I often compare erotica to other genres. But there is one way in which I am pretty sure it differs quite dramatically. Most erotica writers I talk to agree – you have to feel sexually charged to write really good sex scenes. That doesn’t mean you have to be so horny you type with one hand. But your head has to be in a fairly sexual headspace in order to produce the good stuff.
I have tremendous envy for people whose sense of sexuality is self-contained. Although my sense of eroticism is incredibly self-generated and very often emerges through places and objects and situations that aren’t, on the surface, at all erotic, I have come to realize that my sexual headspace is incredibly dependent on the knowledge that I’m desired by someone.
As I have aged and grown to know myself better, I realize I’ve become sexually shy. I was never exactly aggressive in my sexual interest, but over the years I have become more and more tentative about it. To the point now where I am almost obsessed with being polite, and very careful that I fully understand the situation before I will show any sexual interest at all.
I think this is partly a function of age and the damage that a media driven, youth obsessed society does to most women as they age. But it is also, I think, a symptom of how much I have withdrawn from the physical world in the last decade.
Earlier in the summer, after serious internal struggle, I decided that life was short. That there was no way of knowing what the future would hold for me. That I should stop being such a ridiculous coward. So, in the full knowledge that I would probably suffer tremendous pangs in the aftermath, I issued an invitation.
See? This is why I find it so hard to write HEA or even HFN endings.
Because, of course, the invitation was rejected. And, of course, the fallout was entirely predictable; it was a massive blow to my self-esteem. But rejections do that to everyone. More curiously, it put me in a place where I absolutely doubted my ability to read people. I suddenly realized that I had, over the years, progressively lost my capacity to gauge levels of attraction. And, even curiouser, it completely killed my sex drive.
In the long run, the impact has been that I don’t trust myself to write realistic characters with realistic reactions. Because if I am so poor a judge of motivation and desire in my own life, how the hell could I write anything that comes close to being ‘true’. I had always thought I was reasonably gifted at reading people. But if I ever was, this is a gift I have lost. And that makes it hard to be confident in my writing.
The other impact is that I can’t write sex at all. I don’t mean that I’ve simply lost the motivation to write it. I’ve tried to write it, and it makes me physically sick to do it. I got half-way through writing one for a recent call for submissions and ended up on my knees in the bathroom, vomiting up my lunch.
What I’d like to know from other erotica writers is… how does your personal sex life affect your writing? I’m really interested to find out.
(Addendum: after a few very kindly meant communications, I feel the need to make this absolutely clear: the discussion I want is on the subject of how we construct ourselves as sexual beings and how that feeds our creativity as erotica writers. Discussions on the actual rejection, who did it and why are entirely irrelevant. I chose to discuss this personally because it explains the context of a massive change in my writing practice, but no comments, however well meant and supportive as to my personal life will be posted.)
This is a great post RG cause I agree. My ability to write erotica really does rely on my head-space. Late last year I was churning out erotica faster than I could believe but in May this year I got over my own lack of a sex life. I just accepted it wasn’t going to happen and stopped caring. As such I’ve barely written anything and what I have written is far from quality erotica. I haven’t actually written anything in that genre since early August and I can’t see anything coming forward any time soon.
I agree that feeling desired but also desiring someone is an intrinsic part of the process and I have noticed that there are some who use social media to boost that catalyst to their writing whether they openly admit it or not. I’ll admit I tried it when I thought it might stoke my passions but found it to be like any hard drug, the come down sucks worse.
Writing erotica is like orgasms now. I’d rather just go without then have to fake it.
Brave post RG. I hope things improve for you soon.
Xoxo
“Writing erotica is like orgasms now. I’d rather just go without then have to fake it.”
Brilliantly said.
I can’t speak to your specific problem… but yes, I’ve found it impossible to write anything new for a while now. Put simply, the words don’t flow; I can (and have) made a start, and even got quite a long way into a story – 15kwords in one case – but I’ve found it impossible to follow through to the end.
Why?
What’s changed?
I could try to blame many things, but ultimately I can only blame my own inability to create in written form. The inspiration to write has gone, and in it’s place I’ve got games, and photography (sometimes) but mainly simply being with my wife in the evening. It’s our thirty-fourth anniversary tomorrow and, largely as a result of me changing behaviour due to getting my head out of my arse as prompted by reading “Don Lockwood” and Nick Scipio, we’re closer than ever.
If the words start flowing again I’ll write more. Until then… I’ll cuddle and enjoy. 🙂
Congratulations on 34 years! wow. You’re a lucky man, Steve. Who needs smut when you have that?
“The other impact is that I can’t write sex at all. I don’t mean that I’ve simply lost the motivation to write it. I’ve tried to write it, and it makes me physically sick to do it. I got half-way through writing one for a recent call for submissions and ended up on my knees in the bathroom, vomiting up my lunch.”
This part worries me. It seems like something that could be connected to a very unpleasant past. Do you think you might benefit from some professional help?
(I don’t expect this to get through moderation, and that’s okay; I just couldn’t find a more suitably private way to say this. Should you have the kind of very unpleasant past I am talking about, I just want to offer my support. I have a very unpleasant past myself, and professional help has helped me a lot. That’s all.)
Take care. I hope all of this passes soon.
Heheh… Catherine. I don’t have an unpleasant past at all. Although I’m quite sure I could do with professional help. Although my erotica, when I am finally capable of writing it again, might suffer the death of the banal then. hehe.
Oh, well, excellent! I am glad to hear it. Because the unpleasant past thing…yeah. It can make writing erotica very difficult.
I imagine it certainly would.
I’m afraid I’m the anti-you here. I live in my head. It’s a strength and a weakness. I’m far more even-keeled than most people I know and I’m absolutely the guy you want with you in a crisis. While other people are freaking out, I’m solving the problem. However, I don’t feel passion or other emotions as deeply as others appear to. Wanting to kill yourself over love, aka Romeo and Juliet, is incomprehensible to me. This is not to say I don’t love, and love deeply. There’s just an intellectual regulator running at all times saying, “well, *that* would be stupid. How about we don’t do it?”
So my writing is reasonably independent of my external world. For sex scenes, the trick is to push myself into the head space where I can write from my subconscious. That requires quiet uninterrupted time and some mental foreplay, but that’s about it.
That ‘mental foreplay’, though, actually is *easier* when I’m celibate or not feeling desired. It’s not a strong correlation, but it’s there. I write better sex scenes when I’ve gone a while without an orgasm.
(redacted)
I’m not sure this helps at all, but it does address your curiosity. My personal sex life barely affects my writing because of the nature of who I am.
My sexual expression seems to be entirely self-contained. I’m just the opposite; it doesn’t seem to matter whether or not someone actively desires me, it’s more about feeling the desire, finding new and novel ways to express that desire to others. Sometimes it feels like the act of writing sex, and of writing erotic stories and the relationships within them, is more real and dynamic to me than my actual sex life. I suppose it is, in a way; after all, when I’m writing the sex, I get to move in and out of both characters and “experience” it from all sides.
First of all, great respect to you for writing this – openly and honestly – when it concerns your personal life… but, I agree, that is irrelevant to us, so I shall move onto answering your query.
I know a lot of writers find it hard to write if they aren’t having sex, but that has never been the case for me. I often write better (I think) when I’m not, because I can channel a lot of my pent-up sexual tension into my writing, which I believe gives my writing more intensity. (At least I think it does!) But in terms of how much I write, or how inspired I feel to write, it has very little to do with whether I’m having sex. What detracts from/adds to my writing is my ability to focus. If I’m distracted, writing of a sexual nature or otherwise, is unlikely to happen.
As far as emotions go (in affecting my writing), I think I’ve become almost too adept at compartmentalising. My emotional life doesn’t have a lot to do with my fiction. It’s a blessing! But it also worries me; I have a sneaking suspicion that if the two were more engaged, my writing might be better.
Absolutely the lack of a fire affects the writing and result. I find that fire in the belly/mind is essential to creating the scene that feels/sounds/looks realistic and arousing. Without “someone out/in there” I seem to just be writing words, describing the mechanics but the passion is not there. It doesn’t have to be a real physical sexual connection but just as you said, being desireous of someone, or desired by them, or hopefully mutual admiration.
I can get by with a constructed fantasy or rememberance at times but the writing that really does it for me, and my readers I think, is the material that is truely fired by an intensity I feel for/with someone.
I wonder, how many erotica writers do it for a living; how many do it fun, for escape. And if there is no fun, then what?
I can’t honestly say that my sex life has very much to do with my erotica, the ease of writing it or the quality of it. Because of a dissatisfaction with myself, physically but more psychologically, sex episodes for me are more or less a frustrating ordeal, a brackish channel that must first be forded, as it separates me from a euphoria that lay on the other side, and rarely do I have the courage or desire to cross.
As Lady Grinning Soul similarly related in a post above mine, I function better when I am not sexually charged. It clears my mind and allows me to use the entire spectrum of my imagination to write what I want to write, as opposed to me being aroused, even slightly, and subconsciously putting the things that I want, personally, into my writing.
Though there _is_ a sliver of my sexual unease that goes into my writing – I have never been able to write a story of heterosexual romance all the way to the end. I find myself floating somewhere between genders: I don’t want to be female and I don’t want to be male, though I lean toward male behavior and often without realizing it. In a way, it can be described as wanting to stand outside of the gender spectrum and look in. Observe it as it functions normally in others, and not take part in it. My stories mostly consist of romance between men, and I think this is how my ‘sex life’ manifests in my writing.
Normally I don’t actually set out to write an erotic story (or horror or whatever) at the outset so my initial mood doesn’t matter.
For the most part my sexual self is pretty entirely self contained and self generated. When I’m writing I don’t like anyone else in my head while I”m doing it unless I invited them or conjured their voice or something. I think that my erotic writing isn’t so linked to sex with other people because when I started writing it I was still damn near a virgin.
I won’t write erotica that doesn’t turn me on first and foremost. If at some point I don’t want to sneak off for a break, it’s not working and I need to do something else.
3 – 4 years ago, I was on fire with writing erotica (you might class it as porn; I care not!) and ideas came to me constantly. And yes, it has to turn me on – luckily most things do! This is going to sound odd, but in a way it was a form of grief therapy for me (my husband died in 2005). For me, orgasmic sex always has to fire my mental neurone – there’s no magic button on my body. My own sex life was going through an interestingly turbulent time, and that manifested itself in my writing.
I’ve been in a settled relationship now for 3 years and I have simply lost the urge to write, for the moment. Instead, I just wallow in YOUR writing, RG!
What makes you think I don’t appreciate good porn?
Oh, interesting question.
“Most erotica writers I talk to agree – you have to feel sexually charged to write really good sex scenes.” For me, that’s not the case. I had to think a bit about why. I think it’s that when I write, I don’t think of the story as being “about” sex–it’s “about” something else, which sex illuminates or resolves. A story might be about insecurity, or fear, or (one I’m working on now) being covered or hidden. I find my stories are usually more about one person than the two, but the second person is the means by which the first person moves on from some stuck place.
That’s a very broad description, but I think it covers a lot of what/how I write.
The biggest obstacle to my own writing of erotica is simply time and competing projects (that pay better). But if I ever have time, and feel stuck on the writing itself, it’s at the idea/plot stage. How does this person move forward? My own level of sexual desire at the moment doesn’t come into it that much. (In fact, I often write erotica when I’m traveling and therefore not with a partner–that’s the time thing again.)
But then I don’t think for me that sex is about *sex*–it’s about desire and desiring, understanding and being understood. It’s about connecting. Sex is the vehicle.
When I write erotica, I do mine my past for sexual fodder (the present is marvelous, but it is not all that varied, and also not filled with problems to overcome–there’s no plot!), but I feel that’s the crutch of an inexperienced fiction writer. The easiest place to look for ideas is your own life or a life you know well. But if it’s the feeling that is the basis of the story–that can be created and related in any number of ways.
Obviously I can’t take issue with your feelings. But I am going to challenge your conclusion (as I understand it) that if you misread one person/situation, even an important one, that you therefore can’t read people. To me, what makes a writer strong is the ability to convincingly convey a universal (such as desire). You might be drawing on personal experience, you might be weaving a total fantasy, but if you do it well, then I come as a reader who knows nothing about you, and about whom you know nothing (indeed, you aren’t even aware that I am reading!) and I find something familiar; familiar and, if I’m lucky, just a little different too. “Yes,” I think, “I know that feeling! I’ve been there!” and then “Oh…” at the different part. Not a different experience, not “I’ve never thought of doing *that* to a penis,” but a slightly different way of interpreting something, or of naming it, or of valuing it.
If you wrote something totally outside my own ways of thinking or reacting, I’d probably be puzzled. I need something familiar in some way to latch on to. The circumstances could be unfamiliar, and the characters’ decisions could be ones I wouldn’t make, and the resolution of the story one I hadn’t anticipated or didn’t want (being the HEA/HFN fan that I am), but that’s not what makes me connect with the story–it’s finding a feeling I’ve had. I think by and large most humans experience similar emotions. We (readers) know expectation and disappointment and anticipation and self-doubt and passion and hope and humiliation, and I bet most of us have experienced those emotions around sex and a partner, too. People might read HFNs for a feel-good moment, or for hope; but I think they’ll read the UFN (if that’s an acronym) because they’ve been there. Sometimes you want (for whatever reason) to wallow a bit, even if you’re wallowing in the past; sometimes it’s like picking at a scab; sometimes it’s the reassurance that you’re not alone, that others have suffered too; or even the feeling that you’re understood–maybe you can’t put your pain into words, but someone can, and someone has for you.
As someone whose looks would qualify her into the class of “middle-aged women who would have to pay if she wanted an extra-marital affair”, and as someone who’s always had a notoriously bad sense of what motivates others, I can’t say that any of this has affected my wildly unsuccessful writing career. Not being sexy means that writing gives me a way to feel sexy when I’m tired of reading others’ works which aren’t the stories I really want to read. But then again, I write mostly poetry & have yet to really finish a prose piece, so what do I know.
I write what excites me and I don’t necessarily start out excited. I write to become excited. Then, during editing, I work on sublimination, punctuation, and critical analysis. If I don’t keep myself aroused during my writing, I don’t finish. So I don’t finish a lot This is probably why I like writing poetry better b/c it constantly focuses the mind on the physical senses; whereas with prose, you have to do a lot of talk talk talking. I can pour my brain explosions quite prettily in small batches, but making sense of large heaves – eh, not so much. I just can’t keep the focus, find the pithy phrasing, examine the scent, reveal the room for endless pages at a time. I’m beginning to think I’m doomed b/c the difference between poetry and prose is like the difference between a sprinter & a marathon runner.
Being a dumpy, middle-aged, married & monogamous woman doesn’t make me feel any less erotically charged than a single, slim, twenty-three year old nearly-virgin. My energy for writing erotica comes before I feel erotically charged. I write what I would want to read because I’ve been quite disappointed with much work out there. It’s a case of “I think I could do better than that”.
On the other hand, I don’t write for extended periods of time because I lack discipline. My prose work is never completed b/c I need someone to kick my hiney, put my nose to the grindstone – or maybe it’s just yet another indicator than I write poh-eh-tree & not prose, so I just better get over it.
I’m also a terrible judge of character, but I’ve known that forever. I don’t let that stop me when I’m thinking about my characters because it’s the weirdest things which motivate people and short of deus ex machina, I just check to see if TSTL (too stupid to live) is not violated. But to reiterate, I write poetry, not successful prose, so what do I know – nothing.
I connect with a lot of the points made by Big Ed & Nettie – I, too, tend to live in my own head, in as much as I’m constantly dreaming up characters & situations regardless of how I’m feeling sexually: it’s almost an automatic process. And I tend to write the stories I would want to read, which is a surprisingly powerful motivation (though not very marketable); along with a desire to get these non-existent people out of my head.
Having been hitched to the SO for over twenty years, my sex life is certainly stable, almost predictable; it still can feed in to my writing, but I’m not dependent upon it, as my writing occupies a very specific portion of my brain (and, by extension, my sexuality). And there’s no question of me straying in search of novel experiences – she loves me, I love her, and you don’t mess with a winning formula.
Anyway, I’m rambling – what I meant to say is that I don’t need to feel erotically-charged to write erotica, but it doesn’t hurt the process. Sometimes I’ll be switched on & write something good, other times the simple act of writing will switch me on, and sometimes I’m just hacking around; either way, as long as something positive is produced, it’s all good.
It’s better that your judgement is sometimes flawed. Who wants to hear about simple successful advances? That would be like one of those ghastly self-help books, and we don’t what that. Not on my watch.
RG,
At times the motivation can very illusive, it will return.
Thank you,
-TFP
i can’t offer advice, just my own experience. My blog started because i was physically neglected by my wife (IRL i am a lesbian) for 6 years (now 8 years). We sleep in separate rooms/beds. My blog came about primarily as a means of self exploration of the D/s world…and i’ve written almost every day since i started two years ago…
It’s how i cope with a very-low sex life. i have a Master –my D/s life is hidden away from view, and i need a place to express the wants, the desires, the needs.
i didn’t have an orgasm until i was 49.
Writing about sex helped me cope with the lack of it (still does)…i only see Master once every 4-6 weeks for behind-the-door playdates…
Where do the stories come from? Maybe because i had such a fantasy about sex and D/s…they just…come. This is totally unhelpful, isn’t it? But the bare bones is that i sit, i type, and the words flow through me from the Universe, i guess.
All those secret, hidden things, the forbidden, the nasty, the dark, the sweet….they all have their time in the light, and from them, i’ve found my own sense of wholeness.
Blessed be…
nilla
I have had a long dry spell with my writing which seems to coincide with another dry spell… I am able to ‘fake it’ if it is necessary for deadlines, however, I can hear the hollowness echo through the words and I assume everyone else does too. Almost every project i am involved with has something to do with sex/erotica, but some do not leave me as vulnerable and wide open as writing, so, I try to focus on those instead.
Maybe I should put out an submission call about just this very subject…