I make stuff up...really that's all I do...
I write about a lot of things: being tied up, being spanked, threesomes, foursomes homo erotic action, etc etc. In my fiction I'm quite happy to explore anything.
But I always get a shock when I read other people's blogs and realize that people actually do all that stuff and enjoy it . I've never experienced a single slap on my bum since I was a kid and that's okay with me. I have absolutely no desire to experience the stuff I put my characters through.
Does that make what I write less authentic because I haven't done it? I don't think so. I've never had any complaints, in fact, just the opposite. Most readers assume I know all about it and want to share their experiences with me too. Not that this is a problem because being a writer I'm obviously a complete and shameless voyeur.
Last year I wrote a story for my first foray into erotica with Cleis Press. It's called Sunday Service and it's in the L is for Leather anthology. it was such fun to write something completely kinky with no worries about making the ending happy. But I still made it all up and I have a suspicion that some of the other authors in that anthology didn't and that is amazing.
So I wonder, can readers tell whether you've done the deeds you write about?
5 comments:
I write erotica as Elspeth Potter; given the comments I've gotten and the readers I've met, apparently it makes no difference whatsoever what you've done and what you haven't done. I mean, science fiction writers are likely never to have traveled in space or met aliens, yet they write realistically about those things all the time.
I think it's more impressive to write convincingly about things you've never experienced.
Pure fantasy which is never acted upon is a much-underrated thing.
Well, I write m/m erotica and romance, as you know and I'm not a man. And people say to me "how can you know what you are writing about" and I say "well - I do know how to make love to a man, I know how that feels like, so it's not an impossible stretch at all." plus I have had done to me what men *cough* do to each other, mostly. Haven't had a blow job sadly.
I'm all for fantasy :)
It's a big part of my secret inner life...
Gosh, I feel better now.
Well, I make stuff up too, and I do sometimes worry about what the gay men in the audience of my readings are thinking, because I'm sure some of it is anatomically incorrect. But then I remember once reading that Anne Rice was taken to task for similar stuff by her friend the great gay SM writer John Preston, and she never let it stop her (more stuff like how to tie someone up and not stop circulation, since Rice didn't do a lot of M-M). And recently I was reminded of this by a friend and devoted reader who's also a member of a gay men's group called "Masters and Slaves Together" (isn't that adorably, touchingly San Francisco?), who told me it was clear that I didn't know that "whips hurt," but that that was ok, because I got the narcissism of the scenes so accurately.
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