Mid-day rambling.
Jan. 24th, 2012 12:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alexandraerinSo, I have two hours of writing under my belt for today and 2,400 words to show for it. I started writing what's either one or two new erotica stories. I say "one or two" because I started with one story idea but now I'm not sure that the set-up I wrote goes with the action. It might either be thrown out, or grow into something else.
The part I'm definitely keeping is an expansion of my flash story "The Quick Brown Fox", which is something I've meant to do since I wrote it. In fact, as a vignette that revolves around the sudden and mysterious appearance of a naked woman, it was meant to be erotica before it was meant to be a flash story. The fact that I write a series with "adult" elements and am somewhat notorious for my stance that "porn" is not the opposite of "plot", erotica has long been one of the more difficult things in the world for me to actually sit down and write. That's one of the reasons I've been writing so much of it lately.
I've long taken the stance that writer's block--not the state of not knowing what to write but the maddening state of being unable to write for no real reason--is pretty much a matter of inhibitions. I've gone on record as saying that being a writer requires the arrogance to look at a blank page and say "I can do better than that." But you know, I'm starting to come around to the idea that arrogance isn't the only approach that works. One can look at the same blank page and say "It doesn't matter if I do better as long as I do something." or "I can make this mine."
And in the long run, I think that's the better way to go. I mean, it's okay to keep a critical eye towards your own work once it's out and done. You can always improve a story after it's written, but you can't edit what doesn't exist. You can't even really give it a fair appraisal. And if you're taking a too critical approach to your own work, you end up never doing anything with it. Ultimately that's the thing that keeps me from doing more with more of my work... why I've never put anything up on Smashwords, for instance, or any of the other online stores beyond Amazon, the one I first dipped my toes into. Why I keep stalling out when it comes to collecting the Tales of MU chapters into books.
I avoid talking about the quality of writing as an absolute, not because I think there is no such thing as a difference in quality but because I think it's overemphasized in our society to the point that matters of style and taste are taken as markers of something objective. But I think when it comes to sexually-charged writing, the Dunning-Kruger effect applies doubly. People who are confident and competent writers are more apt to be aware of the pitfalls of writing about sex, and people who would otherwise have little confidence in their writing abilities end up gauging their success by how hot they make themselves writing about things that turn them on. Some of the stuff I'm writing as warm-ups these days undoubtedly falls more into the "good only in the sense that it hits my buttons" way, but getting that stuff done and out of the way still helps. It's not all completely self-indulgent, either, and there is money in good erotica.
Coming up this afternoon I'm going to be kind of easing my way from writing random erotica to writing Tales of MU by writing some "mature" MUniverse stories. Like the quick fox story, this is something I have long been planning on doing... it's something I know there's a market for and I know where the market is, so it's pretty much a no-brainer... but sitting down and actually writing it has always just resulted in a serious case of Blank Page Syndrome. I'll keep you posted on how it goes today.
The part I'm definitely keeping is an expansion of my flash story "The Quick Brown Fox", which is something I've meant to do since I wrote it. In fact, as a vignette that revolves around the sudden and mysterious appearance of a naked woman, it was meant to be erotica before it was meant to be a flash story. The fact that I write a series with "adult" elements and am somewhat notorious for my stance that "porn" is not the opposite of "plot", erotica has long been one of the more difficult things in the world for me to actually sit down and write. That's one of the reasons I've been writing so much of it lately.
I've long taken the stance that writer's block--not the state of not knowing what to write but the maddening state of being unable to write for no real reason--is pretty much a matter of inhibitions. I've gone on record as saying that being a writer requires the arrogance to look at a blank page and say "I can do better than that." But you know, I'm starting to come around to the idea that arrogance isn't the only approach that works. One can look at the same blank page and say "It doesn't matter if I do better as long as I do something." or "I can make this mine."
And in the long run, I think that's the better way to go. I mean, it's okay to keep a critical eye towards your own work once it's out and done. You can always improve a story after it's written, but you can't edit what doesn't exist. You can't even really give it a fair appraisal. And if you're taking a too critical approach to your own work, you end up never doing anything with it. Ultimately that's the thing that keeps me from doing more with more of my work... why I've never put anything up on Smashwords, for instance, or any of the other online stores beyond Amazon, the one I first dipped my toes into. Why I keep stalling out when it comes to collecting the Tales of MU chapters into books.
I avoid talking about the quality of writing as an absolute, not because I think there is no such thing as a difference in quality but because I think it's overemphasized in our society to the point that matters of style and taste are taken as markers of something objective. But I think when it comes to sexually-charged writing, the Dunning-Kruger effect applies doubly. People who are confident and competent writers are more apt to be aware of the pitfalls of writing about sex, and people who would otherwise have little confidence in their writing abilities end up gauging their success by how hot they make themselves writing about things that turn them on. Some of the stuff I'm writing as warm-ups these days undoubtedly falls more into the "good only in the sense that it hits my buttons" way, but getting that stuff done and out of the way still helps. It's not all completely self-indulgent, either, and there is money in good erotica.
Coming up this afternoon I'm going to be kind of easing my way from writing random erotica to writing Tales of MU by writing some "mature" MUniverse stories. Like the quick fox story, this is something I have long been planning on doing... it's something I know there's a market for and I know where the market is, so it's pretty much a no-brainer... but sitting down and actually writing it has always just resulted in a serious case of Blank Page Syndrome. I'll keep you posted on how it goes today.