Sometimes You Feel Like A Nut.

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

How far will you wander off the reservation and stray from your comfort zone with your writing?

 

[lovecraft68]

How far will you wander off the reservation and stray from your comfort zone with your writing?

All the way if the story calls for. I have written scenes that have left me shaking and sick to my stomach but its what the story called for.

 

[Desiremakesmeweak]

I can't tell. I write economics reports for banks and mining and occasional primary industry corporates for money.

Not sure these days if erotica is the more, or the less conservative thing; it certainly has more integrity.

However, to answer the question directly - um, yeah I don't stray from what I am personally comfortable with. In fact I think I am pretty pedantic about it; I am not one of those who uses writing (fiction) to test barriers or experiment with ideas. I use my writing as propaganda and I intend for my own ideas and politics and moral philosophy to be platformed in the writing, I guess. Definitely.

 

[DonnaBeck]

How far will you wander off the reservation and stray from your comfort zone with your writing?

I have tried to broaden my horizons because I think it is a good exercise, but then I risk losing authenticity. My most recent story was my feeble attempt at "non-consent" and the readers that previewed it laughed their asses off and told me it goes in erotic coupling. There are a few categories that are easy for me and some that I just can't get my head around at all and still others that are just plain challenging.

I think if I try to write things that don't turn me on, they will fall flat, or insult the reader. Great writers can write murder having never killed anyone, but I am not great. I do feel like I am improving though and have evolved. I only recently discovered my foot fetish. Who knows, maybe I have a deep seeded dream to fuck my brother? Yuck. Not even in my nightmares. My attempt at that category involved a brother-in-law to whom I have no blood relation. Yeah, Erotic Coupling is definitely my hood.

 

[Hypoxia]

I have yet to write a story that turns me off. Much of what I write doesn't turn me on, but I don't mind either challenging or pandering to readers, no matter my own reactions.

How far would I go? Don't know. It's like when a medic or pharmacist asks, "Are you allergic to any drugs?" and I respond, "I don't know, I haven't tried them all yet." I haven't yet tried reading, let alone writing, all the categories on LIT.

I'm not really into reading/writing anal, GM, BDSM, noncon, fantasy-nonhuman -- yet elements of those have wandered into some of my 'journal' tales and satires. A couple of my tales (linked below) will never be approved here because they cross boundaries -- I already went too far. Would I take those or similar themes any further? That would have to be for my own edification, now wouldn't it?

I'll admit it -- I'm pretty new at writing fiction. Much of what I've written falls within my comfort zone, even if the activities are some I never have nor will engage in. I'll probably go further. Will I ever write non-satirical pieces involving centaurs, unicorns, succubi and incubi, reptilioid aliens, 25-part GM anal daisychains, BDSM rituals, BBC-lovers and other racialized stereotypes, or some of the more entertaining fetishes? Maybe. Never say never.

BTW my latest story, AS SIMPLE AS BLACK AND WHITE?, is about interracial incest. Top that, eh?

 

[patientlee]

Honestly, I have no idea. We'll see, I guess.

 

[SamScribble]

I guess I tend to write about 'people I know'. So, as a rule, I don't wander very far at all.

 

[slyc_willie]

BTW my latest story, AS SIMPLE AS BLACK AND WHITE?, is about interracial incest. Top that, eh?

Twin gay male incest with non-con and a multiple-murder plot

I write what I feel like and sometimes it pushes my boundaries, sometimes it doesn't. Most of my early fare was directed at straightforward arousal, marginally touching on some kink. Lately (after my hiatus from Lit which lasted a few years), I've been writing edgier stuff. I don't consciously try to come up with a story that shocks, reviles, stuns, or confuses readers, but if any of that occurs because of the subject matter, then I'm satisfied I got more than a sexual rise from them.

My general caveat is that I appreciate those who take the time to read my stories, but I don't do anything in particular to pander to them. If they like it, they like it. If not, there are thousands of other stories to choose from.

 

[Acktion]

Once upon a time, I'd have scratched my head and wondered what it was about the question I wasn't understanding. But, I was much, much younger and more naïve then. And hadn't taken a college course in the psychology of sexual deviancy. (Some things just can't be undiscovered. )

If that weren't bad enough, I've been down (and up) some roads in practical experience that I probably wouldn't have even known existed much less explored left to my own devices. (But, isn't that true of us all?)

Writing, though. If I can completely dissociate and approach it from a pure cold analytical perspective, then I have yet to encounter anything that is impossible for me to write about. Just how well I write about it in such a case is a completely separate point.

More often than not, though, I find that what gets to me and shatters the glass barrier of my comfort zone isn't so much the mechanics of a particular given scenario but the exploration of the feelings and emotions of the participants.

Edit; Sidenote; I just recalled a short story Mrs. A wrote a long time ago that involved the detailed murder of everyone in the house from the killer's perspective using a baseball bat. She was able to craft the descriptions of the bludgeoning deaths of Man, Woman, and three children including one cherubic toddler... yet, couldn't bring herself to have the yappy toy poodle added to the body count and let it live to be picked up by the lead detective and carried in his trench coat pocket during the investigation. I thought she was a soft touch for that. But, I thought it from where I was sleeping in a different room with a locked door.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

I can't tell. I write economics reports for banks and mining and occasional primary industry corporates for money.

Not sure these days if erotica is the more, or the less conservative thing; it certainly has more integrity.

However, to answer the question directly - um, yeah I don't stray from what I am personally comfortable with. In fact I think I am pretty pedantic about it; I am not one of those who uses writing (fiction) to test barriers or experiment with ideas. I use my writing as propaganda and I intend for my own ideas and politics and moral philosophy to be platformed in the writing, I guess. Definitely.

Your post made me think of my ancestor, Thomas Bond, a Philadelphia physician and surgeon and pharmacist (he owned a saloon too) until he died in 1784. He was a seminal force in the best sense of the term. Someone else got official credit for discovering morphine in 1804 but Bond beat him to it by almost 30 years. Bond had the crazy idea to think heroin had analgesic properties, and planted poppies somewhere he then used to extract morphine from. I imagine Bonds stuff was rude and crude, not refined morphine, but his soldier patients at Valley Forge prolly didn't care when it moderated their distress.