I’ve been thinking a lot about erotic writing lately.
I started writing erotic stories when I was 12 or so, and wanted to put my very explicit thoughts to paper. I’m quite sure they would have completely scandalized any adults who might have read them at the time - here I was, a pre-teen dominatrix, writing smut about the mean and nasty sexual things I might have liked to be doing to, say, the 40-year-old trainer who was teaching me how to weight-lift at my gym (throw him down in the parking lot and have my way with him, and if the gravel was uncomfortable for him, so much the better), or the hot guy from school who always wore a black trenchcoat (carve patterns in his chest with a knife), or the Goth girl who got around the no-crazy-hair-colour rule at school by dyeing the underside of her hair a brilliant rainbow that only showed when she put it up in a ponytail and was easily covered whenever a teacher walked by (something to do with a brick wall and a piece of rope). Anyway, I wrote these little pieces of wishful-thinking fiction regularly, and kept them to myself or threw them away or, in cases when I was particularly concerned about what the public reaction might be in my little world should anyone come across them, I would burn them and watch the glowing black shreds fly away on the breeze, never to be read by another soul.
The first time I actually sat at a computer screen and wrote an erotic story was in November of 2003. By this time, two things had happened. First, I was a lot less worried about scandalizing people; I’d found my confidence and my community, so the idea of admitting I wrote queer sadomasochistic stories - and therefore (gasp!) must have queer sadomasochistic thoughts, never mind practices! - held a lot less charge. Second, I’d started purchasing and reading anthologies of erotica, and I had realized (after my dozenth book or so) that hey, I could write this stuff. Every anthology, I discovered, contained stories I felt were better or more interesting than what I wrote, but also stories that were poorly written or badly edited or just plain boring. In other words, my work would fit somewhere in the middle: I had a place in that world. Plus, my writing had moved from wishful thinking to a hybrid of thinly fictionalized real-life experience and highly reality-based creative fantasy. They do say "write what you know," after all.
The first time I ever stood up in front of a crowd and read a piece of my own work was in January 2004 at a Sappho’s Salon - the occasional lesbo literary soiree held by my friend N. I remember, at the time, thinking it would probably be a piece of cake to read in front of a crowd full of my friends, but when I stood up to do so, I realized it was a crowd full of my friends! and that was somehow a lot more stressful than performing for a bunch of strangers. Downright terrifying, really. These were people who knew me, who might think I was weird, who might in the end decide my work was bad or cheesy or unsexy or… ack!
Anyway, despite my shaking hands and the fact that I had a cold so my voice was weirdly gravelly and I was about to have a heart attack and so forth, I got up there and did my thing. By the time I finished reading you could hear a pin drop in the room, and then there was a lot of applause and people came up to me later and told me my story made them want to go home and have sex with their honeys right this very minute. So I left feeling all warm and glowy and thinking, okay, this worked out just fine. At least I’m not the only person who wants to fuck after reading my work.
In April of that same year, I attended a writing workshop with Patrick Califia, who still stands (shoulder to shoulder with Carol Queen) as my all-time idol in the world of erotic writing. I submitted two of my stories to him for editing - a service included in the workshop fee. The workshop itself was interesting; I took lots of notes. It was quite the experience to sit in a room with ten other writers and jot down advice from the person whose work I most respect. By the third or fourth time we met, the starstruck-ness had worn off, but at the time it was still in full operation and I was thrilled just to be there in his august presence.
Months went by, and in October 2004, I received an envelope from him containing my stories marked up in red pen. A few edits here and there; nothing major; still very helpful. But reading the letter he included in that envelope remains one of the high points of my life as a writer - because in it, he wrote quite strongly that I should publish my work.
Honestly, knowing that my idol felt my work was worthy of publication was a higher compliment than any actual publication could be. No matter what happens in the future, the person whose professional opinion holds the most weight in this area of my life has given his seal of approval, and even if I get rejected by every publisher on the planet, that will stand as a vote of confidence that means the world to me.
So I kept writing. I also started researching the market. I checked the websites for the publishers who released the books I liked best - Alyson, Cleis, Circlet, Arsenal Pulp. I joined the Erotica Readers and Writers Association. And I picked up all the books I could find on the topic of erotic writing, just to see what was out there.
One of those books was Susie Bright’s How to Write a Dirty Story. While it gives a lot of sound advice on the publishing industry, writing technique and all sorts of other things, one of the most interesting parts of the book, to me, was the chapter entitled "A Devil’s Argument Against Publishing." In it, she includes such gems as:
"By not publishing in the public world - with the mediation of publishers, distributors, and retailers - you will remain unsullied and unembittered by the publishing process, which is not unlike being dragged naked inside a barrel filled with nails. No one will put a price on you, no series of twits will be the final arbiters of your value. Your writing will not be lost in the shuffle, or ignored, or insulted. It won’t find itself in the hands of the indifferent and indignant. You won’t be told you’re a superstar, but neither will you ever be called a has-been, a one-shot wonder, or a fraud. You will not be betrayed by strangers."
She goes on to say, "There is nothing like the thrill of reaching new readers with your work, the people who resonate with your creative ideas and want to share their own inspirations with you. There is nothing like hearing a total stranger say, ‘Your story changed my life.’ Some of those strangers will beecome your dear new friends, future collaborators, lovers, and comrades.
"However, in order to reach those new friends, lovers, and comrades, you are going to have to go to The Market. The Market is not ‘your friend’; The Market does not have your self-interest at heart. It can be an intoxicating place - the money changing hands, the competitions, the auctions, the promotions and premiums - but it isn’t a place that puts art first, or people first. It puts money first, and that requires a measure of illusion and exploitation that must be endured in order to reach your desired audience. … There is no dishonour in being an artist who simply doesn’t want to get burned. If you do go The Market route, you will, without exception, get burned, and so you have to be the sort of person who tolerates scarring."
Wise words, I think. So what does it mean that I still want to publish? Sure, I tolerate scarring, but I’m not a big fan of exploitation, especially not when it comes to creative control of my work. I’m not interested in watering down my writing to make it more suitable for The Market or anyone else.
I don’t think it’s mental masochism. I’m not sure exactly what it is, honestly. Ego boost? Probably in part. It feels good to know that people like what I write. Validating, encouraging, whatever. I think we all like approval in one form or another. Some of it is also the joy of producing work that speaks to people, and the desire to follow in the footsteps of the people I most admire. There is a next generation of erotic writers, and I want to be part of it. I want to change the world, and that’s a lot more likely to happen through feeding people’s erotic imaginations - the place that, in some ways, we are most powerfully ourselves - than through producing a tight piece of advertising copy. Also, unlike some writers, I have another career - well, OK, it is a writing and writing-related career, but I certainly don’t make a living writing fiction. I can afford to write fiction "for fun", so that means I can afford to say "no thanks" if an editor wants to cut the soul out of something I’ve created. There’s always the option not to publish after all.
That said, there’s a charge to fiction that simply doesn’t exist with the other kinds of writing I do. Somehow, while it feels good to publish a journalism piece in a newspaper or come up with a catchy marketing tag line for a client and see it show up in an ad a couple of weeks later, these things carry considerably less emotional risk than putting my explicit sexual thoughts to paper and showing them to the world. And therefore, even if they’re much better paid, they’re ultimately less satisfying. Less risk, less reward.
Why does it work that way? Is this just a human thing - triumph in the face of adversity or risk being somehow greater than triumph in the everyday grind? Maybe we are inherently masochistic. Maybe the process of risk and reward is just part and parcel of our existence, and we each need to find the place where the balance lives - a balance where we succeed often enough to make the failures spur us on instead of discourage us, where the pain of not always getting it right or the fear of disapproval and rejection is compensated for by the joy of acceptance and validation. Gawd, we humans are such complicated creatures.
So about a year and a half ago I finally screwed up my nerve and started sending things off to publishers to see if they thought I was indeed worthy to be part of the world of publicly available erotic writing.
And what do you know, they started saying yes. My first-ever submission was accepted into Best Lesbian Erotica 2006 - it ended up being cut for lack of space, but it still felt good to know the initial response was positive. And now I’ve got two pieces coming out in the spring, one in a Violet Blue anthology (I think I mentioned this here a couple of months ago) and one in Lori Selke’s anthology Tough Girls 2, the first of which was nominated for a Lambda Literary Award.
I have no idea where this will lead. I have no expectations of becoming the next Califia or Queen or Bright. I highly doubt I’ll ever weild that much influence in this field - my output isn’t high enough and even if I had the dedication and skill of my heroes, it would be very hard to revolutionize a field that’s already been so completely revolutionized in such a relatively recent past.
But I do feel good in knowing that I’m an entry-level player in their world, that I can in some way join the cultural conversation that is queer erotic writing. I may not have the most widely known or universally compelling contributions to make, but it’s kind of thrilling to be a part of creating queer culture nonetheless, even if it’s just a tiny part. I think I can handle being knocked around by The Market a little bit if it means I get to enjoy that privilege.
I fully expect that at some point - and likely a point where I’m really feeling vulnerable - The Market will take a bite out of me, just as Susie Bright warns. I have no clue what that will feel like or what it’ll do to me. But regardless of what other people think of my work, and regardless of my own fears, I stopped burning my stories a long time ago.
