Here's a taste (for the rest click here)
M. Christian’s How to Write and Sell Erotica
is a collection of short essays drawn
from his regular blog postings on the ERWA website. As one might expect
from
their origins in the blogosphere, the style of these pieces is personal,
pithily opinionated and, at times charmingly irreverent; informal but
always informative.
Topics are wide ranging, touching on numerous issues of concern to
established and
aspiring writers of genre (i.e. non-literary) erotica. I especially like
Christian’s definition of erotica as works that “do not blink” when it
comes
time to describe sexual activity—a healthy counterweight to the sort of
prissy detachment
on display in Benedict’s book. His repeated observation that, in our
society,
if you cut off somebody’s head “you get an R rating; if you show someone
giving
head, you get an NC-17” is right on the money in addition to being funny
as
hell because it’s so maddeningly true. I find moving his suggestion
that,
perhaps, someday society will achieve such a level of enlightenment,
frankness
and maturity that erotica will disappear as a separate genre—would that
it
could be so in our lifetime. Like
Bright, Christian does his share of cheerleading, offering encouragement and
inspiration, though usually with a healthy dose of realism and a plea to
maintain a set of realistic expectations. There are so many marvelous quotable
passages in these essays I find it hard to choose only one; so updating the
ancient practice of sortilegium for the Age of the E-Reader, here’s one at
random:
One
more thing you could do [by writing erotica] is help people. We don’t like sex in this
country. Sure, we sell beer and cars with it, but we don’t like it. We’re
scared of it. Living in this world with anything that’s not beer and car
commercial sexuality can be a very frightening and lonely experience. Too many
people feel that they are alone, or that what they like to do sexually is
wrong, sinful or sick. Now, I’m not talking about violent or abusive sexual
feelings, but rather am interest in something that harms no one and that other
people have discovered to be harmless or even beneficial. If you treat what
you’re writing about with respect, care and understanding, you could reach out
to someone somewhere and help them understand and maybe even get through their
bad feelings about their sexuality—bad feelings, by the way, that maybe have
been dished out by the lazy and ignorant for way too long.
As
with any book of this type, readers
will not always agree with the author on every point—and that’s as it
should be. For instance, I don't agree with Christian--or Stephen King
for that matter--who argue that a writer should never resort to a
thesaurus. (As the compiler of The Erotic Writer's Thesaurus on this site, you can bet I disagree!) Nor does Christian like the idea of constantly
“changing up” descriptive words in a text, especially where bodily parts are
concerned. Others may be horrified, recalling nightmare
critique sessions in creative writing class where they were admonished to avoid
repetition and parallelism like the plague. Christian could have a point,
although his tone may be a tad too ex-cathedra
not to wrinkle a few noses, I remain skeptically neutral on this particular
issue, while Christian is happy to inform his readers that he never got much
out of those creative writing courses. He
also doesn’t particularly like being reviewed—“shut up!” I think were his exact
words. All I can say is; tough titties, dude; the book is recommended, so suck on it!
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