I write when I write

So much for writing every day right?

Fuck it though, I write when I write and I feel like I have something to say

Lately, what i’ve felt like I needed to say has more to do with longing and loss than anything else, for reasons that are both incredibly complicated and not strictly my story to tell, though in fact I think I could simply say it all, since the number of people reading is less than fingers I have on one hand.

But today – inspired by the incredible Journey Chase, what I really want to be writing about is raw, brutal sex. Because she does that to me, consistently. She makes me react, physically, mentally, emotionally. She makes me want to write poetry (which one day i’ll figure out), and to write erotica (which I can obviously do, well, when I am able to get the time). She makes me want other things as well, but, well, that’s not what i’m here to talk about.

Alas today, at least, thus far, work remains a huge drain on my creative energy, so erotic writing will have to wait a bit.

For now, know i’m thinking about these things and hope to have more lurid updates in immediate future.

You will have to wait for it, though. No, I don’t like waiting, either.

 

 

 

what we call stalling

I”ve been trying to figure out ho wbest to create a ‘favorite posts’ menu.

I’m relatively sure this will be easy when I focus on it for more than five minutes at a time, but, I thought i’d start with the idea of what favorites are.

Most popular? I don’t even know what that means anymore, since it’s been a decade at least since I last had a lot of readers. Most popular now is whatever I last posted that got likes.

No, it has to be the best of what i’ve written, according to me. But that means I have to dig through 1300 goddamn posts (and try to resist deleting all the ones that seem stupid, now), to try to figure out what i’m actually proud of.

I don’t quite know if I want to do that, but, I guess somebody has to.

But anyway, what i’d rather be writing about is sex.

One of the tricky parts for some of us is, inspiration. What gets us writing.

I used  to write colossal rants, which was easy to get into. I used to write reviews of things, or at least my impressions of them (books, movies, etc), which as often as not took the form of a rant.

I don’t enjoy ranting the way I used to; I can’t quite work up the energy to be that angry about things that don’t matter so much.

But sex will always drive me. I am there pretty much 24×7 (well, I don’t sex dream like I used to, alas, since those kinds of dreams tend to produce great fiction, so let’s say, every waking hour, and some of the sleeping ones).

I’ve made a few attempts at short stories and at novels that were not primarily erotic, all of which got going but stalled for one reason or another (which doesn’t mean they’re done with, it just means I need to find time where work ins’t always in the back of my head, to try to mail down what exactly i’m writing, when passion isn’t my primary driver.)

So for now, as i’m getting back into writing, i’m going to be working with what I know I can do.

Why am I not doing that here, now? That’s really what we call stalling.

I need to focus myself on what I do, which has always begin with characters. Every piece of fiction i’ve ever succeeded with began with a person; sometimes real, sometimes dreamed, sometimes invented, but always a person. Character-driven, is what a writer would call it, rather than plot-driven. So I need to gather my thoughts to try to find who i’m writing about, first, and who i’m writing as, second (because I tend to find first person infinitely easier, and today, easy is the name of the game).

I have a few places to start – it’s easy to begin with a person I actually know, as a model, at least if I can picture them well. Real life helps, because I can model how they move, how they sound. In some cases I have reference for how they smell (which matters a huge mount to me), or even how they come. Knowing these things means I can more easily build my model.

From there crafting erotica is a simple matter of setting, mood, tone. Something like Long Dark Car, it was easy because person and setting came from a dream, so mood and tone was easy from there, once I had a song in my head to define mood and give the story a beat.

So I need to know who, and then where. The who needs to come to me, which i’m hoping will occur in a few minutes when I can close my eyes and imagine.

I have good candidates; some I know well, either in real life or, in some cases, crushes I could pull out of a movie or tv. Others, who I have not yet gotten enough feel for, to write convincingly, but may do yet.

The trick though with real people is, you have to be able to remain authentic and accurate, even if you are fictionalizing them.

I’ll have let someone volunteer, so to speak.

Dreams to Stories

As I re-explore the blogosphere (in an attempt to rebuild a network of connections and, of course, to re-acquire an audience of readers), i’ve been using WP reader to discover active bloggers.

I’ve been reading a number of blogs with some very good erotic content – mainly poetic but some otherwise. Not classic ‘here’s a sexy story that sounds like penthouse forum’ erotic, but more heartfelt, personal content; at least, that’s what’s reaching me currently.

It’s been quite a lot of years since i’ve written any fiction, erotic or otherwise, but these people – some of whom i’m linking to in my side-bar (or bottom of hime page if you’re on mobile) – are inspiring me to create.

Almost all the writing i’ve done in the last three months has been in the form of life stories for my friend Liz, who only recently discovered that i’m a writer. She was the person who got me to pull Wanton back out and share, then to start working on a revision. I credit her with re-awakening my need to write (as I have re-awakened hers).

But now i’m getting a desire to revisit my erotica skills. I have old (some extremely old) work in an archive I need to revisit, but that will happen later; now, I need to start.

My best writing writing all began as dreams; the vividness of a sexual dream stays with me on waking, and if I can capture the atmosphere of dream, I know the writing will work, because atmosphere is what I do.

I had such a dream last night – a young woman I know vaguely in real life, on a couch next to me, at a large social gathering. She begins to fall asleep, all her masses of long blond hair spilling onto my shoulder as she slumps into me; and I pick her up to carry her to bed, almost the way you’d carry a sleeping child. But as soon as we’re out of sight of the social gathering, she rouses, begins kissing me. I carry her to her bedroom, and – well, as soon as my fingers find my way inside her clothing, I wake. Frustratingly, the scene ends too soon, before I get enough to become a story.

But it may be sculpted into something, later, as I’ve done in the past. I have a character now, and a beginning, but from there I may be able to invent.

Either way, hopefully, i’ll begin something. I’m feeling inspired, but need to find both an image strong enough to move me, but also (and this is the much, much harder part), the time to work.

 

 

Finding like minds in the blogosphere

As I resume this whole thing after a long hiatus (Really. Fucking. Long), i’m trying to figure out ways to find those individuals (like Bacchus at ErosBlog) who never stopped, or people who are new (ish) and have something to say that I like.

In the old days, the best way to promote one’s blog was to coment on others, which we collectively would all do to builds a circle of cross-links.

Thats’ not working as well now, I rather think, because people tend not to comment that much; they are, however, clicking like buttons, and finding other WP blogs via things like wordpress itself (wordpress reader seems to facilitate this rather well).

So i’ve installed a like button, and ask you to please give that motherfucker a poke if you could be so kind. It’s at the end of each post (but you gotta click post title to get to the comments/link/share buttons).

Meanwhile, the reason i’m posting this is because I just found a blog I really dig: journeychase.com.

There’s no about, no info about the author at all, but what there is, is some erotic poetry i’m finding inspirational (I suck at poetry, but reading journeychase just made write out a thought in a vague verse like form, which is more than i’ve done in probably 15 years; i’m not posting it, because it’s almost certainly crap, but, the person I was thinking about when I wrote it may get a look at it later.

In any case, props to the writer for being inspiring.

Anyone who’s known me more than about 15 minutes knows i’m utterly filthy and love anything erotic; my writing is mostly of the bent. Finding other writers who share that is one of the things i’m after.

An excerpt from Spread me open

I know if you
ran your hands
up my stockings
the world
would stop turning
for just one moment

Click links above to get more. That’s just a taste.

Something needs to explode

I’ve had a lot of conversations lately about some complex emotions.

A friend whose marriage may be on the rocks, who thinks her husband is cheating on her.

A friend who’s dealing with an immense array of traumas from childhood, from adulthood, from disabilities and ailments.

A friend who’s commemorating two lost parents in the last five years.

A friend who recently suffered a devastating loss of a pet, who is struggling to deal with a pain unlike any she’s felt.

A couple of men my age who are dealing with mental illnesses, in ways none of us have typically felt able to discuss.

A young adult who’s trying to turn their life around, who’s been (so far) unable to take advantage of all the tools therapeutic practice has to offer.

It’s not news, I think, that mental illness is yet another side effect of pandemic, of trumpian fascist politics, of a world in which hate and ignorance has some our from under it’s pointy hood.

We’re not well, broadly speaking.

Yesterday at a small gathering, two separate (beautiful) friends hugged me with a sweet, desperate affection. Neither they, or I, wanted to let go, holding a platonic hug far, far longer than would have been the norm not long ago.

Ok,  I admit it, it’s never completely platonic with me. I’m aware of every inch of flesh that’s touching, and am damn pleased with it. Wait, i’m distracting myself now.

Maybe it’s the age group; maybe it’s that we’ve all had to confront things we’ve never dealt with in our white, middle aged, middle class, able lifestyles.  I do not recall any time where so many of my close and intimate friends seemed so desperate.

I find myself in a cycle of needing both to comfort, and to be comforted, in ways i’ve never experienced. Not that this is worse; it’s not. But there’s a constant, traumatic sense of need that feels like it’ll never end, as we go into another winter of surge, waiting for something, good or bad, but something.

Wound’t it be easier if we could all drop acid and get in a naked, sweaty pile? God knows we’d all be better for it. Or taking turns with the whip, turns on the wall in cuffs.

I need to feel something stronger than boredom and dread, which describes most of my last three years. And I need to elicit responses.

I think that’s what made me go revisit my novella, because it reprensets both. It represents my own intensity of some 20 years ago. It represents a period in my life where everything I felt was dialed all the way up; when I felt everything, and engendered similarly strong responses in others.

I can’t be back there; it’s been an incredibly long 20 years. But I can visit that place, that time. Re-writing, and then sharing, are about that intensity of feeling in a way I can control. It’s about that sense of directed chaos. It’s the feeling of making someone else feel, in a profound and visceral way.

I’ve had a taste of it again; three or four friends who’ve read my work, in the last month, who’d gotten hard, or wet, who have reacted mentally, emotionally, physically, to my words, my voice.

It’s powerful, but it’s goddamn ephemeral. You can’t have a first time more than once, and so I find myself needing more first time feeling.

I want to extend that intensity to loved ones, friends, to the women I hugged yesterday.

I can make you feel, I want to say, I can touch you everywhere, without touching you, and you, then, can repay in kind just by letting me know how it felt.

Something needs to explode; I wish it could be all of us.

What she looks like

When I wrote Wanton, the character was vividly imagined, created by my subconscious, in a dream.

I describe her in the text:

 

Blood-red hair cut just past her jaw line, brushing her long, slender neck. Big eyes some strange color I could never put a name to. Full lips in a perpetual sneer. Her teeth were a little bit crooked (most of these things I noticed only later). Early 20s, probably ten years my junior, but with something in the eyes that seemed much older. 

Later I add that she’s tall (half a head shorter than our narrator, who described himself as a big man so he’s something north of six foot.  Hey arms are sleeved with tattoos, as well tattooed flowering vines covering hips and sides. 

Several years after I wrote it, I bought a book called Naughty and Nice: The Good Girl Art of Bruce Timm (an incredible book by the way, by one of my favorite comic artists of all time; out of print now, but I’ve heard a re-release is coming — EDIT: here is the re-print

 

In any case, when I first opened said book, there was Wanton looking at me, straight out of my mind’s eye. 

the tattoos are not there, of course, and hair color; but imagine before she was heavily covered. Wanton’s blond, naturally, hair a honey color. But we know she dyes it, red in the story. So imagine this is a black hair phase, pre-tattoos. The pubic hair would be blond, of course, but again, easily imagined. 

I’ve actually tried to get my Timm to draw my version of this girl (it’s been impossible to reach him thus far). At some point I hope to find someone who can transform this for me, digitally, or even re-draw it in something like Timm’s style. 

Alas I no longer have the book, for some reason, so can’t get a higher resolution image. Until the book is reprinted, this will have to do. As best I can present it, this is her. 

 

 

 

Bruce Timm Naught and Nice page 87

Everything that’s old is slightly less old

I pulled out all the old stories that were once up in a writing blog off of an old archive disk, and am gradually going through them.

It’s a mixed bag. There’s nothing anywhere as good (he says, full of humility) Wanton, of which i’me very proud, particularly after a revision.

But there’s some treasure.

Long Dark Car (a story based on a long ago sex dream about – well, some minor TV star) is actually pretty good, and required no editing to speak of (aside from cleaning up typos).

The Man with the Bag is better than I remembered it being; it’s actually a lot of fun. It was written for a long-ago contest for long-gone erotica site Satin Slippers; we were asked to write ‘Bad Santa’ erotic stories. Mine won. Note that it’s password protected right now, because it needs a disclaimer (the site it was written for hosted a lot of non-consent type stories, so it was written with that in mind – yes, he’s a very bad santa). It needed a little revision, but not much. If you want to read it, you’ve been warned – the password is mister Claus’ first name, all lower case.

Aside from that, I have a half dozen short pieces (some erotic, some not) which I have to go through to see if they should be fixed and posted, or if they should just stay in the archive permanently. We’ll see.