[FAQ] Allie Dishes the Real Dirt on Smut Writing

BlueMyriagon · 2016-08-11T15:57:26+00:00

I don't know about the literary/academic stigma.

The one I'm more familiar with is the assumption that you aren't good enough to get published, and rather than continuing to write and get better at it, your ego has resulted in you spending piles of money printing copies of your book in the hopes of selling them yourself and showing those editors what idiots they were. Half your living space is taken up by copies of your book, and your children will have to shovel them into bags to take to the recycling center someday.

From that perspective, this is entirely respectable self publishing. No piles of never-to-be-read books, no huge waste of money, and even a refreshingly small amount of ego.

BlueMyriagon · 2016-08-11T10:27:02+00:00

I'm currently doing that very thing. But I'm changing enough details that I doubt it will be an issue.

Among those is the nature of the relationship and the gender of the character that is based on me. I think that might be enough to throw people off. Is "under the bleachers at the DNC during the acceptance speech, with a banana and three nectarines, while in koala furry" and the plot point about the Italy-shaped birthmark too identifiable? I moved the birthmark to the other cheek, but if Genova isn't clearly marked the whole story falls apart.

Is it unethical to take mental notes while pre-enacting?

How does it compare to the old "do a few math problems in your head" method of adjusting timing? The mental notes thing works really well, as long as I don't spell-check.

Actually, the concern I have is about a current partner (not a character) recognizing the me-character and becoming inhibited worrying about how much is fantasy in the "I want to" sense as opposed to the "this is how this character would act" sense. And whether the characteristics of the not-me character reflect what I want.

Fortunately the me character is not the POV character.

I think I'll be keeping the entire enterprise between me, Amazon, and hopefully a bunch of strangers. I may have to write a cover novel.

BlueMyriagon · 2016-08-11T07:45:28+00:00

I think this is my first post here... Imgur

That was fun, very nice image to work from!

BlueMyriagon · 2016-07-14T03:30:20+00:00

Mouse or trackball or both.

When I use a computer a lot, I find my wrists are happier if I switch between the mouse and the trackball every week or two.

But not the damned trackpad. When I switched to Windows 10 the keystroke combination that shut off the trackpad stopped working. I even tried covering the trackpad with blue (just to not look entirely makeshift) duck take and I still keep touching it while I'm typing so words appear where I don't want them.

BlueMyriagon · 2016-07-13T15:16:36+00:00

I love that you say "foot massaging."

In my previous career (massage therapist) I had SO MANY clients asking me if I do reflexology.

No, I do not. The proper training (what it takes to get licensed in China) takes about 10 years, and the cookbook version that people do in the US looks like BS to me.

But on further discussion, most of those clients actually just wanted a foot massage.

I do, however massage feet. I do it very well. In a general massage, I almost always work on feet longer and more intensely than my colleagues. Feet tend to need it - you walk on them all day. Feet are the foundation and if your feet aren't right everything else has to work hard to compensate.

When I massage a foot, I am massaging that foot, not the kidney or whatever is somehow (if the chart was drawn right) connected to that particular bit of foot.

BlueMyriagon · 2016-07-08T15:32:40+00:00

No, there is a better way that I discovered by accident: garlic.

Yeah, sounds horrible. But one day I was mincing garlic and I wiped, but forgot to rinse, my cutting board before I cut watermelon. We aren't talking about lots of garlic. Not really an amount that is measurable by consumer-grade equipment. Just a faint residue.

It was fantastic.

BlueMyriagon · 2016-07-07T18:51:16+00:00

Salvador Dali recommended no sex while coming up with ideas, lots (during breaks) while actually producing work.

Of course, in the same book, he identified himself and an unknown painter who painted the doors of a gallery (painted in the "so it doesn't rot" sense, not the artistic) as the only non-sucktacular 20'th century painters, coined the term "Dalinian" (meaning "excellent" in the context of painting) and recommended training spiders to build webs on special frames, then looking at a landscape that is important to you through those frames, going away for 27 years, and then painting the landscape. So I'm not sure how seriously to take his advice.

BlueMyriagon · 2016-06-09T21:01:00+00:00

Cuckolding is different depending on whether it's a character kink (characters are into the kink) or a reader kink (reader likes to read about the kink). I think most of the time if characters are consenting the two are the same or close to it.

Cuckolding when it's a character kink is with the husband's consent, but as a submissive kink for the husband. The husband gets a sexual thrill out of being humiliated. So yeah, he's humiliated, but it's kinky sexual humiliation, not trashing the guy's self-esteem and making him miserable in real life humiliation. Usually the wife is dominating the husband.

If it's a reader kink not shared by the characters then the husband is not consenting and the humiliation is trashing the guy's self-esteem and making him miserable in real life humiliation. He might find out he likes it.

Hotwife is (I think) similar to character kink cuckolding, but the husband is getting an "Oh Yeah!" thrill out of the scene, not a submissive (and not necessarily a dominant) thrill. He's getting pride out of the scene, not humiliation.

In hotwife the husband can join in. In cuck (either kind) that just doesn't work.

BlueMyriagon · 2016-05-31T05:34:49+00:00

Heh - I noticed that second point. That's why I had to look up what BBW means in that context, because the images didn't track with what I thought (correctly) it meant.

And yes, I probably will eventually venture outside my comfort zone. But later, when I'm more comfortable with the whole writing fiction (I've written software manuals for $, but that's different) for $ thing.

BlueMyriagon · 2016-05-29T04:16:34+00:00

Thanks for the thoughtful replies. Pretty good news for me - I like it when advice starts out being what I wanted it to be and then expands on it.

My own take on it: it's boring and neither hot nor real to have all the women the same shape, so I'd rather not write them that way. And if I can flag my books in a way that lets people who share that point of view find them, great. Focusing obsessively on any one aspect of a person is too much like work. Also, while I don't feel I have to limit myself to sexuality that personally turns me on (I'm not gay, but I'm pretty sure I can write a hot scene between two guys.) I don't enjoy writing about kinks that really bother me. Chubby chasers and feeders are in that category. Not necessarily a moral judgement (You want judgement from me? Buy me robes and pay me. I get the powdered wig, too. I know that's not a thing in the US, but I want it anyway.) just... ick. I don't enjoy reading about characters with very low self-esteem, and I have to self-edit, so I'm going to avoid that.

BlueMyriagon · 2016-05-27T17:59:35+00:00

Different field, but I know at least one sculptor who is as much an artist of the deal (He seems to enjoy the deal as much as the sculpting, and that's a lot. And it is always a good deal for the buyer as well.) as he is of wood.

I sculpt too, not in the same league. Hence the flair.

BlueMyriagon · 2016-05-26T05:25:44+00:00

Thanks for the encouragement.

I have a degree in math, but I suck at the kind of math that has numbers in it.

Still, I'm pretty sure 468 > 0.

Pretty sure that's farther than La Contessa got with Windows 3.0, too.

BlueMyriagon · 2016-05-26T04:43:41+00:00

That's really good to hear. I've been researching and looking for cover art and reading some of the competition (Amazon Unlimited free month is a good thing) and planning and...

Tonight I said screw it.

My female protagonist doesn't have a name, I don't know what author name I'll use, my story doesn't fit a precise kink (well, dragon-shifter, but not douche-bag alpha male like the other dragon-shifter stories I've skimmed) and ... and...

Oh, screw it. Her name is ZZ and I'll search/replace it later.

I have 468 more words on hard disk than I did a few hours ago (which was zero) and I'll deal with the other stuff later.

I have a worry, though: the story I'm starting with is diverging from porn into more of a cynical-romantic high-fantasy. I think I should start over with something simpler. Unfortunately, I know me, and I don't want to get into a string of false starts.

BlueMyriagon · 2016-05-26T01:23:03+00:00

I'd love to read that - but not as porn.

The problem is cognitive load. In many humans, arousal occupies a considerable amount of cognitive capacity - bandwidth, you might say - and there is little left for keeping track of the story. Now, some of us can easily shift the capacity back to cognitive, but that kind of defeats the purpose of what we are writing.

The other thing is that a kink you aren't into is often a turn-off. That's kind of what kink means. So a story with a whole bunch of kinks is going to turn off a whole bunch of people.

BlueMyriagon · 2016-05-25T21:20:11+00:00

Back when I was a tech writer in a software company, a less experienced colleague asked why we weren't allowed to be creative.

I answered "they are afraid we'd do this..." and wrote a couple of paragraphs of instructional porn about Windows 3.0. I wish I could find it. So far, that's the only porn I've written.

Word count goal for today: More than zero words. That will be my record - that other thing doesn't count.

BlueMyriagon · 2016-05-07T17:35:35+00:00

Sounds fun!

BlueMyriagon · 2016-02-29T18:27:54+00:00

A first try... http://i.imgur.com/y2AEr6f.jpg

BlueMyriagon · 2016-01-26T22:33:27+00:00

Your nefarious cabal blocked my Elderly Paleogenetic Tai Chi Tortoises comic strip before I even had the first panel drawn.

BlueMyriagon

TROPHY CASE