The Erotic Genre: Be Kind To Yourself

Generally, a writer needs to be kind and forgiving to themselves. Nothing is perfect in the rough draft. Nothing is perfect in the first edit. Our words are never typed fast enough to keep up with our brains. What sounds good in our mind translates into some wildly abnormal-tongue that would require the character to be hanging by their feet from the ceiling in order to reach where we say they are licking.

Or they need seven hands instead of the four reality dictates they have. And try that position, your knees just do not bend that way – without breaking that is.

There are only so many names for sounds and body parts. Do-hickey and down there with his ding-a-ling won’t cut it in our genre. Unless you are going for the slap-slick comedy.

Sorry, no man looks good in a speedo…ever.

Maybe our genre is one where we need to be extra kind and patient with our writing. We’re dealing with scenes that are to stimulate and feel good, but it’s a fine line to tightrope walk when you’re mixing comedy, horror, paranormal, with grunts, groans, and moans.

We have heightened emotions filled with lust, anger, fear, love, and sometimes even hate and at the same moment we have to prove our characters are saying “YES” and not being forced or controlled into a sex act/situation.

Stepping outside of ourselves into a fictional character is an adventure in any genre; however, our genre is one where we’ll be asked – did you really do that? Have you… Really, are these stories about you? So that’s your fantasy. Hey, you know…

I’ve never been asked “are you a serial killer” when I’ve written something dark, but boy have I been kidded about writing erotic. 

We write erotic because we like writing sex, sexy, sensual, we’re tired of the wham bam boinking blandness that’s shoved at us. We write what we want to read. And in doing so we’ve set ourselves up for some pretty strange looks and questions.

The general public is more comfortable with blood and guts and less with their own nakedness. We’re just the lucky ones who allow them to peek at our naked imagination.