Reasons for Writing

[madelinemasoch]

I'm intrigued to hear what people's reasons for writing at all are. I think we need more discussion on the forums about writing itself, as an art form. It's Author's Hangout, after all. This can be for your erotica here or elsewhere and for your writing in general, not limited to any specific story, though I'm aware reasons may differ for each one. The reason why I'm interested is because I think there must be some deeper reasoning and motivation beyond just "getting off." The whole "I write to please the readers" shtick doesn't seem sufficient either. There were no readers when you first sat down at the keyboard. Do you want to change the world? Do you want to explore parts of yourself? Do you want to escape into a visualization of a better life? Do you want to alter people's outlooks about erotic subjects? Do you want to play a part in shaping peoples' erotic pretensions and outlooks? Let me hear it.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

I write because I don't want to be on my deathbed wishing that I had gotten those stories out there.

 

[StillStunned]

I've been telling myself stories in my mind all my life. Back when the wife and I were dating I wrote a dirty story for her, and about a year and a half ago she finally convinced me to write some more. I found that I enjoyed taking those stories out of my mind and putting them on screen.

 

[Bamagan]

Sorry, but my principal reason for writing is getting off. Or at least, that's much closer to the facts than any of the other things you mentioned, none of which have much if any bearing on my smutsmithing.

 

[ronde]

I wrote my first story just to see if I could do as well as some of what I was reading here. When it seemed to work, that opened up a new way to relax after working my technical job.

I don't have any illusions about changing how people think about anything. My stories are just stories about things I've done, people I've known, and especially historical events. I don't write about those things per se. I write what might have been alternative ways things turned out, or in the case of historical stories, how ordinary people who are usually ignored by history experienced those times and how those times changed their lives. Sometimes, my stories are a way to live through my characters.

I've never written a story for the purpose of getting myself or any reader off. If my readers manage to do that from my stories, that's fine. If they don't, that's fine too. I didn't write them for that purpose.

 

[AchtungNight]

I’m one of those people who wants to live vicariously through my stories. My most recurring male lead is something of a self-insert with far more luck with the ladies than I could ever have- well, he started out like that but is a different character now in a few ways. The most recurring female lead is a manifestation of my ultimate fantasy girl made real. Together they enjoy various adventures and erotic experiences over about three-four decades. Lose virginity, hook up in college, split for career paths, have all sorts of relationships with various people including fanfic versions of hot celebrities, each get engaged or married to someone else and then divorce, and then get back together with each other in an open marriage. It’s a life I could never have IRL and fun to both imagine and create. Fun to read also, or so people have told me.

It didn’t start out like that, of course. I just had a vision of some famous nude models getting it on together after the 2006 Vanity Fair Hollywood issue cover shoot and decided to see if I could write it up. That became “Fear, Lust, & Vanity” (link in profile). Folks liked it, I wrote more femslash fanfic stories and a few guy on girl stories too over the next few years off and on. I quit in 2010 to focus on a marriage I hoped would last. It didn’t but at least we parted amicably. Last year I had a bit of a midlife crisis and I decided I might be happier if I started writing again. I did have a lot more fantasies, after all, including some hot ideas for video game related hookups and the aforementioned ultimate fantasy girl. So I wrote a bunch more stories, here we are. I still get depressed now and then, or lose interest temporarily, so I may not put out more the rest of my life. But we’ll see how things go. Feedback is appreciated, so are good thoughts.

 

[grenefire]

I write because I don't see anyone else writing the type of stories that I write. I have all these ideas and I feel like I am not the only person out here who wants to read about the combination of kinks/fetishes that I do.

 

[samhasstories]

I write because I'm a writer. It really is as simple as that. It's just something I've always loved to do. I'm happier when I'm doing it, the more the better. If life intervenes and I'm unable to get to writing for one reason or another, I feel something is missing until I'm able to get back to it. I don't hate my day job, but I don't find it particularly satisfying or fulfilling. If I manage to get some writing done in my spare time, I don't feel so much like I'm spinning my wheels, spending my days doing something I don't ultimately care that much about.

I write more non-erotica than erotica, but the story's basically the same. I have an active imagination, and when ideas get into my head I write about them. When those ideas are sexy, I write erotica. When they're not, I write other stuff.

 

[SimonDoom]

I write for a multitude of reasons, and different stories address different reasons.

1. I write because it's enjoyable to write a story. I have story ideas in my head and it's pleasurable to get them out of my head into words.
2. I have always loved reading, and I enjoy words, and the process of putting something into words and fussing over the words is, for me, pleasurable.
3. I'm probably getting something psychological out of my system that I don't wholly understand. I didn't start writing erotica, or ANY fiction for that matter, until I was over 50 years old. I had a lot of things by that time to get out of my system.
4. I feel like I have something to say (not always sure exactly what that is) and this is a way to do it.
5. Erotica turns me on.
6. I get to express, through fictional narrative, my views about erotica, human sexuality, and human self-expression. I have very strong sex-positive views and I think the world is seriously messed up on the subject of sex. I can get on my soapbox and nobody can stop me. I like that.
7. Power trip. I can make my characters do whatever I want them to. I am the God behind my stories. I can make my characters do all kinds of crazy stuff that gets me going. I love that.
8. I enjoy the positive reader response. I don't write for readers, but I sure do appreciate them, and I enjoy the author-reader relationship.
9. I like knowing my words can help people achieve orgasm. That's pretty fucking awesome.

 

[shelleycat1]

I have written reports and minutes all my working life but never fiction. I suddenly saw a story here, and thought that the author has a really interesting concept and what would other parts of that world look like? So I thought about writing a story, then I wrote it. The whole process was fascinating. Then I managed another in the same world, and I think the second time round went better. So it was all to please myself and just see what it would feel like to write a story. The fact that nearly 2000 people have looked at it makes me even more pleased. People on the forums have helped with advice.

 

[TheLobster]

Because I can make thousands of people around the world cum with mere words. Surely that counts as a superpower?

 

[Kasumi_Lee]

I started writing to indulge my personal kinks and was amazed and gratified to discover how many other people there share them to one degree or another. I love stories in which the female MC is impregnated (sometimes against her will) and ends up with a hot guy's baby and a happy ending. Both of those things together is non-negotiable.

I also write a lot of White Male-Asian Female erotica because most of the interracial romance and erotica available on ebook retailers with that particular racial combination is, in my not-so-humble opinion, and with some notable and very welcome exceptions, absolute garbage. I write WMAF erotica not just to indulge the kinks mentioned above, but to prove that you can write steaming hot interracial erotica with White men and Asian women that doesn't reduce the latter to one-dimensional lotus flowers spouting the equivalent of "me love you long time".

 

[Priscilla_June]

I write as an escape primarily, like if I did not apply these ideas to a story or paper they would rattle around my head until it drove me mad. Its a creative escape that I hope to be an outlet of the worlds I have in my mind.

 

[Otto26]

I write the stories I want to read.

 

[intim8]

Do you want to change the world? Do you want to explore parts of yourself? Do you want to escape into a visualization of a better life? Do you want to alter people's outlooks about erotic subjects? Do you want to play a part in shaping peoples' erotic pretensions and outlooks?

All of the above.

The common thread is that I want to explore an idea, and I want others to know about what I've seen in it. And that I would like them to come around to my way of thinking about it. Not so much ideas like "guy bangs girl", but deeper ideas, philosophical ideas. Ideas about human nature, the nature of societies, things like that.

They don't need to be profound, just something that can be looked at in a different way than is commonly done. And the idea doesn't have to be the main point of the story. I don't want to write stories that bash people over the head with polemics and manifestos, (My first story here literally did, and now I cringe at that part), nor to tell them how to think, or even try to convince them. I want to just show them, and let them make their own conclusions.

The thing about fiction is that you can create a made up world or situation in which some idea like that can be brought to the fore and examined closely. In Aces, the first series is examining, through Brian and his "lucky" break, the things a lot of young guys really want, and the conflict between the romantic notions of falling in love with that special girl and how the real world actually works, and how all the sex you can get is often more than all the sex you want.

The sequel will be about looking at society and what holds it together, what keeps it running, seen through the lens of it all falling apart as the population dwindles to nearly nothing, from the bottom up. As new babies stop being born.

My WIP is about culture and sex, seen through a character that comes from a culture that has literally zero ideas about sex, one way or another. He's a grown man (~20 yo ) encountering even the idea of it for the first time ever.

Some of my stories put forward my own opinions, even political ones, but more by implication, and not in absolute, black and white terms, and those opinions are never the point of the story. I'd rather people put the "should" part together themselves by thinking about how things are, because the story gives them a concrete example to mull over.

Even the ones that aren't about big, world changing things, that are just fun 'little' stories, there's usually some small thing in them that touches at least indirectly on how people think about things, sexual and otherwise, and a hint of how I would like people to think of them instead.

 

[yowser]

The main theme is exploration. I want to travel, sometimes I have maps, other times I'm just following the wayward boat in front of me, or that green banked coast looks so sweet and alluring I got to see what else is there.

I like building things. There's a whole world of words for bricks, and then I wield a trowel and add some mortar to hold the whole business together. And the words are amazing, not just one kind but a whole passel of options. It takes work, and sweat, and effort that I could easily (and perhaps more productively) throw at other things but writing is so much fun to do I cannot not do it. I like bricks that feel good in the hand, ones that gleam, others that ooze a little, and sometimes if you get lucky, the final house is breathtaking. And if it isn't, there's always another blueprint to create, another few weeks or months to hammer away, trips to the hardware store, a look at other dwellings to get ideas, the discipline comes and goes but the drive is relentless.

Barbara Kingsolver said through one of her characters (cannot remember which - Demon Copperhead? or maybe The Poisonwood Bible?):

All the noise in my brain. I clamp it to the page so it will be still.

 

[karina_jayde]

I write for a variety of reasons:

1. I have a high sex drive and this serves as an outlet, particularly since my partner travels a lot for work
2. I find it easier to get off using my own imagination than reading other stories or watching porn, and my stories service that purpose to some extent
3. I like to write and tell stories, and I like knowing that people read and enjoy them. Publishing stuff here gets me a broader/wider audience than elsewhere
4. I'm a big fantasy nerd and I find that many traditionally-published fantasy stories are disappointingly lacking in terms of erotic exploration. I play a lot of tabletop RPGs and that sort of erotic exploration isn't really appropriate for most tables, so my stories are a way of exploring that side of fantasy
5. Writing is a way for me to explore kinks that I'd never really engage in IRL (breeding kinks, gangbangs, etc).

 

[gunhilltrain]

By the present year, maybe by chance, I have something to do in my retirement instead of playing Bingo.

 

[gunhilltrain]

I also write a lot of White Male-Asian Female erotica because most of the interracial romance and erotica available on ebook retailers with that particular racial combination is, in my not-so-humble opinion, and with some notable and very welcome exceptions, absolute garbage. I write WMAF erotica not just to indulge the kinks mentioned above, but to prove that you can write steaming hot interracial erotica with White men and Asian women that doesn't reduce the latter to one-dimensional lotus flowers spouting the equivalent of "me love you long time".

I assume you don't mean the "Me so horny" Saigon prostitute in Full Metal Jacket. Kubrick does invert his testosterone-laden movie at the end by having a female Viet Cong sniper pin down the squad and then killing some of them. See the movie for the final results of that.

P.S.: I checked, and she does say "me love you long time" as her next line. Sorry, I seem to be wrong.

 

[M_K_Babalon]

Vastly active imagination, vastly empty bank account.

 

[mildlyaroused]

I mainly write non-erotic fiction.

Why do I write? I don't really know: my history as a writer stretches back too far into my childhood for me to really make sense of my own initial motivations. So putting those aside, and asking the question today, I suppose I write because it feels so attached to my identity that I couldn't possibly not write. And it helps that I love crafting people, worlds, and satisfying turns of phrase. I think it's a privilege.

 

[XerXesXu]

Escapism. Reading is passive, writing is active. I prefer to be active.

 

[Bramblethorn]

Some ideas sit there in my mind and itch until I write them down, and then they leave me in peace.

There are some kinds of story I want to see more of, so I write them myself.

Writing can be a way for me to process stuff and understand myself better.

It lets me present ideas that might change how a few readers see the world, or themselves.

And there's a kind of magic in being able to reach into the mind of somebody I've never met and make them cry or get them hot and bothered.

 

[KeithD]

I've been spinning stories forever, starting with running epics in my mind while doing chores. I was encouraged to take creative writing courses in my first college English class, and the stories I already was spinning in my mind became stories I got written out.

 

[ElectricBlue]

And there's a kind of magic in being able to reach into the mind of somebody I've never met and make them cry or get them hot and bothered.

This.

When I first started writing it was just to see if I could, and to indulge a few fantasies and to remember memories.

Nowadays, I'm still doing that, and living an erotic life through my characters. Knowing that I'm taking people with me, along for the erotic ride, is a powerful buzz. I do enjoy the, "I came, dear writer," comments, knowing that somewhere else on the planet I've got someone lying there with a smile on their face.