What are you doing here???

[Emilymcplugger]

So I was reading a delightful post by MelissaBaby on her journey to writing on Literotica under the title “5 Years” (it’s on here so take a look, it’s really interesting), but that got me thinking.

MelissaBaby’s journey sounded like an emotional one, but then I thought “I wonder what drove other people to write on here?” I mean, let’s face it, as hobbies/past-times go, this is a pretty unusual one.

So, that is the question, not so much “what are you doing here?” but rather “what drew you here to write erotic fiction?” Motivations, stories, etc. let’s have a chinwag as to what put us all here.

 

[EarlyMorningLight]

I’ve been a writer for a long time, although in recent years it’s mostly been boring stuff for work.

The last time I wrote erotica seriously, I was doing the commercial thing on Amazon & Smashwords. Really formulaic stuff targeting specific niches/kinks, real paint-by-numbers throwaway writing. I got bored with it pretty quickly, and even cranking out mindless crap, I wasn’t producing enough to make it viable as a commercial endeavor, especially as a free-time side hustle.

My other creative outlet aside from writing is making music, but it’s hard to find the time and space at the moment (work is busy and I have a toddler). I was climbing the walls after an extended period of not making anything, so I started thinking about writing again.

I came to Lit because I knew the stuff I wanted to write would have negligible commercial appeal (and I didn’t want to deal with the hassles of the commercial platforms, the endless promotion, building social media followings, etc. — that’s all way too close to what I do in my day job), but I could see that a handful of writers who I respected had built followings here.

So now I’m two stories in, and actually interacting with some of those writers who inspired me to get my ass into gear and get back to work. And I’m in a much better headspace than I was a few months ago without a consistent creative outlet.

 

[gunhilltrain]

I first started experimenting with some screenplays nearly seventeen years ago. I mostly tried to redo some existing movies (some of the shooting scripts for those are online). So far, I have made one script partially into prose - the Valerie in New York series. It wasn't well-received, but I still like it anyway.

In 2017, I was recovering from heart surgery and I started tapping out on my computer a kinky but utterly ridiculous fantasy. Eventually, it grew some plot and I thought I'd try to make a novel out of it. That was a bit too ambitious, so in March 2018 (I don't remember how I found it) I decided to try short stories on Lit. The first one was a small part of the proposed novel. Eventually, I'll have a series that sort of overlaps with the intended novel.

The original kinky story of 2017 has become a fantasy in a male narrator's mind, and he briefly describes it to his girlfriend in My Summer with Nora Ch. 05. It's about halfway down and he starts by saying, "I had a weird fantasy about Lilith when she was so mad at me."

 

[Voboy]

I was a reader for many, many years. One day I was out running, and I started to imagine a story that could stem from that, and around the same time one of my favorite writers here stopped writing. So I just reckoned I could write my own, and bob's your uncle. I'd always been good at writing: it's always been more or less effortless for me, ever since junior high. So?

The rest, as they say, is history. I still enjoy that first story I wrote. It appears to have over 73,000 views now, which boggles my mind. It seems to have gone live on April Fools of 2016, which means I must be misremembering when I wrote it, since I thought I wrote it at my parents' house. Nope. I'm never there at the end of March.

Odd.

 

[elizaloo]

Excellent topic!

I've been writing pretty seriously since Junior High, I wrote my first novel in 6th grade? I think. School newpaper, was as stringer for two newspapers for three or four years.. Bored housewife for a long time until I went back to school around age 38 or so...took a few creative writing classes for kicks and just fell right back into writing all the time.

Huge fan of 'bodice rippers' back in 6th grade, a woman I babysat for had a HUGE library of them, so writing similar stories was easy. This was early 2000's with AOL dial-up so I did a search for erotica/written porn/whatever and found a few sites. Those got shut down - don't remember why, wasn't there some crack-down on porn online at one point? Then Lit popped up and I found the perfect place to read and eventually post around 2006.

Had health issues and stopped for many years, now back at it and having a great time.

 

[TxRad]

I had always wanted to write but my handwriting sucked, my spelling sucked to start with. I moved to a typewriter but i couldn't afford the whiteout and my spelling still sucked. Then I got my first computer with Word for Works on it. Now I could easily correct my typos and misspelling. I was off and running. Porn, uh, erotica was easy for me. Sex on the brain helps.

My first story was a 287 page novel. It's posted with all 20 chapters. It is only moderately edited but what the heck. Lit is my fun place to write.

I was on another site and had never heard of Lit until one of my readers pointed it out. Shortly after that the site I was on turn into a pay site so here I am.

 

[SimonDoom]

What am I doing?

I'm writing dirty stories and having a ball doing it, to be honest.

But if the question is, how did I get here, it's a combination of things.

I've wanted to write fiction all my life. I did, a little bit, as a kid, but from 18-on I did not until I wrote my first story for Literotica. I have spent my entire adult life in a profession where I have written all the time, but I never wrote fiction. For over three decades I wondered, could I do that?

I discovered erotic fiction about 20 years ago, and I read hundreds of stories and this nagging voice inside me wondered, could I do that, too?

Also, over time I came to see erotica as an opportunity to explore fantasies I never explored in my real life.

By 2016, all these different feelings finally converged, and they created the impetus to move forward, and I wrote my first story. I haven't looked back.

 

[Dearelliot]

Because there are many porn stories here, and I hope to one day, be able to submit my own story here.
I love to read and write the kind of porn that I enjoy and have been doing it for years. I like my characters and story line and would enjoy sharing them but:
As I try to get my story ready to submit, I keep finding fault with it, editing it for the hundredth time...and my subject matter doesn't seem to be a very common theme here so I doubt many people would enjoy it.
But that said I am getting close to submitting one of them.

 

[WritingwhatIlike]

I had read a lot of stories here, and at one point went through the I/T catalog from A-Z, reading the red H stories. I got a feel for what was on offer but in many cases I would read a story and end up with a 'if only they had' feeling. It culminated in a desire to write the stuff I wanted to read. Half to scratch that itch, and half to see if I could. I've been enjoying the journey from conception all the way up to publication, as nerve-wracking as it can be. I'm not the most prolific but go through waves of inspiration.

 

[Lifestyle66]

I read a lot of stories here for years.

My wife likes to travel, so when driving long distances or sitting in an airline seat for hours, I have a lot of time to think. When she looks at me as we're driving two hours to visit the kids, she'll ask "What are you thinking about?" Well, now she knows the standard answer: sex!"

I started putting some of my ideas in writing, and a year and a half ago tried reviewing them for stories worth posting here. And a year and a half later, I'm STILL trying to make one worthy of posting. Maybe the next one...

 

[MetaBob]

I took the name of this site as a challenge. Write literate erotica? Not schlock, though of course there's plenty of that here, too. I'm in.

 

[RejectReality]

I wrote the first story I posted here as Dark for my Baileykins, and she adored it so much that she kept bugging me to share it with others. Took a couple of years, but I eventually took the plunge.

 

[tenyari]

I've always had a lot of stories in my head, and I dream lucidly. I got past nightmares as a young child by editing them, sometimes turning the monster I was afraid of into a protective guardian.

My mother was published in the pre-Internet days, and she used to read some of her erotic poetry aloud - which was extremely awkward when I was a teen... But it was also my introduction to the idea that 'porn' could be in literature rather than just badly acted films staring actors that were strung out on drugs... (as the stuff was in the pre-Web days).

I stumbled upon alt.sex.stories back in those pre-web Usenet days and in between the mass of short stroke stories there were always gems of better quality. Reading a few of these made me want more of them, and when I couldn't find what I wanted to read, I sat down and wrote it.

My username comes from the name of the main character of my first story, which was never completed enough to post. At the time I picked this name I thought I was a few days away from finishing that story, but I'm so far over 20 years away from it... My first actually posted story was a dream I had that I wrote down in a rush, then posted. About a man who had always wanted to play with dolls in his childhood, was never allowed to, and then found a robot. A lot of people at the time presumed I was into the 'robot girl' kink - but I'm not and generally don't like that genre's tropes.

I'm on literotica because even back when it was very active the archive for alt.sex.stories was a messy site with no filters to keep unsavory content out. It's search system was primarily designed to help you find the most recent Usenet posts, and Usenet's been dead for over 20 years while that system was never updated and the site seems to be now half dead (the login server for authors, near as I can tell, was shutdown 5 years ago).

I still can rarely find the stories I actually want to read, I find more now that are close, but not quite; so I am still trying to finish my own stories instead so that such stories at least exist.

 

[PennameWombat]

I was good in English in high school and despite a Uni CompSci degree took plenty of liberal arts courses. Which all meant I wrote plenty of essays and such. But once graduated my focus was software and technical writing. No fiction. But I've always been a voracious reader, mainly in F&SF.

But the basic ideas that are the base of Mel's Universe have bounced around my head for years. During a long distance phase with my current spouse about two decades ago, I wrote some erotica to entertain her. That gave me the urge to convert my thoughts to written form, but wasn't sure what venue. But I knew I wasn't 'ready' to go for formal publishing (whether self or not.)

I found a few erotica sites, but one key reason I was uncomfortable posting on them was the high number of stories with children and young teens involved. LitE's strict 'no under 18' rule was a key attraction for me to finally post fiction and erotica here.

I'm here to entertain myself and hopefully entertain others, work out if I can tell stories. I pull bits from my life, but don't write for therapy, nor to fictionalise any real life experiences. Everything I publish here is truly fiction.

 

[Ian_Snow]

The simple answer for me is advertising. I needed to get my name out there and stories on Literotica get a lot of views.

The slightly more complex and warmer answer is that I've been a reader here a long time, nearly a decade and a half. I like the idea of having some works here. Making acquaintances with some of my favorite smut writers from here on the forums and Twitter is a joy.

 

[tenyari]

LitE's strict 'no under 18' rule was a key attraction for me to finally post fiction and erotica here.

Yeah, that one has become more important to me, event though my most well known story violates it with a main character that was 17.

In returning to this stuff 20 years later - that rule was the first reason why I stopped in here. Another site I've been looking at copying work to, has a 16 rule (per the law in that site's owner's country) - which I'm NOT comfortable with. And because they went with a number lower than one would expect, they are constantly being asked by people to 'make an exception' and allow even lower, which I find... disgusting.

 

[BronzePlaceWriter]

Because I enjoy writing in general and am working on it as a career. I do SFW writing too under a different handle, and am gearing up towards publishing on amazon as well as in the early stages of running a web novel. I always did NSFW writing but over the years as I improved, I got a ton better at it. Eventually, I needed some extra money and it occurred to me that people will sometimes pay for commissioned NSFW writing. It's generally easier to get a commission for erotica than sfw stuff because erotica has a wider range of attraction. Most people probably won't pay you for a short story of their own devising - if they are interested enough in it, they'll generally write it themselves, but there are plenty of people with a specific kink or fetish that they want to see more of and can't write in high enough quality to meet the demand personally.

That's where I stepped in. I was able to deliver decent quality work for good prices, and got a few commissions here and there (Some of them may be up on lit eventually.)

Once I got it going, i felt the need to create a history of work to potentially attract new commissioners, but also because I just sort of enjoyed writing in general. Obviously, the more well known I am the more likely someone will bite, but I also just enjoy pushing myself and generally trying to make each work better than the last. Unlike a lot of people I have met (Not so much here, but just generally around) I don't regard erotic writing as any lesser than SFW writing and I think it's a good idea to be skilled with them. From that point of view, my being here is the same as me doing work anywhere else on the internet. I am here to enjoy myself, to learn and grow, to attract readers and if I am fortunate, maybe to get some commissions.

Frankly, I would love one day to be able to merge my SFW handle with my NSFW handle and have all my work be under a single name, but that's probably not very likely xD

 

[Defluer]

Huge fan of 'bodice rippers' back in 6th grade, a woman I babysat for had a HUGE library of them, so writing similar stories was easy. This was early 2000's with AOL dial-up so I did a search for erotica/written porn/whatever and found a few sites. Those got shut down - don't remember why, wasn't there some crack-down on porn online at one point? Then Lit popped up and I found the perfect place to read and eventually post around 2006.

I found a "Bodice Ripper" when I was fairly young and now that I'm thinking about it, that was probably the seed. My fairly Christian parents found it in my room (eventually) and wanted to ground me, but first asked me where I'd found it. In the garage with my aunt's basically abandoned stuff, well dad couldn't call out his own sister so they just took the book and didn't say anything else about it.

Jump to me being the first in the house to get my own computer and AOL Dial-Up being the only real way to access the Internet. Pictures were great and I certainly had a collection but they are devoid of any context. When I found text stories that seed ensured I was hooked. I think I probably started writing as soon as I started reading. I even submitted some to another website that eventually went paid, I didn't like the atmosphere there, stumbled across this one, and joined up. Posted in... 2006.

Answer to the question? I write because I have to. I think I'd be a lot quieter and weirder dude if I didn't, with all these damn thoughts and stories running through my head. I get them out and while they emerge here and there throughout the day for the most part I can make a note and then go on with work and socializing.

Because there are many porn stories here, and I hope to one day, be able to submit my own story here.
I love to read and write the kind of porn that I enjoy and have been doing it for years. I like my characters and story line and would enjoy sharing them but:
As I try to get my story ready to submit, I keep finding fault with it, editing it for the hundredth time...and my subject matter doesn't seem to be a very common theme here so I doubt many people would enjoy it.
But that said I am getting close to submitting one of them.

You just got to do it. Even if it's niche, I know that my I/T stories do way better than my other category of stories but I tell myself that if a few people like the other stuff. Enough to vote or even comment, than it was worth it. Especially if you have it finished already! You can still go back through and edit/update. But for me, writing in complete lock down was not a good thing. I wrote all of my Fucking Magic series and then started publishing it chapter by chapter. Luckily I switched to that from my original plan of putting it out in the three parts I'd written it in, because readers were confused by some perspective changes I used. That allowed me to change one of those, for the better I think. Then I ran into a big hole that in my head was more explained than it was on the page which has stalled things but that was the beast. I'd written, tweaked, and re-written the previous chapters so much that the little hints and information I'd dropped that lead to Part 12, are gone. Now I'm trying to find a way of building up the reveal in an organic way. And my stupid head only allows so much banging at it before I have to step away for way to long of periods of time.

 

[jsmiam]

To answer literally, what I’m doing is frittering away hours of my life, at least on the forums. The one redeeming factor is that I tend to mostly do it via the phone, filling in gaps in time, rather than long sit-down sessions. (Wait, that's contributing to shortening my attention span. Is that actually redeeming? And what were we talking about, again? I forgot.)

As far as writing, I came to learn and improve, using the shield of anonymity to avoid feeling any embarrassment. The learning and improving was required, in advance of the the novel (and AFI top 100 movie that will follow) that's been bouncing around my head for over 20 years. As a sidenote, the movie will reunite Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleason (In Bruges) when Hollywood picks it up. ;-)

 

[Duleigh]

I've always had an active imagination and an ability to express myself and found myself on the cusp of yet another change in my life, alone in a town that I liked, in a job that I hated. Three of the last four companies I worked for went bankrupt leaving me scrambling for a secure footing, I needed something to soothe the inner turmoil and I saw turning to drugs or alcohol take so many relatives, so I knew that wasn't the route for me.

In the past I had been able to turn my inner anger outward in humor and during my military career I was able to satirize the situation I found myself in via the written word, a mock regulation, a humorous version of a base newspaper, a "filk" of a popular song (back when music was actually musical) before Weird Al made it big. Later I was an avid fan of the TV show Farscape and wrote some fan fiction on the Farscape forum.

One day as I was reading a story on Literotica, I had to do something to take my mind off of the collapse of the company I was working for (Adelphia Cable) so I decided to give it a shot and wrote three stories about a woman I liked who had published a few stories here also. It helped. Two years later I found myself having to do something to take my mind off of the collapse of the company I was working for (Time Warner Cable) I wrote three more stories, these were based more on fantasy.

Then came a big change, a big move, a new marriage. My injuries from the military caught up with me, and I was hit with a very rare vascular condition... what fun is living in Colorado if altitude makes you sick? I turned to my old standby and started writing, I wrote myself into a corner then started again, then I challenged myself, could I write an original take on a popular Christmas story? So I did it, and I realized that I could enter it in the Lit Winter Holiday contest, but I took so long to polish it that I missed the deadline, so I decided to keep writing, start publishing and see where it takes me. And I'm still working on that Winter story.

 

[Emilymcplugger]

I read a lot of stories here for years.

My wife likes to travel, so when driving long distances or sitting in an airline seat for hours, I have a lot of time to think. When she looks at me as we're driving two hours to visit the kids, she'll ask "What are you thinking about?" Well, now she knows the standard answer: sex!"

I started putting some of my ideas in writing, and a year and a half ago tried reviewing them for stories worth posting here. And a year and a half later, I'm STILL trying to make one worthy of posting. Maybe the next one...

You’ll only know if it’s worthy of posting by posting.

Like Yoda says “try not. DO …or do not. There is no try”.

I did my first erotic story this year and I had never written ANY erotica before that. You’ll only know if you’re good enough by starting and practising and making yourself better.

 

[Lifestyle66]

You’ll only know if it’s worthy of posting by posting.

Like Yoda says “try not. DO …or do not. There is no try”.

I did my first erotic story this year and I had never written ANY erotica before that. You’ll only know if you’re good enough by starting and practising and making yourself better.

Mine was a tongue in cheek reference to the relatively low ratings and views I got on my first 16 stories.

So, I'm still striving to publish that worthy one.

 

[XerXesXu]

So, that is the question, not so much “what are you doing here?” but rather “what drew you here to write erotic fiction?” Motivations, stories, etc. let’s have a chinwag as to what put us all here.

I came to Lit to see how to write/what could be written about sex. I don’t recall how I found it, maybe just googled, but it fitted my purpose, and Lit is the only writing site I’ve read or posted on.

The PC made it possible for me to write recreationally, my handwriting is illegible; professionally, I’d always dictated to tape and sent it to the pool. I wanted to document a particular time and place for posterity; the advent of self-publishing enabled that. The time and place were pregnant with pleasant erotic memories for me, so I wanted to incorporate that feeling into the writing.

Having done that I moved on to write non-erotic fiction, but I’ve stayed on at Lit to people-watch. That’s always been a hobby of mine.

 

[TadOverdon]

Lately, just trying to stay connected.

 

[Emilymcplugger]

Lately, just trying to stay connected.

Aren't we all.

I love how there's no one-journey on here and everyone's take is different.