Who do you write for?

[standingstones]

I normally write for myself. If I have a decent premise I will put it down on the screen. I do realize I have a group of followers who enjoy my stories. The bad part is after writing hundreds of stories I hate to repeat myself. Also, I find that incest is by far the favorite genre of tales. People can’t seem to get enough of this. So I continue to put these types of stories out.

 

[yowser]

To add to my thought of “orgasm count” I wanna state the obvious, which is that the numbers don’t matter. Even if just one person ever got off to something of mine it would be one more that would’ve happened without publishing something. And even if it was none, I’m free to imagine it happened. Kinda my way of bringing more good things into the world.

And yes. There’s more to enjoying erotic literature than orgasming, but it’s so nicely concise that it feels more easily measurable than, say, how many have enjoyed something I write.

Sounds like Lit just needs a correction factor on scoring.

One orgasm = ten Five Star votes

 

[roowa]

Sounds like Lit just needs a correction factor on scoring.

One orgasm = ten Five Star votes

Hmm.. that might change everything, or nothing at all.

So today, we can vote only once for our own story, right? So would an author's orgasm could count for ten 5-stars, too? That's a case for writing for yourself, if I ever heard one!

But there's a lot more readers than the lonely one author, so if you can get at least one reader to orgasm, you've broken even. But more than one and sh-bang! There's the case for writing for your readers!

But do the trolls take 5-stars away when they can't get hard and draw nothing but blanks?

Dammit, the scoring system might still end up a bit broken.

 

[gunhilltrain]

As I said above, I write for myself and to satisfy my demanding Muses.

Only when I have posted a story on Literotica can I forget it and move on to the large pile of incomplete stories. I'm driven to complete and get yet another one out of my system.

I have too many story ideas - every day! I could start a dozen new stories each and every day but I have to force myself to concentrate on finishing and posting one before I can move on.

I tried reducing the heap by posting my heap of part finished stories as:

https://www.literotica.com/beta/s/oggbashan-stew-pt-01 and the other three but that was only a temporary relief.

You've been have so long and written so much; thus I'm not sure I can comment on this but I'll try.

Maybe you should think of it as blessing. You'll never run out of things to do (so many people in our society have that issue, often quite early in life).

You wrote in Part 1 of your "stew," "I have realised that I am NEVER going to complete all my part-written stories before I die, so I have decided to upload all the incomplete works as a set so that others could mine them for plot ideas."

I am sixty-five and I had a close call, health-wise, two years years ago. I started writing after I got out of the hospital because, well, I had to do something as I recovered. I suppose I'm grateful that I did find something that still works for me.

 

[jehoram]

Well, I write for myself.

But I also follow Kurt Vonnegut's advice to write for one person, as if you were writing a private message. In his case, it was for his sister Edith, who died young but was still in his memory.

In my case, I write for a close friend who is also a writer of erotica (among other things). If it pleases her, I feel I've done well.

 

[GroverLang]

So we can vote only once for our own story, right?

Nope. It depends how much time you have on your hands, a willingness to travel, and how much you want to accumulate the little red H’s.

 

[OneAuthor]

I would say I mostly write for myself, but I can't say I haven't written certain scenes with my intended readers in mind.

 

[ElectricBlue]

I would say I mostly write for myself, but I can't say I haven't written certain scenes with my intended readers in mind.

I've written readers into my stories, as cameos.

 

[Spencerfiction]

I would say I mostly write for myself, but I can't say I haven't written certain scenes with my intended readers in mind.

I’m 70 years old, so for most of my life (55 years) I wrote for only for myself. I started my first monthly school mag/comic at 11, for a ha’penny a look, the money only to finance the next exercise book to produce the next issue. We had 20 pupils in my class in a village school and a rival (a boy I can only remember as "Poulter", we were all just surnames in schools then!) started up a competitor, but I beat off over a handful of issues. When 14 my parents moved to a new town and the new huge school had 7 classes of 36 boys, and they put me in the 3rd class until Easter and then the 2nd class until Summer. I roll up with my brand spanking redesigned "comic" and I was regarded as ‘weird". My previous English teachers encouraged me, my English teacher for my last 2 years at school hated me and everything I wrote.
From then on I wrote only for myself. My family and new friends weren’t interested in my stories, my girlfriends, even the one eventually to become my wife only read a few under sufferance. So I worked the stories out in my head, typed them up as partial drafts and as soon as I’d concluded them in my head there was no need to type them up to completion on my old manual typewriter. I did complete some and sent them to publishers from late teens to mid-20s but rejection wears you down.
When computers came I got rid of my second clunky typewriter and carbon papers and typed them up, each change of computer leading to loss of stories. Now Literotica and other sites provide an outlet, and I’ve also self-published 22 paperbacks on Amazon, but at first I found it really difficult to actually write stuff than anyone considered readable, a lot of experimenting to get any kind of competency without any formal training.
So now I do write stuff very conscious of an audience, but I still insist that I decide how the story moves through its development and completion without conforming to any formula or writ, so in the end I really only have myself to please with the final result.

 

[Damoiselle]

I write exclusively for other people. My head is full of complex, sprawling stories that I wallow in for my own pleasure, but I only put myself through the torture of actually writing the damn things so that I can share them.

I frequently fantasize about having the means to hire something that I can dictate to, and they'll actually type the base story for me, but I know that would inevitably do more to ossify my writing skills than it would to help them evolve.

 

[lovecraft68]

I write exclusively for other people. My head is full of complex, sprawling stories that I wallow in for my own pleasure, but I only put myself through the torture of actually writing the damn things so that I can share them.

I frequently fantasize about having the means to hire something that I can dictate to, and they'll actually type the base story for me, but I know that would inevitably do more to ossify my writing skills than it would to help them evolve.

Alexa....write my porn.

My wife has Siri on her phone(not sure if that's how its spelled) but when my wife thanks her for something one of the replies is "I live to serve".....Great fun for the teenage boy mentality I've been stuck in since the 80's.

 

[davion2308]

Me, kinda

I write mostly for me but I write to imagine my wife participating in my particular kink. I love the exhib/voy category and whereas we've been married for 16 years, she's not one to participate.

I write because I need an outlet for some sexual frustration that she's not as passionate and exciteable as she used to be. She's much more "above all that" now when it comes to exploring sexuality and trying new or different or, or me, exciting things.

I write for me to create what I would love to see in the real world.

 

[Suedomnim]

I wrote two stories- my first serious attempt at erotica , for a long time friend, with whom things have finally turned romantic. I wrote them both as a premise for roleplay which I had hoped would materialize to a degree when we meet next .
Apparently erotica is not her thing , as an earlier poster put it she seemed to ' be above that sort of thing '. it was something of a kick in the gut to be honest , like finally finishing a painting only to have your close friends just look at ind say ' Thats Interesting "
On the upside , Ive found the community here , and I eagerly want to connect with some like minded writers, collaborate or compare ideas .. every one i come up with spawns two more - its like Gremlins , X rated little critters that pop up when theres anything moist around ... yup there goes another one , a chick whose Vadg pops out furry creatures when she gets wet enough.

- Sue

 

[WoodmanStark]

My wife has Siri on her phone(not sure if that's how its spelled)...

Yes, P-H-O-N-E is how "phone" is spelled. Good job!

 

[WoodmanStark]

As I've said before, I write for myself only. Yes, I publish here in hope of feedback (read: ego stroking), but how others might receive my work is not even a tiny consideration when I'm writing. I write the stories I would want to read, for a target audience of one.

 

[JaxRhapsody]

I write to get the stuff out of my head, and on "paper". For those who like, or at least read my stuff by proxy.

 

[WoodmanStark]

I write to get the stuff out of my head, and on "paper".

SAME!

 

[nikisixx]

xxxxx

 

[yowser]

First, I am writing here to become a better writer. My other genres are totally different. The pace, the style, ...everything is different.

Erotica is hard to write and do it right.

I have not found a way to become a better writer without writing. One can read others, one can think, one's imagination can tend to the infinite, but it is not until you try to narrow that insolent and eternal gap between vision and execution that any real progress can be made. And putting pen to paper, literally or figuratively, is the only real avenue to progress.

I think Lit is an excellent (or at least adequate) platform. Your output can be extensive and your feedback will be quick, and often useful (a certain amount to be discarded, perhaps more than in other arenas but rarely absolutely useless - at the very least one can discover which hornets' nests are the most sensitive.) Folks will let you know when you have done a pratfall, and the stakes are relatively low.

I think erotica and humor are two of the hardest genres to write well. Easy to try too hard at both, easy to overdo, easy to be tone-deaf and wrapped up in your own sensibilities. Twain always complained that he was just a low-brow humorist, but his work was amazingly perceptive and tonally perfect.

Go for it.

 

[nikisixx]

xxxxx