Writing Erotica

My writing gig for Scarlet Girl has been bringing some interesting questions re my writing career and goals to mind. The thing is, I'm not ashamed of writing smutty stories, my writing has always had elements of smut in it, quite frankly. I've always said that a quality sex scene improves almost any story, with my tongue only slightly in my cheek. 

But, I do start to feel slightly tawdry and paperback-shelf-at-Target when churning out fireman and police office sex scenes. Like, come on, cliche. To that end, I've so far been striving to write as far from cliche as possible, looking for new and unthought-of places and situations for these little interludes to occur, trying to find ways to make trysts between a poor helpless female and the big handsome man who saves her seem less trite and overdone. It's been a challenge. I've also been looking for ways to make these more like my regular style of writing, to craft them as if they were any other short story and not just meant to tittilate as much as possible. As in, just because they are sexy stories doesn't mean they shouldn't also be well written, literary, artistic, and up to my usual standards.

For example, one of the stories I'm proudest of at the moment is called Ashwood's Anger, and it's a super hot punishment piece, Victorian setting. I'm pleased with how the writing came out, I think the characters have some life to them though, admittedly, a piece like this is going to be a bit two-dimensional, the sex is hot, and the setting is one that I love to write in anyway, so it allowed me to flex those writing muscles and meet my deadline at the same time. 

Here's a little excerpt, although you can read the full version here:

“Head up, Jane. Let me look at those breasts you were so keen to show to Lord Mortimer. Arch your back, that’s it. Don’t make me ask you to do these things, you know much better than that.”

Jane arched her neck back and looked towards the ceiling, thrusting her breasts outward as she did so. The cool air of the room away from the fire raised her nipples to hardened points, and made her shiver. She heard him drawing closer, could feel the heat of his gaze as it dragged from one end of her body to the other. Then, as light as a feather, the rod whispered down her skin, grazing along the valley of her breasts and down around her stomach until it tickled the insides of her thighs.

“Now then,” he said. “I’m going to ask you for the truth of what you did. If your answers please me, I shall be kind. If they do not…”

The rod came stinging down across her breasts and Jane could not bite back a cry of pain and surprise.

At the moment, the stories are being posted under a psuedonym, since I wasn't sure if it would hurt or help to have that kind of writing directly linked with my name. Cause people can be weird. But I've been leaning more towards the idea that I should just own it, use it as an opportunity to hone my writing, make these stories the best they can be, and mine the archives later for pieces that I can submit to other, paying, markets.  

Thoughts?

Dreck

Today's quote of the day, via Advice to Writers, comes from Ezra Pound:


"The secret of popular writing is never to put more on a given page than the common reader can lap off it with no strain whatsoever on his habitually slack attention."

At a time when I've been battling that most irritating of recurring themes, that is, that my writing is dreck, this quote was poignant. I'm not sure yet in what way. Perhaps it's telling me to soldier on, not to compare myself with published authors, because so much of what is popular is actually crap, and the fact that I'm still struggling is only evidence of the fact that my writing is better, more deserving, superior.

Or just that, if all else fails, I can publish my crap and still get famous.

Eh. 

I have a deadline at the end of the week and I'm finding it supremely difficult to make any progress on the project in question. It's another erotica story for the website I'm writing an ongoing series for, www.ScarletGirl.com. I was working as a party consultant for them for a while, and when I pitched the idea of producing sexy content for their website, they were all for it. Especially after the big success of 50 Shades, which...sigh...I won't even get started on. See above quote.

Writing Group Prep - Jan 2013

With the new year upon us, my writing group and I decided to renew our commitment to our regular meetings and being productive. Lately, when we met at all, we ended up drinking coffee and gossiping. Plus, with the incentive of new blood in the form of my new coworker, we were galvanized shamed into doing something with ourselves.

We, amongst the four of us, we paired off and gave one another writing prompts for our upcoming meeting on January 19th. We decided not to set a word count or other restrictions on the prompt. That way, we could be free to incorporate the prompt into something we were already working on or craft something new. We're on the honor system to make it a worthwhile effort.

The prompt I gave my partner was the apocalypse, since it had been December 21st and we were all waiting for the world to end. She replied with prompting me with Winter Solstice.

I have it on good confidence that one of the prompts giving in the other pair was racist balloons. So. Make of that what you will.

I have not yet started working on my prompt story. After a brief internet search, I found some background info on the winter solstice that has drummed up some ideas, something about it being an ancient ceremony to celebrate the awakening and return of the sun god that sounds promising. I'm interested to see what I will make it of.