My regulars here know that I tend to write about three things: erotica, statistics, and writing itself. Lately, I’ve been deficient in that third category, and I wanted to share something which I’ve been trying to get better at lately.
You know how you get blocked on stuff? Forget it; as this insightful essay points out, there’s no such thing as writer’s block. You’re either writing or you aren’t, just like a carpenter is either hitting nails with a hammer or he isn’t.
I don’t really use bold face in my stories. There’s not really a lot of use for it in fiction like there is in technical manuals and other types of writing, so it goes unused. But nothing draws attention like bold. It stands out great.
So if I”m stuck on something and can’t write something good for what happens next, I hit ctrl-b to turn on bold and type crap. I mean, utterly crappy story, which is only an improvement over typing nothing because it’s typing something.
Bold is my “I give you permission to write utter crap” message to myself, much like caps lock is EVERY MORON ON THE INTERNET’S BEST FRIEND. Wait, I think I spelled that last bit too well. Anyway, the point is that unless you’re one of those authors, you edit and check your erotica before it goes out onto Amazon and Smashwords with your name on it and a $2.99 price tag. A complete lack of editing is the only way you won’t notice a passage in bold in your text.
I’ve gotten to the point now where, in Scrivener, I’ll write out the summary of each chapter (in bold) before I’ve finished everything. I just went through the last four bits of the Genetic Lottery and sketched out the main action for each chapter in bold, preparatory to my making a grand sweep through there to try to write everything and finish it up. I would love to have it out there soon.
So anyway, my advice to fellow erotica authors: if you just finished writing a big scene and your mind has just had enough of throbbing dongs and gasping maidens experiencing pleasures which their minds just can’t process adequately, don’t let your story suffer by neglecting the morning-after “Oh hi, you’re naked in my bed!” fuck. If it makes sense in the story, here’s how you write that scene:
Jim rolled over in bed, and bumped into Annie. For a moment he wondered who she was, then he remembered. “Mmm”, she said as she rolled over. She says something, he says something flirty. They have a morning fuck, then he remembers he’s gotta go do something so next scene is in the kitchen. Julie’s there.
That’s pretty much how you do it. When you go back through to edit, you write those scenes which are missing. It’s a lot more truthful to your story than just “Oh geez I don’t feel like I can write this right now” and a lot more truthful to your deadlines than “I’m going to come back to this when I feel good and ready.”
The end result is that I’m not writing like I did when I wrote the free versions of Progenitor, Merlin’s Magic Wang, etc. I have a checklist, as it were, of things which need to get written before I can count the story complete. And I feel my stories are considerably more complete as a result.
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