Writing in the Real World

As most of you know, I write for a living.  I used to do only one type of writing - the most stressful, tedious, boring kind that you can imagine (also the most lucrative), but I've branched out in recent years and now I'll write just about anything I can get someone to pay me for.

What a sell out.  I know, right?

The only excuse I have is that I have to support my family. That's a pretty good excuse, now that I think about it.

But trust me.  If I could earn a living doing nothing but writing for you guys, I would do it. This is one of the few places where I can be myself, end a sentence with a preposition (without giving a shit), and use the Oxford comma (or not), as the mood strikes me. This is the place where I can be completely honest and know that it's ok. There is no other place like PWK in my life, and no other people I respect and enjoy as much as you.

Recently, I joined a few online writing groups to see if I can make a connection with other writers in the "real world." It has been an interesting experiment. I shared a few sexual-themed poems with my poetry group and waited for feedback.

Crickets.  That's all I heard. They were shocked.  When the comments finally started coming, they were about the sexual content, not the structure or craft of the poem.  I was a bit disappointed.  I ended up revising one of them myself and submitting it to an online literary journal for publication, fully expecting it would be rejected as smut, but no! It was selected for publication and my real name will appear in the byline.

Hubby isn't too happy.  "Do you have to say, 'As he entered me...'? Can't you make it less graphic?"

"Are you kidding?" I answered. "That's not graphic at all.  Graphic would be something like 'I gasped  and arched my back as I felt all 8 inches of his hard, hot, throbbing cock slide into my wet cunt.' But that's not very poetic, is it?"

"Oh," he said sheepishly. "I guess it's ok like it is."

Yeah, I thought so.

That is exactly what's so difficult about taking erotic writing into the mainstream. People still think of it as dirty.

I'm working on a smutty romance novel right now that has some beautiful lovemaking/sex scenes in it. In my mind, they are anything but dirty.  They are beautiful, lyrical, almost poetic in the blend of love and sex that they describe. Ok, poetic may be going a bit too far, but you know what I mean, right?  My non-PWK reviewers, though, see dirty smut.

One wrote, "For the oral sex scene, can't you say hardness instead of 'cock'?  'Cock' seems so crass."

"No," I answered. "A woman doesn't want  to put a man's hardness in her mouth.  She wants to put a hard cock in her mouth.  It's a subtle, but important, distinction."

And I didn't even have to put the word cock in quotation marks, like the rest of the sentence needs to be protected from its filthiness. If you can't handle the word cock, maybe you shouldn't be reviewing my writing.  I'm just sayin'. I happen to love cocks.  They are nothing to be ashamed of.

(See? I ended another sentence with a proposition.  Ooooo, I feel so naughty!)

In fact, I think I'll write a poem using as many words for cock as I can. I think the bucket needs more stirring.