Erotica all over again

I used to be really excited about erotica writing, and it's funny, cause I look back at those early stories and they seem so flat to me, most of them. There are a few, like "Doing the Dishes" and "Lap Dance Lust," that I can still reread. But for the most part, I'm like, "what's next?" And maybe because I gave myself all this time just for myself this weekend, to roam around and gorge on books and not riding the subway and not running around, I actually got out stories I've been meaning to write for months.

And as always, it's the ones with a ring of truth that are my favorites. This one in particular, it's totally fictional, and yet there are at least six little things I stole from my life, or friends'. And they're not really things anyone else would pick up on, well, except for my fondness for "the naked girl game" (that video photo hunt game), but even that has a twist. I can't say more until someone buys the story, and in the grand scheme of things, one little erotica story is really nothing, but writing the two I did this weekend, and opening new documents for several others, made me remember why I do this in the first place. That it's not a chore being imposed on me by anyone, and it's certainly not about the $50/story for 2,000+ words. It's not even about seeing my name in a book, which I still get a high from. It's about when it all clicks, in a totally perverse kind of way, like a kinky jigsaw puzzle, where I borrow a dash of my twisted fantasies, and a pinch of my friend's story, and a teaspoon of something a lover said to me, and mix them all up at 100 WPM, and voila.

And my awesome new virtual assistant got me on board with Google Docs. I'm still pretty scattered with to do lists, but I made one for the anthologies I want to submit to. I used to have this hyper-organized Excel spreadsheet tracking what stories were out and what had happened to them, and then I gave up on that. And now I'm an editor and I know people wait for answers, and I try my best to get them to them as soon as I can, but I am often farther behind than I had planned to be. There is nothing like the giant relief of hitting "Send" to turn in a manuscript (and oh that there are many more of those in the future). I have a few anthologies I'm wrapping up for Cleis, and my novel, and a few other big ideas percolating. But for now, I'm happy with my one little story and all its twists and turns, even if I'm the only one who will ever really get their origins.