getting myself off after writing a story or just thinking about one.

Lol. I just read my story to my SO in my very best sultry voice and my problem becomes an instant opportunity. Life is tough.

Casiyessie said:

I have the same issue. I usually have to end up getting myself off after writing a story or just thinking about one.

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And that's a problem how, exactly?

If it works for you, and you know what's about to happen, that's a pretty good indication of potential reader reaction, surely .

It's, ahhh, sort of the point of erotica, isn't it? And definitely the point of porn.

electricblue66 said:

And that's a problem how, exactly?

If it works for you, and you know what's about to happen, that's a pretty good indication of potential reader reaction, surely .

It's, ahhh, sort of the point of erotica, isn't it? And definitely the point of porn.

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LOL. Definitely. If it doesn't get me panting, I'm not writing it hot enough. If my SO can control himself, I'm not writing it hot enough. If he arrives home and I'm not ripping his clothes off, I'm not.....

ChloeTzang said:

LOL. Definitely. If it doesn't get me panting, I'm not writing it hot enough. If my SO can control himself, I'm not writing it hot enough. If he arrives home and I'm not ripping his clothes off, I'm not.....

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The mind boggles. . . .

Handley_Page said:

The mind boggles. . . .

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So are my SO's eyes. He was just reading over my shoulder and now he's blushing. It's so sweet!!!! Uh-oh...... I better turn the webcam off.....

There are far worse places to draw writing inspiration and material from when describing erotica, I’m sure.
Kant

In all seriousness, about thirty years ago or more I had in mind that I wanted to be a serious writer. And I remember reading in the professional journals for the wannabes ("Writer", "Writer's Digest" and the like) that if you really wanted to be a serious writer, you had to start with erotica.

Now, at the time I had some convictions that I called religious but were pretty well over on the nasty side of the Amen pew. And I categorically refused to participate in writing smut. And besides. I wanted to be a serious writer. And that "pornographic garbage" could not possibly be serious writing. I mean, whoever heard of a SMUT writer on the New York Times Best Seller list?

(When I did figure out just how many, it near curdled my pea brain.)

Got identical rejection letters from Tom Doherty and Jim Baen to add to my collection of almost two hundred before I burned everything in the bathtub late one night along with my waist length ponytail in a fit of pique. (The wife was decidedly unamused since it was 2a.m. and I set the fire alarm off.)

I pretty much gave up writing for the better part of two decades I think, other than the occasional "inspirational" piece for a school newsletter where I taught. I mean, what was the point if I sucked?

I ran across Literotica (and yeah, I had changed a whole shit ton. more than you want to read about, but it had been twenty-five years) and the first story I read, I was like "man, I've burned better writing than this!"

So, I figured "what the fuck" and jotted up a little entry for the Halloween contest going on, a retelling of "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow," and thought it was pretty damn good.

And Laurel sent it back in my face like I'd talked about her mother!

So, I took my bat and ball(s) and went home to pout for another couple of years.

And took to lurking around the stories that did make it past Mistress Laurel's whip to try and figure out just what the fuck they had that I didn't.

After awhile I tried again, and once more got slapped down.

It took a couple more years and being slapped down twice more before I finally managed to squeak something past Mistress Laurel back in 2012.

And got manhandled in the voting. (It's since rebounded to a 4.3, which is better than it deserves, with 36k views... which sort of sucks since it's been up for over five years in "Group Sex" category.)

Over the next two years, I managed to slap eighteen more attempts up and learned a metric shit ton more than I ever had reading "How to" manuals from published authors and taking a few college courses in creative writing. Or my "more serious literary efforts" of a few decades earlier. I mean, come on. Sex is one of only two needs that slides all up and down all five levels of Maslow's Hierarchy Pyramid. If you can't write sex to get somebody's motor running other than your own, you need to seriously revisit your paradigm! Don't you?

So, I revisited my paradigm nineteen times total and barely managed to eek out four H ratings (and one that has yet to break 4.0) before I took a two year forced sabbatical.

I made a brief single resurgence for V-Day 2016 (not counting my tales in the boards threads) and managed to swipe a HW before fading away on another forced sabbatical.

And now I'm back (under a third name) with four submitted efforts so far.

I've been asked by some of my new followers (none of the old ones have found me so far) whether I ever write anything not erotic in nature. At least a couple have pointed out the "naughty bits" in my two contest stories could well be deleted and they would still think it a decent read. Which is flattering, but I've pretty well learned my limits. If there's not sex (or at least sexual tension) (and some violence) involved somewhere, I can't write it worth a damn.

And besides, writing about sex is about as much fun as I've found short of having it. I mean, come on now. If you can't have fun writing about sex, you've really, really got to revisit your paradigm! Don't you?

Any road, OpenMouth, I probably should have just kept my trap shut since I'm pretty sure I didn't answer the question and I doubt I contributed anything useful. But, my two cents (and no, I don't have change) is fuck it. You do you and write the tale you have to tell. And if it's "only" a tale of some tail, tell it well.

PuckIt: I enjoyed your saga...but it left me wondering what you did wrong that kept you from having your stories accepted? I don't think I've heard of anyone having such persistent problems passing muster. Care to enlighten us...think of it as a learning experience you can share after suffering through years of hard won knowledge (I'm not specifically thinking of the 'Last Jedi'...but something like it! )

yukonnights said:

PuckIt: I enjoyed your saga...but it left me wondering what you did wrong that kept you from having your stories accepted? I don't think I've heard of anyone having such persistent problems passing muster. Care to enlighten us...think of it as a learning experience you can share after suffering through years of hard won knowledge (I'm not specifically thinking of the 'Last Jedi'...but something like it! )

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Egad, man! You actually read all that?!

Um, de dum. Well, I guess the biggest problem I had actually started in childhood. I tested out on a college reading level when I was eight and had a tendency to devour books like most kids ate candy. I hesitate to call what I do "speed reading" since I took a class once and it actually slowed me down. But, it's somewhat close. I think I read "Beowulf" in Olde English the first time when I was... ten, maybe? And that just exacerbated the problem. Because, you see, I pretty much skim without really seeing each individual word and my mind fills in what should be there, whether it actually is or not. Especially since I fell only two points short of an eidetic memory when I was tested. Which meant I really was just incapable of being my own beta reader or editor since any time I looked at a page I'd written, I saw all of the different variations and rewrites.

I just made the problem worse when I clepped out of every grammar class after my Freshman year in high school. You don't have to be perfect to clep, just good enough. And, among the good writers I'd read, I had also read some that were... well, not edited well enough before going to print. And mistakes they made were engraved on my memory just as indelibly. (As was the music I'd been listening to while I read it, the smell of cut grass coming in the open window...) As a result, when I wrote something not dissimilar from a passage I'd gleaned from elsewhere, I would more likely than not make the same mistake they (and their editor) had made. (And, of course, an eidetic memory only works if you actually read the shit in the first damn place!)

(Yeah, I know. "First World problems." But, you did ask.)

And, of course, I was a cocky little shit. No one could tell me a damn thing. And, I for sure was NOT going to pay someone to proof and edit my writing for me. (Even now, as I'm test driving this new Grammerly.com, I have a tendency to argue with it. Granted, I'm just testing the free version, but still.)

The rest of the troubles I ran into in those early years are largely irrelevant since they centered around an entrenched publishing industry and literary agents with scads of rules about submissions via the U.S. Postal Service that are largely defunct with the advent of home computers, the internet, email, and so forth. And, in the spirit of complete honesty while I did get a pair of rejection letters rubber stamped with Tom Doherty (TOR) and Jim Baen (Baen Books), the majority of the rejection slips I got were from "literary agents" gleaned from the back of "Writer's Market" who thoughtfully enclosed a form to fill out in order to purchase a spot at their next seminar or their new book on "How to write and make money" for a small fee of $$.$$.

("Let me guess. Step one, take out an ad in the back of 'Writer's Market' posing as a literary agent?")

Jumping ahead to my time standing on my head and gargling peanut butter to try to get Mistress Laurel's attention...

Well, I did some checking and apparently my Parkinson's has eaten more of my fading eidetic memory (which is pretty cool, because now I can read something I've written after a couple of weeks and be surprised ) than I realized because it actually wasn't quite as bad as I implied since I joined as Acktion on 08/31/2011 and "Virgin No More" was accepted on 11/28/2012, just over a year later. So, it was one year instead of two.

"Ride of the Headless Horseman" finally slipped through on 10/07/2013 after being kicked back again and again and going through not one but four volunteer editors. The one and only time I took advantage of the volunteer editors listing. I think (and keep in mind my once almost eidetic memory no longer is) I finally ended up switching out "playa lake" for "pond" and "runneled" for "ran in rivulets" and it passed.

(Yeah, I know I would benefit from finding another after my wife and live in proofer passed away shortly after helping me get "Heatstroked", the only one she actually got to read, completed. But,... Eh. I pretty much look for red underlined words when I paste from Notepad into the submission screen and it's worked so far.)

As far as the votes, once I learned how to sneak past Mistress Laurel,... Mmm. Truthfully, I mostly just pay attention to the more literate comments that go beyond "What a crock of shit *1" and try to focus on playing up what seems to work and what doesn't. That and I gave up trying to find the perfect voice that would resonate with everyone who saw it and working in every possible trick and tip gleaned from literature and creative writing classes and just go with the voice that seems to work best for the particular tale. And, I suppose, I stopped seeing my mad scribblings as any reflection of me at all, but just entities in their own right to be taken or left each as they lay. Last, but not least, with the passing of the Survivor Contest, I stopped trying to write out of my comfort zone since I'm actually pretty vanilla and can't really do "fetish categories" (or pretty much anything outside of straight up hetero romance) without tripping the fan's bullshit detector.

But, eh. Like I said. I pretty much should have just kept my mouth shut since these days I mostly write (and forum) just to give myself something to while away the time without my wife to keep me company since I'm disabled and largely housebound.

Any road, thanks for reading and then asking and then reading again (if you made it this far without deciding I'm so full of shit my eyes should be brown instead of grey). I'll shut the hell up now and quit hijacking OpenMouth's thread.

Seeing as how I write what I like to read as far as erotica goes...

When I was younger I would get aroused when I was writing. Now that I'm older I still get slightly aroused, but sometime I get so involved in the story that I can think of nothing else for day at a time. I also tend to leave a lot of story background information out...which kills the story and I don't see that until it's too late.

Now, after bypass surgery and with all the meds I'm on...arousal is limited. In my mind I'm aroused, but the other head has a soft time of it.

PuckIt Yes, I read the whole thing (twice ). You gave me my first smile today with your tale. Quite a talent, I would say, considering that it was a tale of woe. And one thing you said made me think of something I should check...The story I've just completed is full of slang contractions. I think they are critical to the story and, as I said earlier someplace, my own "little red line machine" seems happy with what I've done. BUT! That may not mean that Laural's "red line machine" will agree...so me thinks I better go upload it and make sure I'd be real disappointed come Jan 19 if I found out her's didn't approve

yukonnights said:

PuckIt Yes, I read the whole thing (twice ). You gave me my first smile today with your tale. Quite a talent, I would say, considering that it was a tale of woe. And one thing you said made me think of something I should check...The story I've just completed is full of slang contractions. I think they are critical to the story and, as I said earlier someplace, my own "little red line machine" seems happy with what I've done. BUT! That may not mean that Laural's "red line machine" will agree...so me thinks I better go upload it and make sure I'd be real disappointed come Jan 19 if I found out her's didn't approve

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Ah! I wouldn't sweat about slang and colloquialisms in dialogue. Typically, I've found her pretty understanding about quotations and purposeful misspellings and grammatical errors to portray dialect.

On the other hand, some of the ones that have sneaked past her red line machine have made me wince hard when I spotted them. Probably the absolute worst to date was the Anal submission in which I got all the way through to the end and I didn't catch and she didn't catch where I "shot my load deep in her bowls." Without a doubt my most cringe worthy.

PuckIt said:

Ah! I wouldn't sweat about slang and colloquialisms in dialogue. Typically, I've found her pretty understanding about quotations and purposeful misspellings and grammatical errors to portray dialect.

On the other hand, some of the ones that have sneaked past her red line machine have made me wince hard when I spotted them. Probably the absolute worst to date was the Anal submission in which I got all the way through to the end and I didn't catch and she didn't catch where I "shot my load deep in her bowls." Without a doubt my most cringe worthy.

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Thanks PuckIt for the advice. Just got a couple of others saying the same thing, but maybe add a note to be sure.

I wouldn't worry too much about that typo...probably half the ones reading it spell it the same way...and, if you did your job, the other half most likely were too preoccupied to notice

Hey, PuckIt, I read all of it too. I enjoyed the alliteration at the end!

Thanks for the input, everyone.

PuckIt said:

On the other hand, some of the ones that have sneaked past her red line machine have made me wince hard when I spotted them. Probably the absolute worst to date was the Anal submission in which I got all the way through to the end and I didn't catch and she didn't catch where I "shot my load deep in her bowls." Without a doubt my most cringe worthy.

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How else do you mix a bun for an oven, if not in a bowl? Makes perfect sense .