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Lisabet Sarai

The Virgin as She Was Meant to Be

by | January 11, 2014 | | 8 Comments

By Henry Corrigan (Guest Blogger)

Several weeks ago, as
often happens on the ERWA Writers discussion list, a question was
posted and soon after a debate began. The question was how to write a
scene that involved the sixty-nine position, but from a female
perspective. The author was having difficulty because he had no
actual experience with the position. (He had no experience with being
a woman either, but that’s beside the point.) He asked several
female members of the group if they could offer any insight. The
answers he received were varied and detailed, but one of them stuck
in my mind.

It was from the
incomparable Rose, and her reply didn’t so much as deal with
sixty-nine, but with writing from the woman’s point of view in
general. She lamented that today, many stories which try for the
female POV, often end up revolving around the same poorly conceived
idea: the trope of the virgin.

The story is simple. A
shy, goodhearted but burningly curious young woman decides to leave
her hometown of Virginity (Birthplace of Everyone, Ever) and move to
the exciting, but kinda scary city of Sex (Everybody Comes Here).
Wherein, on her first day in town, despite being given no outward
instruction, she somehow manages to perform an incredibly complicated
and intense…insert sex act here.

Why is this a bad idea? As
Rose put it, the story left her disappointed because she was unable
to believe in the characters. Doing something right for the first
time without instruction, especially sexually, doesn’t happen in
real life. And if a story is not at least partially based on reality,
the reader can’t connect with it.

This simple fact applies
not only in erotica but in all of literature. If science fiction goes
too far out into the black, no one wants to follow. If the
protagonist of a horror story shrugs off a wound that even a layman
knows is fatal, said layman will demand his money back.

Bypassing reality, while
expedient, comes with the cost of losing the reader’s interest.
Science fiction can go as far out as it wants to, so long as it
remembers to keep a sleeping pod open for humanity. Erotica must keep
the human element in the bedroom as well, if it wants readers to
return for more.

Because for as wonderful
and special as sex can be, it is still, at its heart, a physical act.
And like anything physical that a person tries for the first time,
they are bound to do it wrong.

Real people will gag,
cough at the wrong time, or feel ashamed when something doesn’t go
the way they imagined it. They may even hurt their partner without
meaning to. It’s distressing and humiliating, but everyone goes
through it. To pretend otherwise is like being that guy in high
school who brags about how great he was in the sack the first time
around. Everyone knows he is full of it before he even finishes
speaking.

Don’t be that guy.

The impulse to skip over
the embarrassing moments may seem like the logical thing to do. When
I first started writing, I did the exact same thing. Why put in
happenings that are difficult to talk about, even years later?
Because people who’ve experienced a similar event will be able to
connect with your fictional re-imagining. The point is not to remind
readers of an embarrassing time in their lives, but to put them in
the right frame of mind to remember what came after. The moment when
they got it right.

That golden moment when
they and their lover found a rhythm or that one little spot and
suddenly…blankets got kicked off the bed, pillows were knocked
aside and two people clung to each other till they had nothing left
and all of it felt just a little bit like dying. Then they did it all
again.

The missteps, accidents
and occasional tears were necessary because they made finally driving
each other absolutely, skin tremblingly insane worthwhile.

Readers come to erotica
because they want heat, but they stay for the heart. They don’t
just identify with characters who have foibles and make mistakes but
with the authors who create them as well. They purchase stories, tell
their friends and little by little a network of fans begins to form.

Give readers the heart,
heat, accidents and mistakes they want and they will look to you for
more. Remember, there may be a whole vast Internet out there full of
poorly written virgin stories ready to pull readers under, but if you
give them a safe port full of well written tales, they will study
oceanography to get to it if they have to. 

 

About the Author

Henry started writing erotica for the same reason that gets most people into trouble; Because of a girl. Several years ago he decided to turn his passion into a professional career. By day, Henry is a full-time federal employee, and by night a student working towards an MBA in healthcare. Whatever time he has left over, is devoted to family and writing. His work has been featured at everynighterotica.com and twice in the ERWA Gallery. He is currently at work on two novels. Updates and randomness can be found on twitter, @HenryCorrigan. More of his work can be found hanging in The Cave at
henrycorrigan.blogspot.com.

The Line

by | December 21, 2013 | | 25 Comments

By Lisabet Sarai

Earlier this month
(https://erotica-readers.com/the-paradox-of-normalization/),
Remittance Girl challenged the frequently articulated claim that
exposure to porn encourages violence against women. The UK is about
to ban eroticized fictional depictions of rape because (the argument
goes) such fiction exposes people to the juxtaposition of rape and
arousal, makes rape appear more attractive and socially acceptable,
and hence increases its frequency.

RG’s characteristically subtle
refutation of this view relies at least partially on the assumption
that readers make distinctions between what they like to read about
and what they do. After all (as I’m sure you’ve heard erotic writers
argue), murder mysteries are not banned out of fear that they’ll
encourage readers to go out and poison their neighbors or hack them
to pieces. “Admittedly, we do suspend disbelief when we read or
view fiction,” RG comments, “but we don’t mistake it for
reality.”

Until recently I would have agreed
wholeheartedly with this position. Then I read about this case:

http://au.ibtimes.com/articles/523503/20131120/fifty-shades-grey-rape-case-stratford-new.htm

If you haven’t heard about this, and
don’t feel like following the link (and putting up with all the ads),
I’ll summarize the situation. A man who’d been separated from his
ex-wife for several years bought a new phone, with a number
unfamiliar to her, and began texting her, pretending to be a 20 year
old stranger. Before long their interactions became highly
sexualized. They agreed to have a physical encounter at her home. Not
wishing to reveal who he was, he arrived masked and refused to speak,
giving her instructions through hand signs. Apparently he played the
role of the dominant, tying her to the bed, fucking her, and leaving
her there, still bound. This happened twice, and then (it’s not
entirely clear how), the woman guessed the true identity of her
lover/assailant and charged him with rape.

The relevance of this case to erotic
writing lies in the fact that both the man and the woman had
apparently read Fifty Shades of Grey. The woman kept a copy of
the book, as well as other titles related to BDSM, by the side of her
bed. If the media are to be believed (and I suspect that there’s at
least some truth to this interpretation), the protagonists in this
saga were acting out scenarios they’d encountered in erotic fiction.

Is this bad? I don’t give much credence
to the claim of rape (and apparently the judge didn’t either). The
motivations are murky but clearly the encounters were consensual.
What bothers me is the fact that these two people apparently engaged
in potentially dangerous BDSM practices without much of a clue as to
what they were doing. Any serious dominant will tell you that you
should not leave someone tied up, alone, with no means of escape. The
risks range from circulatory problems to death in the event of a fire
or other disaster.

These individuals had read about BDSM
in a novel and used the behavior in that novel as a model for their
own. Real world practitioners of dominance and submission have panned
FSOG as dangerously inaccurate, with respect to both the physical and
psychological nature of a BDSM relationship,
(http://www.tinynibbles.com/blogarchives/2012/07/clinical-psychologist-fifty-shades-is-harmful-distorted.html;
http://litreactor.com/news/50-shades-of-grey-criticized-for-inaccurate-portrayl-of-bdsm),
But how was this couple to know?

Clearly these people didn’t appreciate
the difference between fantasy and reality. One might guess that this
was simply due to ignorance. After all, if FSOG is your first
exposure to dominance and submission – and it now is, for millions
of readers around the world – how are you going to know that BDSM is
not about instant surrender, endless beatings and innumerable
orgasms? Who’s going to tell you to study up on the physical risks
before taking the plunge? While preparing this blog, I tried without
success to find reputable statistics on injuries or emergency visits
attributable to BDSM scenarios gone wrong, but during my search I
encountered plenty of chilling (as well as ridiculous) anecdotes.

It’s easy to criticize FSOG. Sour
grapes make such grumbling all the more tempting – even though ever
mention of the book just pumps up the sales. However, even those of
us who try to portray BDSM more realistically are sometimes guilty of
twisting the truth in the service of arousal. How often do we write
about negotiation? About limp or dry cunts? About the
exhaustion that sets in when you’ve been whipped and spanked for
hours, until, despite your devotion to your dominant, you really just
want to take a shower or a nap?

I’ve written about BDSM activities I’ve
never tried – knife play, fire play, branding, heavy caning.
Because let’s face it, for many of us, extreme or taboo sexual
scenarios are more exciting than more familiar acts. I’ve tried to do my research, but I
don’t focus too much on the risks because I know that too much
emphasis on those aspects can break the erotic spell. I’ve always
believed that readers have responsibility for their own actions, and
that most can distinguish the line between fantasy and reality.

After reading about this couple in New
Zealand, though, I have begun to wonder. Perhaps some sort of formal
license should be required before people are allowed to read porn.
Maybe they should have to take something like a driving test, to make
sure they know the sexual rules of the road. Minus five for slamming
your penis into her vagina immediately after you’ve fucked her butt.
Minus ten for using a plastic bag over your sub’s head to muffle her
screams. Minus fifteen for looping the rope around her neck because
you like the way it looks…

I’m being facetious, of course. I’m not sure how to deal with this evidence that people do, in
fact, conflate sexual fiction and sexual fact. We’re not educators.
Our books are not how-to manuals. We’re writing to challenge, engage,
and arouse our readers, not teach them about sex. Yet clearly our
readers do learn from our books – sometimes not what we intend.

Should this bother us? Or should we just
shrug off the people who take us literally, even when they might come to
physical or emotional harm? Is it really their problem? Or is it
ours?

At this point, I honestly don’t know.

The Gold Rush

by | November 21, 2013 | | 3 Comments

 

By Lisabet Sarai

In January 1848, James W. Marshall
discovered gold at Sutter’s Mill, in what is now El Dorado County,
California. That event kicked off the now-fabled California Gold Rush
and changed the country forever. Between 1848 and 1855, by which time
most of the readily available gold had been exhausted, some 300,000
people arrived in California, from across the United States as well as from many other
countries. In seven short years, San Francisco grew from a small
settlement of 200 people to a city of over 35,000. It took only two
years for the United States to decide it wanted California as a state
and to pry the land away from Mexico, to whom the territory belonged
at the start of the Gold Rush.

An estimated 100,000 native Americans
died from disease or aggression as the avaricious newcomers pushed
them out of their traditional hunting and fishing grounds. Many of
the prospectors met equally dire fates at the hands of the Indians,
the elements or their fellow gold-seekers.

New wealth fueled new technologies and
new growth. At the same time, the Gold Rush destroyed much of value,
damaging ecosystems, ruining families, tearing society apart. The
boom town mentality rewarded short term greed and discouraged long
term planning. It left the mountains of the Sierra Nevada littered
with ghost towns. These days, a drive through the old gold country is
a meditation on the nature of transience.

Publishing, especially epublishing of
romance and erotica, seems to be experiencing its own gold rush. Book
sales have surged by several hundred percent annually since the
introduction of Amazon’s Kindle in 2007. The number of publishers of
ebooks has grown in proportion. Pretty much every week, I see a new
digital imprint announced on the Erotica Readers & Writers
Association list. Meanwhile, established print publishers, from
Harlequin to Constable & Robinson, have rushed to cash in on the
boom by developing their own lines of e-books.

On the plus side, this means more
publishing opportunities for authors. Unfortunately, the boom has
also made it possible for any individual who ever fantasized about
publishing a book to do so. As a result, the slush pile has exploded
by several orders of magnitude. For every work that I’d label as
quality fiction, there are now hundreds, even thousands of competing
titles that are, to be blunt, total crap.

It’s true that it’s easier to get
published now than every before. Desperate for profits, some
companies will accept anything that even remotely resembles a book.
Plus there is always the self-publishing alternative. In fact, the
burgeoning slush pile isn’t the most serious problem. One of the
worst aspects of the boom is the fact that it has become impossible
for quality fiction to get noticed. You could write a
Pulitzer-Prize-worthy novel these days and not sell more than a
handful of copies.

One can understand the aspirations of
would-be authors – no matter how lacking in competence they might
be. After all, who made me the gatekeeper? So what if I believe that
my erotica is better than 90% of what is available on Amazon today.
Most writers probably feel the same way. Maybe one really should let
the market decide. And indeed, with a sigh, I must admit I don’t know
what else we poor authors can do.

What frustrates me more than anything
else, though, is the get-rich-quick attitude of the publishers –
including some with long-standing reputations, who should know
better. In the past few months I’ve reviewed ebooks from several
well-known publishing companies that were close to unreadable due to
editing and formatting errors. If I had purchased these books as
opposed to having received free reviewer copies, I would have
demanded my money back.

In one case, the book was a reprint of
a classic erotic novel from before the ebook revolution. I believe
that the original print book must have been scanned and subjected to
optical character recognition (OCR) in order to create the electronic
form. Anyone who’s used OCR will know the process is rife with
errors. Careful editing is required to correct the guesses made by
the OCR software. As far as I can tell, the editor (if there was one)
did no more than give a quick glance to this book. It was full of
garbled text that seriously disrupted the reading experience. In
their haste to get some income from this novel, this company
apparently rushed it into “e-print” with zero quality control.

Does this company realize that, in my
eyes at least, they’ve completely destroyed their credibility? I’ve
actually had stories published by this company, but I’ll think twice
about that in the future.

If I were the author of this book, I’d
sue the company for breach of contract. And then I’d make sure to
spread the news far and wide via social media. As a reader, I’ll
certainly steer clear of any other titles in this series.

I wish I could tell you this was an
isolated case. It’s not. On the contrary, it’s an illustration of the
same sort of orientation toward short-term profits that made the Gold
Rush so destructive, and I see it in many places in the publishing
industry.

The Gold Rush reached its peak and then
faded away in a mere seven years. It has been just about that long
since the birth of the Kindle. What literary ghost towns will be left
behind when the e-reading boom subsides – or changes to something
unrecognizable? The rate at which technology and society change these
days is dizzying. Anyone who imagines that the ebook boom is here to
stay is as much a dreamer as the farmer from Pennsylvania who sold
his farm and traveled half a year across mountain and desert,
believing he’d make his fortune in the California hills.

I’ve been in this business since the
end of the twentieth century. I’ve seen the eclipse of print and the
rise of the ebook. I’ve done what I could to adapt, but I know
tomorrow will be different from today. I plan to be here long after
the get-rich-quick types have given up. Because ultimately for me,
it’s the stories that matter, not the money. That’s why I hate to see
the stories polluted by the greed of those who publish them.


[This post appeared a few months ago at the Oh Get a Grip blog. I apologize for double posting, but it’s the end of term, I have four sets of exams to grade, plus thesis proposals and project reports… so it was either this, or skip my spot this month. And I definitely didn’t want to do that! I promise fresh content next month!]

Art and Play

by | October 21, 2013 | | 12 Comments

By Lisabet Sarai

I discovered buried treasure today.

There’s a box in our storage closet
labeled “L’s Writing”. I hadn’t examined it in quite a while. I
knew it held my old journals, my poetry notebooks, various term
papers, theses and other academic artifacts. I couldn’t recall,
though, how much I’d kept of my very early schoolwork and writing.
After all, my life journey has taken me through five decades and
halfway around the world since I was in junior high school. Maybe I’d
jettisoned some of my childish output – or maybe it had
disintegrated, the paper drying out and crumbling away after half a
century.

In particular, I was looking for a set
of science reports I remembered from eighth grade. Each week the
teacher would perform a demonstration and ask us a set of questions.
In our reports, we were supposed to diagram the experiment, then
answer the questions and draw conclusions. I liked to draw and I
liked my teacher. So instead of simple scientific figures, I created
a series of cartoons, some of them harboring private jokes. I had
great fun concocting those reports. I’m sure it took me far longer
than if I’d merely followed the instructions, but I didn’t care. I
was happy putting in the effort, expressing myself. It was homework
but it was also a kind of play.

Imagine my delight when I found a
tattered manila envelope crammed with documents going back to
elementary school – some as fragile as I’d feared, but many in
decent condition. My book reports and my compositions from French
class . My high school honors thesis about the Great Chain of Being
in Tolkein’s Middle Earth. My plays about the Beatles, about the
jealous gods of Olympus, about the 1964 presidential election. My
ghost and science fiction stories. And, just as I’d hoped, the full
set (as far as I can tell) of said science reports.

You might ask what all this has to do
with writing erotica.

I’ve been pondering the way we look at
our writing as work. Many of the posts here at the ERWA blog discuss technical aspects of the writing process. We discuss conflict and
pacing, the theory of the short story, the exterior and interior
elements of character, techniques for evoking sensory experience in
our scenes, strategies for self-editing. We wrestle with revisions.
We “kill our darlings”. We train ourselves to view everything we
write with a critical eye.

I don’t mean to minimize the importance
of self-analysis or craft. However, I sometimes worry that we’re too
analytical, too focused, too left-brained, about our writing. Or
maybe I should say “I” as opposed to “we”. I’m so concerned
with markets and word count, sentence structure and word repetition,
that I forget why I started doing this in the first place. I’ve lost
my sense of play.

Nobody taught me how to write
creatively. I’ve been doing for as long as I remember, and from the
very first, I did it for fun. I played with words, and back when I
was a kid, I played with images too, as can be seen from my eighth
grade efforts. (I was always a better wordsmith than visual artist,
though.) I was, in psychological jargon, intrinsically motivated,
writing, drawing, painting and rhyming simply because I enjoyed doing so.

And that’s what’s often missing now.
The product is what counts, from the perspective of readers and
publishers. They’re waiting for my next book. I try to ignore the
pressure, but I’m never entirely successful. The limited time I have
available for writing adds to the sense of stress. I only have this
day, these few hours – what if I can’t get the words out?

Art cannot be compelled. You have to
simply open yourself and let it flow. I know there’s a theory that
all great artists must suffer. I don’t know if I buy that, but in any
case, I’m not aspiring to greatness. No, I just want to enjoy my
writing the way I did when I was younger. I want to play.

I managed this, to some extent, with my
last novel Rajasthani Moon. I undertook this project solely
for my own amusement, as a challenge to myself: how many sub-genres
could I combine in a single book? In a sense, I was thumbing my nose
at the erotic romance establishment, which so loves to slice and
dice, categorize and label, every story. So I let my imagination run
free, and I didn’t censor myself to please my publisher. I even
included some F/F interaction, generally considered to be the
marketing kiss-of-death in traditional erotic romance. If it turned
me on, I put it in and damn the markets.

When the book was done, I knew it was
no work of enduring literary significance – but it’s lively,
entertaining, and pretty hot. Most important, I had a fabulous time
writing it.

I want to do that again.

I’m willing to put in the effort it
takes to write well – but not without the payoff of having fun. Not
anymore.

The Perils of Perfectionism

by | September 21, 2013 | | 6 Comments

By Lisabet Sarai

“The good is the enemy of the
best.” Anonymous proverb

I’m sure most readers have encountered
the maxim above. The point? That it’s a mistake to be satisfied with
“good enough”. By exerting only the minimum effort needed
to fulfill the requirements of some task, you’re missing out on the
opportunity to produce something truly great.

Personally, I subscribe to this
philosophy―up to a point. I believe that when you commit yourself
to something, you should be willing to devote 100% of your effort to
meeting that commitment. That means not making excuses (except of
course in extreme situations like illness or family crises). It means
seriously applying yourself to the problem you’ve shouldered,
spending whatever time is realistically necessary to solving it.

In the so-called real world, I’m a
teacher (among other things). Nothing upsets me as much as a student
who’s happy just to “get by”. That sort of student is wasting
his own time as well as mine. (Please pardon my choice of pronoun. I
don’t mean to imply that this pattern is limited to males.) I don’t
know why he bothers. Sure, he may get a passing grade, but aside from
that, what will he have to show for the months he’s spent in my
class? I’d much rather put my own effort into a poor student who is
really trying to understand the material despite the difficulties
than a more talented individual who isn’t willing to work.

So I definitely think it’s important to
do one’s best―up to a point. At the same time, as an author, I’ve
seen many examples of the perils of perfectionism. I have writer friends who
have been working on the same novel for years, rereading, revising,
going through periodic crises of confidence about whether their book
is really worth publishing. It’s sad. I feel like shaking them.
“Stop already!”, I want to say. “Submit the darn thing! You
can’t publish your work unless you submit it!”

New and aspiring authors, pay
attention! You can’t publish your work unless you submit it. Which
means that at some point you have to stop polishing your prose and
say enough is enough.

The French playwright Voltaire is
credited with the reverse of the saying above: “The best is the
enemy of the good.” When it comes to writing, I think this
statement holds a good deal of truth. There’s no such thing as a
perfect story. If you’re like me, every time you re-read one of your
manuscripts you see some change that might improve it. Don’t give in
to the temptation. Decide ahead of time how many drafts you’re going
to do and stick to that decision. Otherwise, you’ll get bogged down
with one tale and never get a chance to write the others that are
clamoring for your creative attention.

One thing I’ve learned is that it’s not
worth agonizing over a single book. You have to submit it, let it go
and move on to your next. If I don’t like what an editor or publisher
has done with something I’ve written, I don’t get my knickers in a
twist. There are more stories where that came from, or at least I
hope there are. This attitude helps me deal with rejection, too.
Maybe I’ll find another home for a rejected tale. Maybe I won’t. In
any case, I need to move on.

Readers are hungry. You have to keep
them fed with a continuing stream of good material. Good, not
perfect.

Please don’t misunderstand me. I’m not
excusing sloppiness, poor grammar, spelling errors or wildly-veering
point of view. If you’re a professional writer, you have a
responsibility to learn your craft and apply it to the best of your
ability. The fact is, though, the more you write, the more you hone
your technical skills. If you get hung up revising one work to death,
you’re missing the opportunity to keep learning.

Compared to many authors I know, I do
relatively little editing. I rarely do more than two drafts. I do
have a tendency to edit as I write, reviewing and modifying material
from my last session before settling down to attack the day’s goals,
so my first draft is probably more highly polished than some
authors’. I’m also pretty good with the nuts and
bolts―grammar,spelling, punctuation and the like―so I can focus
on higher level issues like characterization, pacing and emotional
impact even during the initial pass.

Deadlines are a huge help, by the way.
If you’re new to the writing game, let me assure you: deadlines are
your friends! Once you’ve made a commitment to submit a work by a
particular date, you can pace yourself. You can make rational
decisions about how much editing is feasible. You’re not likely to be
caught in the perfectionist trap.

So now I’ll make a possibly
embarrassing admission. I just submitted a 17K story after producing
only a single draft. Am I being lazy? I don’t think so―and in any
case, I didn’t have a choice. I’m leaving in two days for a three
week foreign trip, and I promised the story by October. Plus I have
more deadlines stacked up when I return. It will simply have to be
good enough.

In any case, I’m pretty happy with it.
I’ve found that my best stories tend to be the ones that I write
quickly, the ones where inspiration carries me along. This tale is no
literary masterpiece, but it fits the call for submissions to a T.
And, after reading the blurb, the publisher has asked whether I’d be
willing to write a 60K novel based on the same characters.

I’m going to wait a while before I
commit to that deadline! 

In Defense of Romance

by | August 21, 2013 | | 19 Comments

By Lisabet Sarai

As erotic romance becomes increasingly
popular, I’ve noticed a trend among authors of erotica to denigrate
the genre. ER panders to readers who aren’t comfortable with “real”
erotica, some argue, sanitizing sex by requiring that the individuals
doing the nasty be “in love”. ER is tame and conservative,
according to others, not to mention stereotyped. True creativity
isn’t possible within the rigid constraints of the genre. ER
reinforces traditional cultural mores which favor monogamous,
committed relationships, especially those in which the woman is
subservient to the man, the social critics complain. The happy
endings required by romance just aren’t realistic, runs another
popular objection, and they make romance too predictable.

Recently a well-known erotica author
reviewed one of my novels on Goodreads. She commented that she would
have given it five stars, but she dropped her rating to four because
the book was too “romancey”. This is for a novel in which the
heroine is boffing three different men, as well as a spare woman or
two…!

There’s a kernel of truth in all of the
arguments above. I’ve read blog posts by authors of erotic romance
who loudly protest that what they write is distinct from “erotica”
(or “porn”) because they’re focusing on characters and
relationships instead of “just sex”. It may be that these
individuals have never encountered well-crafted erotica, but the
stridency of their tone suggests a level of fear or repulsion
associated with sexuality. (Or maybe they’re just afraid of the
social stigma attached to being overtly sexual.)

Some erotic romance is indeed tame and
conventional, by my standards at least, focusing as it does on
vanilla sex initiated mostly by the male. On the other hand, some
folks enjoy vanilla erotica, too. And yes, I get annoyed with
romances where marriage seems to be the ultimate goal in life, but
these days there are plenty of ER stories where matrimony is never
mentioned.

Predictability is a huge
challenge for a romance author. In some ways, the HEA or HFN required
makes crafting a romance more difficult than producing a tale
construed as erotica, which is free to end ambiguously or even badly
for the characters. Romance readers know, at some level, that
everything will work out. It takes consummate skill to create
narrative conflicts so compelling that readers will wonder just how a
happy ending could be possible. It’s tough, but it can be done.
Erastes’ M/M romance Standish sticks in my mind as a tour
de force in this regard. Twenty pages from the end, I couldn’t
imagine how the protagonists could ever reconcile, yet when they did,
I found the resolution completely believable.

A lot of the romance I read is boring –
poorly crafted, with amateurish language, hackneyed premises,
cardboard characters and implausible or sometimes non-existent plots.
However, there’s plenty of awful erotica out there, too. Those of us
who hang out at ERWA don’t tend to see it as much, but spend a little
while browsing the self-styled “erotica” on Amazon if you don’t
believe me. The explosion of e-publishing and self-publishing has
resulted in a flood of terrible books in pretty much every genre.
There are probably more of them labeled romance than anything else,
simply because romance is the single most popular category of books.

I write for both audiences. Based on
comments I’ve seen on the ERWA Writers list, I think some erotica
authors harbor some serious misconceptions about erotic romance.

Romance has changed – a lot. For a
great discussion of romance then versus now, check out Sheila
Claydon’s recent post at Beyond Romance
(http://lisabetsarai.blogspot.com/2013/07/metrosexy.html).
No longer are heroines wimpy and helpless, just waiting to be saved
by the big, blustery alpha male. They’re not shy or reluctant about
sex anymore, either, worried about preserving their virginity or
hankering to make a good marriage. The
more realistic HFN (happy for now) is a perfectly acceptable
alternative to happily ever after.

Today’s erotic romance celebrates
sexual pleasure every bit as enthusiastically as erotica, and
includes many of the same activities – oral sex, anal sex, group
sex, exhibitionism and voyeurism, sex toys, bondage, discipline,
whipping, spanking, piercing, branding, knife play. You’ll find
casual sex in romance too, though the participants usually end up in
a more enduring relationship as opposed to simply going their own
satisfied ways afterward. And of course, these days romance doesn’t
have to be straight. Gay ménage
is very popular, as is bisexual (M/M/F) ménage.
The market for lesbian romance appears to be smaller, but still energetic and loyal.

Am I
trying to argue that there’s no difference between erotica and erotic
romance? Of course not. However, the dividing line isn’t sharply
defined either. Several of my own novels, originally written as
erotica, are now being sold as erotic romance. Indeed the erotica
versus erotic romance dichotomy may be more a question of different
target markets than clearly different content (at least in the
aggregate).

Meanwhile,
I believe that the popularity of romance has benefits for erotica.
Erotic romance has helped readers become comfortable with stories
about sex and has aroused their curiosity about more extreme or novel
activities. Of course the publication of FSOG has accelerated this
trend, but the drift in readers from pure erotic romance toward
erotica has been going on for quite a while.

Erotica
sales lag romance, but they’ve still grown phenomenally since the
advent of ebooks. I think we’re seeing significant spillover. When
romance readers want a bit “more” – more extremes of emotion,
more breaking of taboos, more surprises – they turn to erotica.

Some
of you may be shaking your heads right now. You’re wondering if an
alien has slipped into the skin formerly occupied by Lisabet Sarai,
because this post seems to contradict things I’ve written previously.
It’s true that in the past I have lamented the co-opting of erotica
by erotic romance. It does bother me that publishers like Cleis, who
previously focused on exceptional literary erotica, now targets the
romance reading community with many of their titles. Black Lace
flipped years ago, from “erotica by women, for women” to erotic
romance. Eighty percent of new publishers who want erotic content
also specify that they want a relationship and at least a happy for
now resolution.

I’m
starting to become a bit more comfortable with this development,
however. Publishing is a business. The erotic romance audience is many
times larger than the audience for “pure” erotica. It makes sense
from a financial perspective to give those readers what they want.
I’d much rather have readers introduced to explicit romance via the
quality writing in a Cleis anthology than through some of the
alternatives. And Cleis does still field calls for books with no
romance elements required.

Some
members of our community believe that the ascent of erotic romance is
a dangerous development for erotica – that it is the essence of
erotica to explore the edgy, uncomfortable aspects of sexuality that
might send romance readers screaming and that romance is blunting
those edges. I know I’m going to get some flak for this column from
Remittance Girl and Donna George Storey, for instance. Look, though,
at what these authors are doing in response to the romance boom.
They’re starting their own
presses to publish more transgressive stories. They’re
self-publishing tales that don’t end happily. And they’re finding
readers – perhaps not millions, but more, I contend, than they
would have if erotic romance were less popular.

Which
brings me to a final theory as to why erotica authors tend to diss
romance. We’re jealous. Heck, I admit that I’m jealous, and I
actually publish erotic romance, though my books are apparently too
far from the mainstream to sell zillions of copies. We resent the
fact that our worthy literary endeavors remain obscure while sloppily
written, derivative romance sells. We rail against the fact that the
number of people who want to read happy endings far exceeds those with broader preferences.

That’s
not the fault of the romance genre. And I think we need to get over it, because
bitterness and envy don’t necessarily foster creativity.

A Community of Spirit

by | July 21, 2013 | | 19 Comments

By Lisabet Sarai

I discovered the Erotica Readers &
Writers Association in the year 2000. Google was barely a gleam in
the eyes of venture capitalists. Social networking meant going to the
local singles bar. The word “blog” had not yet been coined. I was
living in rural New England and accessing the Internet via a 36
kilobaud dial-up line.

I wasn’t looking for a critique forum.
Although I enjoyed reading erotica, I wasn’t seeking a source for
sexy stories or reviews of the same. No, I was searching in clueless
newbie fashion for ways to get the word out about my first novel, Raw
Silk, which Black Lace had published a few months earlier.
Somehow I happened on a page of erotica-related links on the ERWA
website (which at that point had been around for about four years,
and was known as the “Erotica Readers Association”). So I
emailed the webmistress and asked if she’d be willing to include a
link to my brand new venture, www.lisabetsarai.com.

Adrienne sent me a kind reply in which
she explained that ERWA wasn’t really about advertising. However,
they did have email lists for authors and others interested in sexy
stories, including a list for discussing craft (Writers), a list for
sharing stories and critiques (Storytime) and a list for chitchat,
often about sexual topics (Parlor). Isolated in my remote, somewhat
conservative town of 1500 people, half a world away from my British
publisher, I eagerly accepted her invitation to join all three lists.

I canceled my subscription to Parlor in
a matter of days, after being swamped with posts about returning
versus not returning your supermarket cart to the designated areas.
(What was sexy about that?) However, Storytime provide new thrills. I
read more, and more varied, erotic stories in the first month or two
on Storytime than in my whole previous existence – and found some
of them both wildly imaginative and truly arousing. Furthermore, I
was able to apply my excessive education to the useful task of
writing crits and providing comments to some of the authors –
though I read many more stories that I could critique. Participating
in Storytime turned out to be a highly intimate experience, as
writers tended to share pieces that revealed their own desires and
fantasies.

Storytime inspired me. I wrote and
posted my first flashers (only 100 words back then), painfully
cutting out words to get below the limit. Targeting a short story
contest announced on ERA, I wrote my first erotic short story, “Glass
House” and received both warm praise (what we authors all live for)
and useful suggestions for improvement. A few of my stories were
selected for the Gallery. I began to read and respond to the calls
for submissions on the Author Resources page. I wrote the first three
chapters of my second novel, Incognito, and sent a proposal to
Black Lace, only to have it roundly rejected (with the comment that
Miranda wasn’t the sort “kick-ass heroine” they preferred). I
might have given up writing at that point if it had not been for the
support of folks on the Writers list. Instead, I girded my loins and
started looking for a new publisher.

Over time, I became more and more
involved with ERA (which added “Writers” to become ERWA at some
point, as the management recognized how important authors were to its
well-being). I wrote reviews for the Smutter’s Lounge, plus an
occasional article for Authors Resources. In 2004 (God, has it
really been that long?), Adrienne convinced me to take on the role of
writing the monthly Erotic Lure newsletter. In 2006 I edited and
arranged the publication of Cream: The Best of The Erotica Readersand Writers Association, which
is still (in my humble opinion) one of the most satisfying and
diverse erotic anthologies around (and which incidentally includes a
great forward by Adrienne, covering the early history of ERWA). Last
year I produced a year-long series of articles (“Naughty Bits”)
covering various technology topics relevant to authors. Controlling
and bossy as I am (yes, I know that’s kind of odd for a submissive),
I also agreed to serve as ERWA blog coordinator. 

 

Looking
back now, after thirteen years, I’m astonished at how much this place
means to me. I’ve come to know individuals here whom I’d place in the
circle of my dearest friends – even though in some cases, we’ve
never met in person. When I have had the chance for face-to-face time
with folks I first encountered at ERWA, it often feels as though
we’ve known one another forever. In the real world, there are very
few people to whom I can reveal my identity as an author of erotica.
At ERWA I’m free to be myself.

For
me, ERWA is a community of spirit. Someone who just learned about the
place might think that the biggest draw was the ability to speak and
write frankly about sexual matters, in an environment where such
topics are welcome rather than taboo. Sure, that’s a great feature,
but today there are many adult-oriented on-line communities. ERWA is
special because of its literary focus. The people who end up on the
Writers list, at least, are passionate about reading and writing –
and not just in the erotica genre. They care deeply about words. They
recognize that storytelling is a definitively human activity. And
many have a profound understanding of both the mystery and the craft
involved in spinning an effective tale.

We
tend to whine about how hard it is to succeed as an author these
days. In fact, I’ve watched many of my colleagues here move from
amateurs to professionals with dozens of books to their credit. Pick
up any recently published erotica anthology and you’ll see familiar
names from the Gallery and Writers. Search Amazon and our members
come up as editors of award-winning collections. Several members have
even gone on to establish their own independent publishing ventures.
As far as I know E.L. James has never been a member of ERWA, but
considering the difficulties involved in getting anyone to take
erotica seriously, I’d say we’re doing pretty well.

And of
course, ERWA has been instrumental in my own career, such as it is.
I’m an old-timer now, but when I first joined, I knew nothing about
publishing or marketing. I barely knew that the genre of erotica
existed, and I’d never read an erotic romance. I had lots of arousing
fantasies, but my dialogue was wooden and my convoluted sentence
structure like something from the nineteenth century. Now I have a
back list that’s pages long – I’ve stopped counting since it’s hard
to know exactly what criteria to apply, but certainly nobody could claim I was a one-book wonder.

I
suspect that without ERWA, I’d never have gotten this far. Without
the support (moral and immoral) of my fellow authors, I might not
have wanted to.

If
you’ve been around this community for anywhere near as long as I
have, I think you know what I am talking about. If you’re new – if
you’ve been trying to get your erotic visions out of your head and
into a manuscript, if you feel ostracized because of your fascination
with things sexual, if you’ve always loved to read and write but
haven’t dared to think about publication – all I can say is welcome.
You probably belong here.

The Inner Eye

by | June 21, 2013 | | 10 Comments

By Lisabet Sarai

I’ve been reading since I was four
years old – a total of fifty six years. I still marvel at the power
of fiction to create visible, tangible worlds. Outwardly, as we read,
we look at the words, the sentences, the paragraphs. Blindly, we turn
the pages. All the while our inner eyes gaze upon the scenes we
construct in response to the author’s prose.

A skilled writer can evoke times,
places and people with such vividness that, at least while we read,
they feel more real than the surrounding environment. As the words
penetrate my brain, I see the glare of the sun upon the looming
pyramids. I feel the baking heat reflected from the stone, taste the
dust kicked up from the bare feet of the passing farmer, smell the
steaming dung his donkey leaves in my path. I squirm as the lash
scores my bare buttocks, shiver as a fingertip traces the line of my
spine, sweat as the girl opposite me on the subway crosses one knee
over the other to reveal red lace and tempting shadow. Reading is a
sort of miracle that dissolves the here-and-now and crystallizes a
totally new universe in its place.

What we see when we read is born of a
collaboration between the author and our selves. We bring our
histories, expectations and preferences to the act of reading, making
the process deeply personal. My images of Catherine Earnshaw in
Wuthering Heights, of Anna in
Anna Karenina, of
Humbert in Lolita, are
unlikely to match yours. The author sketches the setting and the
characters, but allows us to fill in the details. Even the most
meticulous and elaborate descriptions cannot capture the full
richness of sensory experience, but imagination embroiders upon the
framework of the text and embeds us deep into the world of the story.

One mark of a great writer is knowing
what to express and what to leave unsaid. Sometimes the simplest
prose is the most evocative.

When I write erotica, I rarely describe
my characters’ overall appearance. I may focus on some particular
physical characteristic – the elegant curve of a woman’s hip, the
scatter of curls leading down from a man’s navel toward his cock –
but for the most part I allow the reader to create his or her own
pictures. Instead of dwelling on what can be seen, I spend most of my
time on what can be felt – the characters’ internal states.

Erotic romance is a different kettle of
fish. I’ve learned that readers of this genre like to have fairly
complete descriptions of each major character. They want to know
about stature, body type, hair color and style, skin color, eye
color, typical clothing… The first time I filled out a cover
information sheet for a romance book, I was stuck. The publisher
wanted full details about the appearance of the hero and heroine. I
hadn’t thought much about the question.

Lots of ER authors I know use actual
photographs of characters to inspire them. I’ve adopted this strategy
too, in some cases. It’s easier to describe a picture than to
manufacture a complete physical creation from scratch.

Overall, it seems to me that Western
culture is moving away from the imagined to the explicit, and that
the written word is losing ground to the visual. These days, video
appears to be the preferred medium of communication. If you buy some
equipment, you don’t receive a user manual any more – you get links
to YouTube. My students seem unable to concentrate on any text that
does not include lots of pictures, preferably animated. Graphical
icons (often obscure to me) have replaced verbal instructions. I
really wonder how the blind survive.

Suspense in film – that overwhelming,
oppressive sense of imminent danger – has been supplanted by fiery
explosions and bloody dismemberings. I personally find the old movies
more frightening and more effective. Sex has followed the same trend,
in mainstream movies, in advertising and in porn. Everything is out
there to be seen, in your face. Nothing is left for the viewer to
create. Common visions overwhelm individual interpretations.

High definition television. 3D movies.
The thrust of modern technology is to externalize every detail,
making everything visible. The inner eye atrophies as imagination
becomes superfluous.

When I heard Baz Luhrmann had directed
a 3D version of The Great Gatsby, I felt slightly nauseous. 3D
dinosaurs in “Jurassic Park” I can accept, but if there was ever
a story that needed a light touch, a judicious selection of detail,
it’s Jay Gatsby’s tale. True, Fitzgerald’s novel describes at
considerable length the wild excesses of the Roaring Twenties, the
booze and the jazz, the extravagant parties and casual love affairs.
However, all that is just a backdrop to the lonely delusions of the
title character and the vacant lives of the people who surround him.
You could tell Gatsby’s story on an empty stage, with a couple of
bottles of champagne as props and a single sax as the sound track.

The result of Luhrmann’s misguided (in
my opinion) effort is an impressive spectacle with no substance. The
film lavishes its attention on the crazy parties and drunken orgies.
Meanwhile, Gatsby, Daisy, Jordan and Nick remain ciphers, cardboard
characters one can’t really care about. You see it all, but feel
nothing.

I sometimes worry that reading will
become obsolete, despite the surge in book buying due to ebooks. I’m
glad I don’t have children growing up in this increasingly literal,
visually-oriented world. I’d hate to see them struggling to keep the
magic of imagination alive.

Meanwhile, the Luhrmann film had one
positive effect. It has motivated me to reread the original book.

The Post That Wasn’t

by | May 21, 2013 | | 0 Comments

By Lisabet Sarai

Okay, so I was supposed to post today, not a week ago as I did, stomping on poor Garce’s post. These things happen. I was trying to get the post pre-scheduled, you know, getting on top of my To-Do List … Anyway, if you haven’t read that post, entitled Stories We Tell Ourselves, I invite you to do so.

Meanwhile, today’s my official posting day and of course I can’t keep quiet…!

I just want to remind all readers that if you enjoy the discussions on this blog, you might want to join the ERWA email discussion lists. On the Writers list, we share our thoughts and information about all sorts of writing-related topics. Recent threads have included: self-editing – when to stop; reality versus fantasy in the portrayal of BDSM; how to write convincing dialogue; first versus third person POV; how to motivate yourself to finish what you start.

The Storytime list is our on-line critique group. Members post works in progress as well as comments and suggestions on other authors’ submissions. It’s very civil and strongly moderated – even the tenderest ego will not be shattered, yet at the same time you can get some fabulous insights into how to improve your writing. As an added benefit, our esteemed editors select the best stories, flashers and poems each month and invite the authors to publish them in the ERWA Gallery.

The Parlor list is just for fun – chit-chat with other ERWA members about anything under the sun. (However, posts do tend to stray toward sexual topics pretty frequently!)

To join any or all of these lists, follow the instructions here.

Let me finish up by posting one of my own favorite flashers – from the old days when flashers were strictly 100 words. I especially like it because it’s about writing.


Groupie
By Lisabet Sarai
Copyright 2001

“I like your poems,” she said, leaning closer across the cafe table, so that he could see the shadowed hollow between her breasts where the candlelight did not reach. “I like your images. I can taste them, roll them around on my tongue. They catch in my throat like unshed tears.”

He sipped his chianti, adjusted his glasses, pretended to ignore her stealthy hand on his thigh. Her fingers crept over his chinos, aiming for the swelling at his root. He thought of rejection slips, the dirty laundry scattered round his flat, the bills waiting to be paid. Useless. None of these mundane devices could prevail against her blonde adoration.

He stood like iron. Her triumphant hand claimed him. “I like the way  you can write ‘fuck’,” she said, “and make it into a poem.”

Stories We Tell Ourselves

by | May 15, 2013 | | 10 Comments

By Lisabet Sarai

Fantasy versus reality. This is a
recurring theme in our author discussions and blogs. As authors of
erotica, do we have a responsibility to paint a somewhat realistic
picture of the complexities of human desire? Or is our role to create
engaging fictional worlds and people them with characters who have
more and better sex than most of us actually experience? Should our
BDSM stories portray the actual practices of the kink community,
complete with negotiation and limits? Or should we allow ourselves to
descend into dark fantasies of acts that might be risky, even
physically impossible, because that’s what pushes our buttons?

I don’t intend to reopen this debate
right now. Even if you’re firmly in the “realism” camp, however,
I’m sure you’ll admit to consciously constructing your stories to
enhance their emotional impact. You introduce elements of suspense.
You gradually intensify conflict. Ultimately, you provide enough of
a resolution to give readers a sense of closure. This is, after all,
the job of the storyteller – to build a coherent whole out of an
assortment of people, actions and events, a tale that will linger in
the readers’ (or listeners’) minds and perhaps, change them.

We do this, often quite deliberately,
when we write fiction. But what about autobiography or memoir?

I’m currently reading, for a review, an
anthology of “true sex stories”. Each author has written about
some crucial erotic experience in her life, some encounter or
relationship that had particular significance. I’m perhaps halfway
through the book right now, and enjoying it quite a bit. The authors’
accounts are well-crafted, diverse, and frequently hot. However,
they’re more or less indistinguishable from the fictional erotic
tales that appear in so many collections from this same publisher.
There’s nothing about them that labels them as “true” or “real”.
They have been subjected to the storyteller’s craft, smoothed,
tailored, refined – turned into works of art.

Please understand, this is merely an
observation, not a criticism. As I contemplate the so-called true
stories in this book, though, I wonder whether the phrase is an
oxymoron, whether “story” and “truth” (in the sense of actual
experience) can ever coexist. “Story” by its very nature implies
an intervention to turn raw phenomena into narration.

Of course, many erotic authors –
myself included – mine their own histories as material for their
fiction. Much of my work is to a greater or lesser extent
autobiographical. A few tales (I won’t say which ones) are nearly
literal accounts. In every case, though, I’ve applied my
storyteller’s lens to the details of my real world erotic encounters
– bringing some aspects into sharper focus while blurring others.
Some alterations are intentional misdirections to protect the
so-called innocent, but most have to do with whipping the tales into
a more literary shape, transforming them from anecdotes to stories.

As I contemplated the phenomenon of
the“true” collection described above, however, I realized that I
do the same thing with supposedly accurate descriptions of my “real”
life. Between ERWA, Oh Get a Grip, my personal blog Beyond Romance,my publishers’ blogs, and my frequent guest posts, I produce quite a
lot of material about myself and my past. I know I’m writing for an
audience, and, without really meaning to, I adapt my life story to
fit my perceptions about what they’ll find intriguing. At this
point, it’s practically second nature to tweak a detail here, neaten
up an ending there, to heighten the effect.

I’m a bit disturbed to note that in
some cases, the stories I’ve told you are now the stories I remember.
I am not sure I recall what actually happened, only what I’ve told
you happened. In fact, some of my fictional tales, even the ones not
intended to be “true”, feel just as real.

As psychologist Daniel Kahneman points
out, direct experience is fleeting. Memory is an act of creation –
or re-creation – an effort to enforce some order on the fragmentary
impressions left by our senses. There’s no guarantee that our
recollections are accurate. Research has shown that memories can
be systematically manipulated by changing our foci of attention.

http://www.ted.com/talks/daniel_kahneman_the_riddle_of_experience_vs_memory.html

There are two ways to react to these
findings. We can panic, as the supposedly solid ground of remembered
experience turns to perilous quicksand. If we can’t be sure about our
own life histories, is there any certainty at all?

On the other hand, we can embrace our
storytelling genius, our genetic predisposition to rearrange and
restructure the world into some shape that makes sense, as a gift. We
all tell ourselves stories and create realities – whether we call
them fiction or not. That may be unsettling. But it’s also a kind of
magic.

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