Saturday, October 10, 2015
Confessions Of A Literary Streetwalker: What's Erotic?
Thursday, September 15, 2011
Out Now: Finger's Breadth By M.Christian
Thursday, September 27, 2007
Confessions of a Literary Streetwalker: An Emotional Survival Kit
(the following is part of an ongoing series of columns I did for The Erotica Readers & Writers Association on the ins and outs and ins and outs and ins and outs of writing good smut)
Please read if you just had something rejected:
This is all part of being a writer. Everyone gets rejected. Repeat after me: EVERYONE GETS REJECTED. This does not mean you are a bad writer, or a bad person. Stories get rejected for all kinds of reasons, from just not the right style to a just plain grouchy, or really dumb editor. Take a few deep breaths, do a little research, and send the story right out again - or put it in a drawer, forget about it, remember it again, take it out, read it, and realize it really is DAMNED good. Then send it out again. Never forget that writing is subjective. My idea of a good story is not yours, yours is not his, his is not mine. Because an editor doesn't like your story doesn't mean that everyone will, or must, dislike it as well. Popularity and money don't equal quality, and struggle and disappointment don't mean bad work. Keep trying. Keep trying. Keep trying.
Think about the rewards, about what you're doing when you write. I love films, but I hate it when people think they are the ultimate artistic expression. Look at a movie, any movie, and you see one name above all the others - the director, usually. But did he write the script, set the stage, design the costumes, act, compose the music, or anything really except point the camera, tell everyone where to stand? A writer is all of that. A director stands on the shoulders of hundreds of people, a writer is alone. Steinbeck, Hemmingway, Austin, Shakespeare, Homer, Joyce, Faulkner, Woolf, Mishima, Chekov - all of them, every writer, created works of wonder and beauty all by themselves. That is marvelous, special: that one person can create a work that can last for decades, centuries, or even millennia. We pick up a book and through the power of the author's words we go somewhere we have never been, become someone new, experience things we never imagined. More than anything else in this world, that is true, real magic.
When you write a story, you have created something that no one - NO ONE - in the entire history of history, has done. Your story is yours and yours alone, it is unique - and you, for doing it, are just as unique. Take a walk. Look at the people you pass on the street. Think about writing, sending out your work: what you are doing is rare, special, and DAMNED brave. You are doing something that very few people in this entire planet are capable of, either artistically or emotionally. You may not have succeeded this time, but if you keep trying, keep writing, keep sending out stories, keep growing as a person as well as a writer then you will succeed. The only way to fail as a writer is to stop writing. But above all else, keep writing. That's what you are, after all: a writer.
Big deal. It's a start. It's just a start. It's one sale, just one. This doesn't make you a better person, a better writer than anyone else out there trying to get his or her work into print. You lucked out. The editor happened to like your style, what you wrote about - hell, maybe even that you set your story in their old hometown. Don't open champagne; don't think about royalty checks and huge mansions. Don't brag to your friends, don't start writing your Pulitzer acceptance speech. Smile, yes; grin, absolutely, but remember this is just one step down a very long road.
Yes, someone has bought your work. You're a professional. But no one will write you, telling you they saw your work and loved it, no one will chase you down the street for your autograph; no one will call you up begging for a book or movie contract. After the book comes out, the magazine is on the stands, the website is up, you will be right back where you started: writing and sending out stories, just another voice trying to be heard.
If you write only to sell, to carve out your name, you are not in control of your writing life. Your ego, your pride, are now in the hands of someone else. Editors and publishers can now destroy you, just as easily as they can falsely inflate you.It's nice to sell, to see your name in print, but don't write just for that reason. Write for the one person in the whole world who matters: yourself. If you like what you do, enjoy the process, the way the words flow, the story forms, the characters develop, the subtleties emerge, and then no one can rule what you create, can have you jump through emotional hoops. If a story sells, that's nice, but when you write something that you know is great, that you read and tells you that you're becoming a better and better writer, that's the best reward there is.
But above all else, keep writing. That's what you are, after all: a writer.
Thursday, July 31, 2008
Confessions of a Literary Streetwalker: Commitment
I don’t believe in talent. Sure, I think some people have a touch more hardwiring in their brains that lends them to be artists, musicians, scientists, and even lowly writers but I think that having this turn of mind never guarantees being able to utilize this towards a satisfying pursuit. When someone uses that word, ‘talent,’ I think of something that makes a person have a kind of special dispensation, a phenomenal leg-up on everyone else. I use an analogy to explain this supposedly hypocrisy: just because you’re a good driver doesn’t mean you’ll be a great driver – and not all great drivers started out being good drivers.
Maybe it’s because I think of myself as a Liberal -- that everyone is created equal, or at least have equal access to making themselves a better person – but I don’t like the idea of someone by luck (good or bad) having an edge. I also think the idea of talent is what a lot of people use to give up on something. They put pen to paper and when it doesn’t work out perfectly the first time they toss it too the floor, saying, “What’s the point? I just don’t have it.”
There is one thing, though, that’s true of great drivers as well as great writers: commitment. To do anything well you have to practice, you have to get up and do it even though you’d rather do anything else in the world. It’s easy to lock onto stories of first story sales, first book sales, and think that’s common, expected. But the fact is they are alarmingly rare. For every one phenomenal success there are thousands of other writers who sit in front of their machines every day and work, work, work. Sure, those flashy first timers often deserve their praise and fat checks, but they often vanish as fast they appear. Without determination, a willingness to be there for the long haul, they suffer from expecting the next project, and the next project, and the next project, to be as easy as the first. Someone whose battered and beaten their way up, however, knows that for every five stories, only one will be any good: its part of the game.
But there’s here’s something else to remember ... back to analogies: if you go out and just circle the track, drive the same car at the same speed, over and over again you may be a better driver but you’ll never be Tazio Nuvalari. Writing the same story over and over, never stretching, never trying new things, will have the same affect. Same with writing page after page after page but not taking the time (sometimes very painful times) to sit down with your work and really, honestly read what you’ve been writing. Determination and commitment is one thing, useless thumb twiddling is quite another.
You have to look really had at what you’re doing, to look at it and face the fact that sometimes what you’re going to write is going to be crap. Some stories deserve to be thrown in the trash, but what separates the casual dreamer from the person really in pursuit of their destiny, is when you can look at what you’ve written and go: this is crap, but I know how to make it better.
Personal confession time. Does ten years sound like a long time? Sure, it might be an eternity if you’re in a prison cell sometimes, but maybe only the blink of an eye if you’re a parent watching a child grow up. For me, ten years is what it took for me to become a published author. I started writing very seriously just out of high school and ten years later I sold my first story. Putting aside that I honestly do feel that selling something is not the signpost of quality for writing, this was a defining moment in my life. Ten years of trying.
Nine years after that I have a pretty respectable resume of projects. Sometimes I think I took to long to get where I am, but other times I think that maybe it would have taken much longer – or never happened at all – if I’d never sat down and done the work: word after word, page after page, story after story. But it wasn’t just those words, pages, or stories that pushed me along, that made me as good a writer as I am today. Sure, that was part of it – but I really think that I always tried to be better, tried to improve what I was doing, and was willing to look at what I was doing.
I really do believe dreams can come true, despite the Saccharin sentiment usually tagged to that philosophy. It can happen, but if too often means a huge amount of very difficult, time-consuming, heart-breaking work.
Is it worth it? Ten years is an awfully long time, true. But when I think of the stories I’ve written, the fun I’ve had, the things I’ve learned about myself, and the world, I would do it all again in a second.
The choice is yours. But it’s better to really, truly try, then pass on regretting you never even made a first step.
Friday, April 18, 2014
Confessions Of A Literary Streetwalker: Worth a Thousand Words: My Life with Tumblr
It may come as a surprise, but far too often authors—people who are supposedly very comfortable with words!—have days when they just don’t want to write at all.
It’s a common mistake writers make when they begin to think about social media, marketing, and all that other fun stuff: this idea that words are the be-all and end-all for them. They force themselves far too often to script tweet after tweet, Facebook post after Facebook post…until they just can’t write another line of original content, even if only to say “Look at my book!” Worse, they come to feel that because they’ve burnt out on writing tweets and posts and marketing copy, they have failed. They think about all the potential readers they have lost; markets they haven’t tapped; piles of beguiling words they should have written—because are they not supposed to be endless fonts of text? (Spoiler: no.)
Fortunately for you if you’re one of these writers, there are some great options for social networking that don’t require you to write a word. They are wordless yet powerful, simple yet evocative, easy yet poignant.
In short, Facebook and Twitter are not the only games in town when it comes to keeping yourself and your writing in the public eye.
I’m talking about using pictures rather than words. Using Flicker, Instagram, Pinterest or Tumblr to make your point, catch your Twitter followers’ imaginations, engage them emotionally in a way that leaves a favorable impression of you in their minds. An image-sharing tool like these can help you reach out to others, and save you a thousand words of writing, every day.
There are quite a few image-sharing venues out there—and while your mileage and social media needs may vary, in my experience they’ve basically boiled down to just one. Allow me: Flickr is ridiculously clunky and doesn’t share well with others—just spend a few minutes trying to either find an image or a keyword, or pass along a photo. Pain. In. The…youknowwhatImean. Instagram is fine and dandy for taking snapshots of your dinner, your dog, your kids, your whatever…but when it comes to sharing what you snap, or using images from other sources, it’s not exactly user-friendly.
This basically leaves us with two choices, if you want to save those thousands of words: Pinterest and Tumblr. I’ve tried both and the choice was extremely easy to make—it comes down to one thing: sex.
Let’s face it, when you’re an author of erotica and erotic romance, you are dealing with—in one way or another—characters having sex. Like lots of erotica authors, I’ve learned to (sigh) deal with platforms like Facebook that will wish you into the cornfield for showing—or in some cases even talking about—something as threatening as a nipple. We deal with Facebook because we have to. But an open-minded image-sharing social media venue is a bit like Twitter: the more the merrier.
Pinterest doesn’t like sex…at all. I used to have a Pinterest account but then I began to get messages, here and there to start, but then tons: each one about a posted image of mine that was removed due to the dreaded Terms of Service. A few were obvious, but then the images they were yanking became and more innocent. Bye-bye Pinterest.
Tumblr isn’t perfect—far from it—but even after being purchased by the search engine deity Yahoo, I can count on the fingers of one hand the times it has caused me any kind of headache. Mostly they will reject anything that really pushes a button—think of the deadly erotica sins, but with pictures, and you know what I mean (hate speech, rape, bestiality, incest, underage, pee or poo, etc).
In a nutshell, Tumblr is easy, fun, and—best of all—a rather effective social media tool that also neatly and simply integrates into Twitter and Facebook…and, no, I do not own stock.
The way it works couldn’t be less complicated: you can create any number of Tumblrs—think folders—(even with an “age appropriate” warning if you want), and then design them with any one of a huge number of themes. From your master dashboard you can see—and tweak —all the separate Tumblrs you’ve created. The themes are a blast, and the interface takes very little skill to navigate.
As for what Tumblrs you should create…well, that’s up to you. Like food? Make a nice edibles Tumblr (and they have an app that lets you to take shots of your meals if that’s what you’re into). Like history? Create a vintage photo site. Love sex? Well, it’s pretty obvious about what you can do with that.
Where do you get your pictures? You can certainly take them yourself or upload them from your various devices, but where Tumblr becomes a real social media machine is in reposting. Once you create your account just look for other Tumblrs by interests or keywords and then hit that little follow button. Then, when you look at your dashboard, you’ll see a nice stream of pictures that you can like, share, or repost to your own various Tumblr incarnations. Plus, the more people you follow, the more people will follow you.
Just to give you an idea, I started—rather lazily—my dozen or so Tumblrs four or so years ago and now my main one, Rude Mechanicals, has close to 4,000 followers. You can imagine the reach you could have if you really put some work into it.
And if you want to see how far that reach extends, you can go back and look at your posts to see how many times they’ve been liked or reposted. It’s harder to tell when it’s a reposted picture but it can also be very heartwarming to see that, for instance, when you post about a good review or a new book announcement, dozens of people liked your news or, even better, shared it with their own vast audience.
What’s also fun about Tumblr is the auto-forward feature. It’s not perfect, as there are some periodic glitches, but all in all it works rather well. When you set up your separate Tumblrs you can then select an option where—if you choose—you can also send any image to Twitter or to Facebook.
That increases the number of people your image will potentially reach. It can even go to a Facebook page you’ve created. Neat!
One trick I use is to click the handy “like” button to create an inventory of images and then—once or twice a day—go back into my list of likes to repost them to my appropriate sites…with or without Twitter or Facebook reposting as I see fit. Tumblrs also feature RSS, which means you can subscribe to one of them through an aggregator like Feedly.
What’s also neat about Tumblr is its flexibility: you can post images (duh) but you can also embed video (from YouTube or wherever) and post text, quotations, links, chat streams, and audio.
Let your eyes do the walking and let the images they find do the talking. Image-sharing tools like Tumblr are a super easy way to fulfill your need for social media presence without having to write anything.
M.Christian has become an acknowledged master of erotica, with more than 400 stories, 10 novels (including The Very Bloody Marys, Brushes and The Painted Doll). Nearly a dozen collections of his own work (Technorotica, In Control, Lambda nominee Dirty Words, The Bachelor Machine), more than two dozen anthologies (Best S/M Erotica series, My Love for All That is Bizarre: Sherlock Holmes Erotica, The Burning Pen, and with Maxim Jakubowksi The Mammoth Book of Tales from the Road). His work is regularly selected for Best American Erotica, Best Gay Erotica, Best Lesbian Erotica, Best Bisexual Erotica, Best Fetish Erotica, and others. His extensive knowledge of erotica as writer, editor, anthologist and publisher resulted in the bestselling guide How To Write And Sell Erotica.
He can be found in a number of places online, not least of which is mchristian.com.
Thursday, September 12, 2013
Confessions Of A Literary Streetwalker: "Oh, How Beautiful-"
Funny that these columns are called Confessions of a Literary Streetwalker because ... well, I have a confession to make.
I'm very much on the fence about the whole thing, and am still dealing with doubts about whether or not I've made the right decision but - in the end - I think it will end up being a good thing.
I've joined Facebook.
I know, I know: I've been a rather vocal - if not strident - opponent of that particular corner of the social media universe, but a very good friend of mine pointed out that, to call down The Bard, I "doth protest too much."
It hasn't been easy: I tell ya, nothing like having a nearly (gasp) twenty year writing career resulting in only 433 'friends' and 68'likes' on my author page to really make the dreaded depression demon really flare up.
But I'm sticking with it - not because I think that I have to, or that Facebook is the end-all, be-all solution to all my publicity needs - but because it was something I really, honestly, didn't want to do.
Obviously, explanations are in order. See, I'm a firm believer in pushing yourself in all kinds of ways: as a person and, particularly, as a writer. Sure, you have to like what you are doing - both in how you live your life as well as the words you put down on 'paper' - but growth comes not from comfort but from adversity, from challenge.
I didn't set out to be an pornographer, but then an opportunity presented itself and (surprise!) I was actually pretty good at it. I didn’t plan on being a 'gay' writer - because, no duh - I'm not, but (surprise!) I not just did it but came to really enjoy it. I didn’t think I could be a teacher, but (surprise!) I've found that I really get a kick out of it.
I may have hated Facebook - hell, I still hate Facebook - but I had to at least try it. Maybe it will work out, maybe it won't, but at least I'll have stretched myself.
[MORE]
Friday, May 30, 2014
Confessions Of A Literary Streetwalker: Luck
There’s a deep, dark secret that no writer wants to talk about. Oh, sure, in our braver moments we will talk about depression, anxiety, envy, frustration, spitefulness … the whole dark rainbow of negative emotions that come with being a professional author. And by professional author I don’t mean actually being paid for your work but, rather, being brave enough to send it out into the big, wide—and far too often cruel and uncaring—world.
This secret is lacking of mention in most books on writing—though it should have at least its own chapter, or maybe an entire volume, dedicated to it.
Okay, I won’t string you along any further. You’ve probably guessed it, anyway, by the one-word title of this article. We may not talk about it much, but luck is a powerful force in the life of a writer.
I wrote career in the last sentence before scratching it out and replacing it with life because, as I’ve said many times before, writers don’t have careers: this is not a profession—or even an unpaid pursuit—that you can plot and plan like many other occupations. You can’t, for example, say that this year you will write an award-winning story that will open the door to a major book contract, and then that book will be made into a flick starring Liam Neeson. You can dream about stuff like this all you want, but you can never, ever plan for it.
All because of luck.
Personal story time: I wrote—totally unsuccessfully—for ten years before I sold my first story (an erotic one … and so here I am). My wife at the time signed me up for a class taught by Lisa Palac, of the late-lamented FutureSex Magazine. At the end of the class, I brazenly handed her a story that I had written. If I hadn’t taken that class, if I hadn’t handed her that story, if I hadn’t mentioned that Pat Califia and Carol Queen were pals of mine … I seriously doubt that she would have even glanced at it.
Personal story time (2): about this same time I was best friends with someone—who, sadly, I am no longer close to—who introduced me to all kinds of other writers and, more importantly, editors and publishers. Without his help, I don’t think I’d be where I am today.
I think you can see where I might be going with this. If, if, if, if … looking back on my writing life I can see far too many branches that just happened to work out in my favor. Am I a good writer? I like to think that I am a capable writer—with a lot of learning still to do—but I’m not so arrogant as to think that my work is so absolutely brilliant that it would transcend the slush pile or get past the insecurities and nepotism of far too many editors and publishers.
In short, I am where I am today because of luck.
Dig around in any writer’s life—or the life of any creative person, for that matter—and you will see a lot of these branches that just happened to work out in their favor. Friends-of-friends, right-place-right-time … it’s pretty clear that ability is only one part of what can mean the difference between renown and obscurity.
This is just one reason why I despise arrogance in writers. Oh, I can certainly understand it: writing is damned hard—so it’s far too easy to protect a bruised and battered ego by lying to yourself, and the rest of the world, that your blistering talent got you where you are instead of admitting that it all would have been very different if the dice had landed ones instead of sixes.
But luck doesn’t just magically appear. You can’t summon it with “likes” on Facebook or by chugging bourbon. A cosmic alignment didn’t get me from where I was to where I am now. Luck is about circumstance but it’s also about people. My wife, that one friend who helped opened doors … they were my horseshoes, my rabbit feet, my four-leaf clovers.
Not to sound too Machiavellian, but it’s very important to look at the people in your writing life and think—at least on some level—how have they helped me? …or are they a hindrance? Writing can be hard, almost miserable, but it can be a glorious way to live when you have people surrounding you who are kind, supportive, and encouraging.
Another reason I can’t stand arrogance is that it’s ultimately self-defeating. An old stage maxim says that you should be careful of who you step on while on the way up—because you’ll be meeting them on the way down. By pissing off all kinds of people you are also severing your connection to all kinds of opportunities—luck in the making. Some of these rolls might work out, some may not, but none of them have a chance if you don’t have anyone out there to hand you the dice.
Skill? Very important. Dedication? Extremely important. Flexibility? Absolutely. Luck? We might not want to talk about it but, yes, luck is a key factor … but luck can only find you through friends.
M.Christian has become an acknowledged master of erotica, with more than 400 stories, 10 novels (including The Very Bloody Marys, Brushes and The Painted Doll). Nearly a dozen collections of his own work (Technorotica, In Control, Lambda nominee Dirty Words, The Bachelor Machine), more than two dozen anthologies (Best S/M Erotica series, My Love for All That is Bizarre: Sherlock Holmes Erotica, The Burning Pen, and with Maxim Jakubowksi The Mammoth Book of Tales from the Road). His work is regularly selected for Best American Erotica, Best Gay Erotica, Best Lesbian Erotica, Best Bisexual Erotica, Best Fetish Erotica, and others. His extensive knowledge of erotica as writer, editor, anthologist and publisher resulted in the bestselling guide How To Write And Sell Erotica. He can be found in a number of places online, not least of which is mchristian.com.
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
Confessions of a Literary Street Walker: Tooting
(the following is part of an ongoing series of columns I did for The Erotica Readers & Writers Association on the ins and outs and ins and outs and ins and outs of writing good smut)
There are a lot of myths about being a writer: Fame, fortune, tweed coats with leather patches, million dollar advances, movie deals, publisher-sponsored book tours and so forth. Not that there aren't a few instances of these things actually being true, but for their rarity they might as well be right up there with unicorns and trolls under bridges.
For the most part these fables only turn a smile into a frown for the newly published writer, but with book tours and publicity the affect can be much more traumatic: the writer who depends only on their publisher for publicity is quickly going to find their book remaindered, their work quickly forgotten.
Certainly some publishers are very good about heralding their books - like Alyson Books, who I've worked with several times - but that still doesn't mean they're going to do all the work. It all comes down to numbers: even a great publisher has a LOT of books to sell; they simply don't have time or resources to publicize each and every one. Most of the time you're lucky that the publisher sends out a dozen or so review copies or galleys - let alone does the legwork and makes the calls to drum up interest. Getting your book published, in other words, is just part of the battle: you have to do even more work to get your work noticed.
Sunday, October 04, 2009
Ashley Lister Likes Licks & Promises
It’s not an understatement to say that M Christian has a well-deserved reputation for excellence. He is the author of more than 300 short stories, the editor of 20 anthologies, four collections of his own short fiction and the author of four (or five) novels. (There is, as yet, no official confirmation as to whether he is the M Christian behind ME2). M Christian’s Confessions of a Literary Streetwalker column is one of the most popular parts of ERWA and this is probably because he speaks with authority about erotica as an author who knows his craft.
However, for anyone needing proof that Christian knows what he’s talking about, they need look no further than Licks & Promises. Licks & Promises is a collection of Christian’s scintillating erotic stories, published by Phaze books, and the contents will not leave the reader dissatisfied.
Sage Vivant provides an Introduction to this collection, relating her appreciation of Christian’s work and acknowledging the breadth of his skill. As Vivant explains:
Christian knows that sex is not purely about bodies, desire, and sex toys. He goes deeper, much deeper, dispensing with the puerile, predictable situations so common in erotic literature these days. He entreats his readers not to settle for the obvious clichés and the usual storylines where two (or more) people end up with their clothes off. Instead, he forces readers to consider the behaviors and thought processes that got those people naked in the first place — because that’s what the story is really about. The trembling, sweating, engorged body parts are just a bonus.
My favourite story in this collection comes early in the book. ‘Dead Letter’ is a tale about an author, which is probably why I enjoyed it so much. Filled with humour, irony and a richness of character, ‘Dead Letter’ introduces us to the story’s protagonist/writer through the eyes of his bored-but-besotted wife. The complexity of their relationship is vividly relayed, without hampering the pace of the story. The humour is sharply observed, only a little cruel, and tinged with empathy for the human condition. The denouement is as clever as it is moving. The following passage illustrates the depth of character, detail and humour.
Helen of Troy — diaphanous, luminous, and ethereal — glided into the room and banged her shin on the coffee table.
Dammit! She bit her lip so as not to put speech to it. Hopping, balancing with a hand tightly around an ornately carved bedpost, she vigorously rubbed her barked ankle.
“W-what —?” came Randolph’s sluggish voice from a point somewhere below a mountain range of goose-down pillows.
Crap! Both feet down, ankle clearly more painful than damaged, she smoothed her sheet, adjusted her dime-store tiara, took a deep breath, and crooned out a melodious “Oooooooooooo!” Then she whispered down low near her husband’s ear, “From the great beyond, I have come!”
“W-who is there? Who is it?”
The lights in the room were dim, so much so that everything seemed washed with a brush dipped in inky shade and shadow. The bed was a pale rectangle, the pile of pillows a gray smudge, her husband’s face a pale mask haloed by silver hair — and that damned coffee table completely invisible.
There are lots to be enjoyed in this collection. The quality of the writing is outstanding and the depth of characterisation is enormous. For any serious aficionado of erotic fiction, Licks & Promises is a necessity for the bedside bookshelf.
Ashley Lister
September 2009
Thursday, October 11, 2007
Confessions of a Literary Streetwalker: No Muse Is Good News
People sometimes ask me about my muse. In other words, where I get the ideas for stories, or how I work.
I hate the idea of a muse and have to bite back the response that I had one once but I clubbed it into submission and now keep it chained up in my basement.
The reason I hate the idea of a muse is that, for me, it takes the responsibility for creation away from the artist and puts it in control of another. "We don't write stories," the muse seems to say, "but we give them as gifts to special people."
Bunk.
Here on earth, we have the writers who feel they have to wait until a story 'speaks' to them, or for a visit from their very own personal muse. Not to put down other writer's habits, but this also strikes me as bunk. Now, I'm the first to say that what writers do is extraordinary; damned near magical. After all, one person creating a work that can live for decades, centuries, and change millions of lives -- if that's not incredible, I don't know what is.
Incredible, yes. Handed down from beyond -- no. Not at all. Shakespeare, Homer, Hemmingway, Steinbeck, Vonnegut, Pynchon, Woolf, Mishima. Make up your own list. These men and women didn't have anything you don't already have. No angelic or alien visitations, no mutant genes, no Formula X, no extraordinary gifts. They had brains and minds and worked very, very hard.
Of course that's simplistic, but that doesn't make it any less valid a point: what did they have that you don't have? What do they have that I don't have?
What does any of this have to do with writing erotica? Well, more than you think. Creativity, ingenuity with language, craft, flair, insight, wit, observation -- these are all things that come with work, with practice, with trying, with experimenting. Not once, but over and over again.
Where is this coming from? Well, every once and a while when I put out a call for submissions for an anthology -- or hear other writers talking about someone's project -- I will hear someone say "Oh, I could never do that," or "That's not my kind of book," and I think about muses.
That kind of attitude, that a writer has to be "inspired" to write to a certain theme, or even a certain type of story, reminds me of that myth, that a story has to 'come' to a writer.
Good example: write me a Transgendered Erotica story. Okay, I agree the subject is a bit daunting but don't let that stop you. Think about it, play with it, do some research. What does gender mean? Who are you? What could you be? What must it be like to have been born one way, but know you should have been the other? What does our society say about sex and gender? Does there have to be only men, only women?
Think, read, play -- and write. No muse is going to ring your doorbell and say "Have I got a story for you!" You have to do it yourself, you have to sit down (or walk around) and think, dream, stretch your creativity, and do it yourself.
That's the trick, you see -- where this circle I've been drawing connects up. To be a better writer you have to work at it. Try new things, new techniques, new styles, new markets. Who knows, you might be the best damned transsexual writer ever, maybe you'll write a really great story, maybe you'll only write a good story, maybe your story will suck -- but no matter the result, you've stretched yourself, tried something new. Inspiration and craft are not gifts from above, they're what happens when you put yourself out there and try new things.
As I like to say, the only time a writer fails is when they either give up writing, or simply don't try.
So try. Don't wait for inspiration. Don't wait for just the right market, don't wait for anything. Write. That's the only magic in a writer's life: the writing.
Wednesday, October 02, 2013
Confessions of a Literary Streetwalker: Save the Frog
The coolness continues! Check out this brand new column I just wrote for the fantastic WriteSex site - where I'll be contributing a monthly piece. Here's a tease - for the rest you'll have to check out the great site.
Tuesday, April 08, 2008
Confessions of a Literary Street Walker: Why Not?
(the following is part of an ongoing series of columns I did for The Erotica Readers & Writers Association on the ins and outs and ins and outs and ins and outs of writing good smut)
This month's column comes from a request by my pal Tulsa Brown. Tulsa, and many folks on the ERWA list, have been frustrated by rejections for stories that seem to be just what the editor would be looking for: smart, stylish, deep, interesting, heartfelt, and all the rest. A sure winner, right? But even though Tulsa, and a lot of other writers, are trying their best, their labors of love keep getting shot down.
But first, a quick word about rejection slips. One of the other questions Tulsa asked was if those 'notes of doom' editors send out to let you know your baby isn't what they want for their precious anthology, are honest. Do they really express how the editor feels about your work? No, they don't. Now that doesn't mean that some editors aren't being sincere when they send out their rejections - especially if they include a personal message with their generic rejection - but it's just about impossible for one editor to write everyone who didn't make the cut. Answer: the form rejection letter. They can be polite ("Sorry, your story didn't meet the needs of our publication"), cold ("Your submission was not satisfactory"), sympathetic ("I know how tough this is") or even rude ("Don't you EVER send me this drivel again") but they mean the same thing: better luck next time.
But there is a bright side - really. Think of it this way; at least that editor spent the time to send those notes out. There are still some cowardly editors out there (shame, shame) who never reject; you just hear that your friends were accepted (and obviously you weren't) or the book comes out and you're not in it. At least getting a note - any note - means that you can now send the story somewhere else.
Now then, the Great Secret of Being Accepted. Ready? You sure?
Okay, okay, put the baseball bat down. The Great Secret of Being Accepted is ....
There isn't one!
If there were, don't you think I'd be selling it? If there were, then why the HELL do I still get rejected?
The fact is that even though you think, hope, and work really hard to give editors exactly what they want, the decision is still very subjective. In my own case, I've been rejected because:
a) The story is too long by a few hundred words
b) Didn't get aroused reading my story
c) There is already a story selected that's set in New York City
d) The editor doesn't like the use of certain 'words' in a story
e) The publisher may object to it
f) Some of the sex is 'objectionable.'
If it helps, rejection never gets any easier to give or to get. As an editor, I hate to give them out, but have to because I feel writers deserve to know whether they made they cut. I'm also in a position of having to put together the best anthology - as I see it. As a writer, I still get rejection notices and will get even more in the future. It's simply part of the writing life; good, bad, or indifferent. The only remedy I can offer is to keep writing because - as I've said before - the only way a writer fails is not when they get rejected but when they stop writing.