How do erotica writers get their inspiration?

I'm asking the contributors to Best Bondage Erotica 2014 exactly that in mini interviews on the book's Tumblr. So far, these writers have answered that question along with their favorite sentence or paragraph from their story (I'll be answering soon about my dom with two subs story "Dual Mastery"):

Lucy Felthouse, author of "Clipped"

Annabeth Leong, author of "Eel"

Elizabeth Coldwell, author of "Wearing Purple"

Kay Jaybee, author of "Behind the Door"

James McArthur, author of "No Strings Attached"

Annabel Joseph, author of "The Neckcloth"

Emily Bingham, author of "Pegged"

French fries, fire eating, lap dances, boxing, Monica Lewinsky and bukkake - a few of my favorite things to write about

I've written and sold erotica about a wide variety of topics in the last 14 years, starting with Monica Lewinsky all the way through lap dances, French fries, Joe's Pub, sexy emails in the air, a paid hotel job organizing an orgy, boxing, chess, jigsaw puzzles, fishnet stockings, a spanking machine, Monica Lewinsky, hot wax, fire eating, a belt beating, erotic choking...the list goes on. Ducky Doolittle was inspired in my last class to write about a mitten fetish. Want to learn how to find inspiration anywhere and everywhere for erotica that sells? Take my erotica writing workshop. this Friday, January 17th, from 7:30-9 p.m. at The Pleasure Chest, 1150 Second Avenue on the Upper East Side of Manhattan (note new address). We'll go through numerous writing exercises and I'll share tips and advice, answer questions, and point you in the direction of where to send your work. Sign up for the class here ($25/person).

Official description:

Whether you’re writing to that special someone, penning longtime fantasies, or want to earn cash for your dirty words, this workshop is for you. You are sure to find growth with the very prolific, award winning erotica author and editor Rachel Kramer Bussel. She will take you through the ins and outs of modern erotic writing. Learn how to get started, find your voice, and write against type. She will talk about incorporating everyday scenarios as well as outlandish fantasies into your writing. Rachel will teach you how to groom your writing to fit particular magazines and anthologies. And how to submit your work and keeping up with the thriving erotica market (including anthologies, ebooks, magazines and websites). Materials Needed: Please bring a laptop or paper and pen.

Thank you, Kelly Writers House!

I'm in the midst of so many projects my to do lists have to do lists, but this week I got to teach an incredible erotic writing workshop at Kelly Writers House at the University of Pennsylvania, and I was so impressed with the students. It reinvigorated my love of writing erotica and made me remember when I was a fumbling, misplaced NYU law student discovering the world of sex-positive feminism and arranged for Lisa Palac to come to campus. I get so angry with myself so often for not writing, for having the idea and maybe getting a thousand or two or three words into a story and then putting it down, for not following my dreams, for assuming there is always something better/smarter/more competent out there, rather than going for broke, and if ever there was a time to just go for it, now is it. So I'm very grateful for these students for reminding me that I have something to say and that my mind is still full of ideas, as long as I sit down, for hours or days or weeks or months or years, tuning everything else out, and Do The Work. I hope I will soon have a book of short stories to share with you! But I also know that "hope" is probably the dumbest word to ever pair with writing. I will or I won't. I'll post here either way.

Pre-tattoo listening: "Turning Tables" by Adele

Because I'm me, there will of course be a tattoo essay forthcoming. I've thought so much about this tattoo, why I need it, what I hope to do differently, and, well, Adele captures it so perfectly in "Turning Tables:"

Next time I'll be braver
I'll be my own savior
When the thunder calls for me
Next time I'll be braver
I'll be my own savior
Standing on my own two feet

"french-kiss life"*

I’ve been reading a lot—well, I always am, but a lot of what could be called self-help, even though some of it is about writing. I read a lot of sites that talk about your message, your following, building those to drive a career, a following. The thing I’ve struggled with, over and over, is how to write honestly about my life on this blog when that message is not always, or even often, a fit in terms of promoting my books. Nor is this blog title. The last thing I am these days is “lusty.” I feel like sex, or rather, the idea of it, is all about other people’s desires and I misplaced mine in my travels, perhaps, left them on an airplane.

I know they’ll be back, but right now my desire is for so many other things that feel more pressing than sex. I’m speaking just for and as myself, obviously, but I think part of what feels like reclaiming control of my life, because it certainly has felt out of control, is figuring out how to put sex in its proper place. Sex (by which I mean both sex and relationships and other people in general) is not going to fix all the things I don't like about myself. It has its uses and value, of course, I'd be the last one to deny that, but it is not some panacea and I have treated it like one for way too long and that concerns me. I'm willing to take a break from it so that I can properly appreciate sex with myself or others in a way that's healthy, not escapist.

I seem to take one step forward and then at least a few back. Like last week, when I finally got up the courage to call a psychiatrist. I was so proud of myself, but then discovered the one I want to see doesn’t take my insurance, and the only one who seems to is a proponent of Wealth Therapy and while that might be something to pursue someday, I want to go with the first pick. And then I bounced a check...to my accountant. Someone sent me this Hyperbole and a Half comic, "This is Why I'll Never be an Adult," and I so relate. Adulthood is a pain in the ass. I feel so bad at it and yet I know I have to just do it, trial and error, even things that most people maybe do in their twenties and I'm just now tackling. That instinct to run away and stop when it gets hard is how I've landed in so many of my big and little dramas.

Anyway, then some other drama went down and I kindof lost my shit. And while I was losing it, I didn’t have any sense of perspective. I cried into my pillow, I cried into my clothes, I cried into a ton of napkins and I cried into my dinner and I had to try to unpack exactly why I was crying, and I’m still sorting that out. I know what triggered it, but there are so many deeper questions I have to confront and ask myself, and those aren’t going to be solved in the span of a night or a week. They’re a lifelong project.

I’ve always shied away from anything hard. If I couldn’t foresee the finish line, if my mind had to have faith and trust that there was a finish line, I pretended it didn’t exist, or made it such that it didn’t exist. I wanted to know exactly how things were going to go, whether I'd win or lose, succeed or fail, I wanted everything mapped out and clear and I was so afraid to trust myself that I wound up lashing out, in a way, against those who trusted me. "I'll show you not to have faith in me, not to believe in me." Yet there are still more doors opening, more opportunities, and I am slowly learning that being grateful is also part of adulthood. Closing doors gently instead of slamming them, and opening them gently too, instead of flinging them so firmly they hit me on the way in.

And now I feel like I’m at a place where I am actually a little closer to being open, like my tattoo says, to both those opportunities and to the awareness that I do have to treat this whole adulthood thing like I'm starting from the beginning. Maybe it took a total meltdown to get to a place where I had to admit that I don’t know much of anything, where I had to accept that the progress I thought I’d made over a certain situation was an illusion, maybe a necessary illusion, but an illusion nonetheless. I’m tired of living behind so many illusions and shame and secrets. I decided to stop saying “yes” if people asked if I’m okay if the real answer is no. I decided to just own that I cry and I can’t predict how long it’ll last or where it’ll erupt.

And of course, because that’s how these things go, as soon as I told one person I was on the brink of tears, one person who’d seen me but didn’t know, she admitted that she was too, and so was someone else, and I had no idea, and wouldn’t have known. None of us were trying to tell each other how to feel or “cheer each other up” or pretend that there’s something wrong with being sad. That was so beautiful to me, to just acknowledge it and live it and let it sit and simmer instead of rushing in to eradicate it with food or drugs or sex or whatever your coping mechanism of choice is.

*And then I discovered Danielle LaPorte, whose tagline for her site White Hot Truth is "Because Self Actualization Rocks," and was really blown away. I just ordered her 10-card set, and one of them says this:



I plan to keep that card all for myself, as a reminder of how I want to approach each day, not with the dread or guilt or fear I seem to approach most of them with, but with the idea that this is a chance to start over, always, and that I have the power to steer the course of my days. I don’t think LaPorte means that every day will be free of tears or badness/sadness. That’s unrealistic. But I want to learn to find the moments of growth and strength even when I’m, like Justin Bartha’s character in All New People (which is a comedy and has its flaws but of course I related to this part) when he simply asks G-d for help. Which I did, but I also asked myself for help, even though I don't purport to have any divine or even undivine answers. At the end of the day, my answers will have to be enough, as flawed and human and stumbling and maybe sometimes brilliant as they are.

Via Piccsy. Smart one, that John Green.

"Writer's porn"

I've ordered this book because I'm at this point with my YA novel where...well, frankly, I'm not actively writing it, but I'm ready to. I'm excited about the story and wishing i hadn't gone to California in January so I could take a week and go to some magical place and write. That I might do next year, but this year, I am stuck with the constraints of real life, which means fitting writing in to a full-time job, part-time blogging, freelancing, dating, family, social life, etc. Not easy when you're a natural procrastinator. But I could and do come up with zillions of excuses not to work and none of them are good ones. Ultimately, if you want to do something, you will do it. I know that very, very well.

I read novelist Justine Musk's blog Tribal Writer for inspiration to work, and she writes of Alan Watts' The 90-Day Novel:

I like to think of writing fiction as a difficult and intricate kind of magic.
Magic = skills + art.

You need to learn a rather stunning array of skills, whether it’s the rules of decent grammar or the principles of storytelling, and then you need to transform them into something your own. The dancer becomes the dance. You don’t see the plot points, you only experience story.

So I love to read books and articles about how to write fiction. I think of it as writer’s porn.

So I guess we'll see. My goal is to be done with my novel by Labor Day. I hope this book can guide me in the right direction of how to pull off these characters who are less than half my age and live in an age of technology I couldn't have imaged as a teenager, and barely can now (it's a contemporary, but technology plays a huge role).

You can also check out the90daynovel.com

I wish there were more long-term relationship erotic stories like Christen Clifford's "After Ten Years"

Christen Clifford

I wasn’t really in the mood for a reading last night, and I was running really late. As I walked fast from SoHo to the Lower East Side, I got a voicemail from D.L. King that Bluestockings was packed. We had a good crowd, despite the umpteen other events, and as I listened to Christen Clifford read her story “After Ten Years” from Gotta Have It, I was struck by how rare it is that I get a perfect story like that about a long-term relationship. It was tender and sexy and real; it wasn’t trying to pretty sex up, make it funny or perfect. There are moments of friction between the characters, ways they don’t get along, aren’t quite in sync in bed, and yet the narrator isn’t looking elsewhere. She wants what she wants from the same person after ten years.

I’ve known Christen a long time; I once did an event she organized at Makor, along with Julie Atlas Muz and I can’t remember who else. I’ve seen her perform her one-woman show 17 Guys I Fucked while I think 7 or 8 months pregnant. Hearing and watching her read, seeing her blush or squirm, was so moving. I wish I could do readings with all the authors (66, since 3 of them are me), and hear what they bring to their work. I hope more people will send me stories like that, especially for my next erotic romance anthology, but even for the “erotica.” It was perfect and moving and in 1,200 words or less, she captured sex in a long-term relationship. THAT is what I look for when I edit an anthology, that mix that doesn’t shield sex from the rest of the world, or use sex to shield characters from the rest of the world. It mixes them together, and she brought all the italics in the story to life as she read. I wish I had a recording of it, but maybe part of me doesn’t; maybe you had to be there, and maybe that’s as it should be.

I wanted to select a short segment of the story for you, one that captures what I’m talking about, but you know what? You have to read it. I’m not even asking you to buy it (and, shhhh….I’ll give you a copy if you ask nicely and promise to write a review for me on Amazon, until I run out), but go to your local bookstore. Look at page 173 and take five minutes and tell me if that doesn’t move you. Or, yes, you could buy the book (see below for options). But really, I'm sick of the relentless selling, the postcard mailing, the posting in a bazillion places, the utter uncreativity of book promotion. Who knows if I'm good at it? Who knows when those statements arrive whether anything I've done has made a difference? Right now, I just am moved by a story...the whole reason I got into this crazy thing called erotica editing.

There’s love and hurt and lust and pain and desire and raw need. There’s so much in that short short story and I listened, me, someone who is likely never to be in a relationship for ten years, someone for whom that seems inconceivable. There is a line in the story that is not at the end, but near it, that is, I think, the backbone of it, what makes all the surrounding words so meaningful: “I want him to fuck me forever.” So yeah, that reading reminded me why I say yes to these things even when they’re often the last thing I want to do. I was in a sports bra and t-shirt and ratty sweater, no time to change. I was ratty and wheezing and didn’t really care, and I read some other people’s stories and my own. I knew I’d be reminded of D.L. King’s librarian late fee punishment story “Punishment Befitting the Crime” every time I pay the New York Public Library for my overdue fees. I remembered that way back when, in, 2001, I think, I organized my very first reading, and it was at Bluestockings. It was a nice way to end a long day, to sign off from doing readings and focus on words on the page, on the screen, words in ways that don’t involve quite as much relentless ubiquity and self-promotion and stress, words that have room to breathe and give the reader a chance to read them alone, in private, not be blasted with them live. That is not really my thing anymore, and the freedom of not having to corral people anywhere every month is one I feel immensely. I’m grateful every time anyone shows up, and was pleasantly surprised at the crowd last night, at the readers, and at myself. So thank you for that, for a last hurrah (though I will be asking questions about art, morals, death [her book opens with a suicide], love, sex, pornography and more of Pleasure Bound author Deborah Lutz Thursday night at 7 at McNally Jackson, which will also have copies of my books ,but interviewing, where the burden is on someone else to talk, I’m happy to keep doing).

Order Gotta Have It from:



Amazon.com



Kindle edition (coming soon)



Bn.com (Barnes & Noble)



Books-a-Million



Borders



Powell's



IndieBound (find your local independent bookstore)



Cleis Press

inspiration

It's weird sometimes to me how fast time flies. Tomorrow night it's a friend's birthday party, and, well, I've come a long way, baby. Been thinking about a lot of things, not all so cheery, but healthy thoughts that show I'm growing up. I'm definitely not that girl I was at that party that seems like ten, not two, years ago. And I'm so grateful for that. I'm not perfect, and I know nobody is, but he's the one who taught me about being a "work in progress," and I have to try to remember that when I want the changes to take place instantly. When I want to snap my fingers and be perfect, impulse-free, as nonchalant as everyone around me is. I've been thinking about the idea of "rock bottom," of how we all deal with that in our own different ways. Of how easy it is to try to rescue someone else from it rather than myself.

From "Living Without Alcohol" in The Merry Recluse by Caroline Knapp:

The hard part, the having-a-life part, has to do with what goes on mentally, with the questions and choices and feelings that present themselves when they're not perpetually blunted and obscured by alcohol. This is the big stuff, the stuff that has you staring at the ceiling at 3 a.m. What kind of person am I, really? How do I truly want to spend my time? What knid of a life am I capable of, cut out for? What sustains me, motivates me, satisfies me? These are the sorts of issues of self tha tmost people (at least most thinking people) start addressing in their 20s, and it can be very disconcerting indeed to wake up at the age of 37 and realize you've never really raised the questions, let alone begun to answer them.

I'm learning, with a little help and inspiration from writers like Rebecca Woolf and Anna David and so many others. You wouldn't think a book called Party Girl could spin your head around, but you'd be wrong, dead wrong. I was rereading this brilliant post of Rebecca's and thinking that she is my new Marianne Williamson.

I may have played the part of mother and acted like I cared about the world, wanted to join the peace corps, hold the hair of the puking drunk, love everyone unconditionally. I may have acted like I was selfless, honest, real but I was a good liar. Even I believed me.

I said I love you to everyone who needed to be loved but did I love them? Of course not. I loved saying so. I loved that my love was enough to make a difference, at least until morning. I loved that my words could be an easy fix, could numb the pain. Fix a moment. Fix an hour. Fix a life. I loved that I could be the strong one, even though I was falling apart. I felt like I was worth something. I was alive.

I've probably quoted this before but powerful thoughts are worth repeating, especially right now when sometimes I feel like I just churn out words that don't stick, words that won't ever make someone cry. I have, yes, but I want to find that again. I'm looking for it when I settle my pretty new laptop on my lap, looking underneath the easy surface, and sometimes a moment, an image, a memory hits me, and I get where it goes in the puzzle. There are plenty of other things I don't get, things that make me cry and not in the good way. Sentences that stir up all the old feelings, that make any progress I've made in the last few months pretty much obsolete. I don't want to ignore those feelings but I know I can't live in them. I know that sometimes it's like Mary Lou Lord sang, "sometimes there's not goodbye and no reply and just no point in questioning why." But knowing and believeing are not the same thing.

I still have that "Our deepest fear..." quote up on my cubicle but I often forget to look at it. I forget to believe in myself. I forget it's not all about my drama, I forget that life is not so all or nothing. I had a brilliant time in Austin but there was a point where I went to that lowest, lowest place, and I realized that it's not a drinking or not drinking thing, it's not a point of no return burst of happiness, it's not about being "cured" or "over it" or above it all. Life is one day at a time, whether you have an addictive personality or not. That's a tough one if you want it all to be over and done with in one big dramatic moment.

I'm learning about learning. About learning from people who aren't exactly like me on the outside, but on the inside, where it matters, we are. Which is why we can have those ridiculous bonding moments like at SXSW or I can cry on line at the post office because I see myself in this lost and then found character. And why I want to be the kind of mom I saw in Rebecca and Romi this weekend. But before I even try to take care of anyone else like that, I have to take care of myself.

Class of 2007 Reading Series tonight at Boxcar Lounge

From the fabulous Jami Attenberg - I read an essay Min Jin Lee wrote way back over 10 years ago, when I was in law school, in Rebecca Walker's anthology To Be Real. She was an ex-lawyer trying to be a writer and I was a miserable, horrible law student trying to figure out what I wanted to do. We exchanged letters and I believe a phone call in which Min Jin Lee told me I have "books in my voice." I didn't really believe her and sometimes still don't, but since publishers seem to, I guess it's true. I can't wait to dig into the huge galley of her first novel Free Food for Millionaires I just got sent to me. She's obviously impressed other people in a big way too. I've been looking forward to this reading for a while. Also can't wait to see the always wonderful Felicia Sullivan read from her forthcoming must-read memoir The Sky Isn't Visible From Here.

The Class of 2007 Reading Series @ Boxcar Lounge
February 28, 2007 8 PM
Annie Choi, Joshua Ferris, Min Jin Lee, Felicia Sullivan

About the series:

Get a sneak preview of the coming year's best new first-time authors in the comfort of a cozy East Village bar. Boxcar Lounge is located at 168 Ave B (10th/11th). The series is curated by Jami Attenberg, author of Instant Love (Crown/Shaye Areheart Books, 2006) and the forthcoming novel The Kept Man (Riverhead Books, 2008).

Last season's fantastic readers included: Laura Dave, Janice Erlbaum, Shari Goldhagen, David Goodwillie, Robin Hazelwood, Karen Russell, Marisha Pessl, Hana Schank, Deborah Schoeneman, Scott Snyder, and
Pauls Toutonghi.

About the readers:

Annie Choi was born and raised in the greater Los Angeles area. She received her BA from University of California, Berkeley and her MFA in writing from Columbia University. Her first book, HAPPY BIRTHDAY OR WHATEVER: TRACK SUITS, KIM CHEE, AND OTHER FAMILY DISASTERS will be released April 3 by HarperCollins. She lives in New York City. Her website is www.annietown.com.



Joshua Ferris is the author of the forthcoming novel THEN WE CAME TO THE END (Little, Brown, March). His short fiction has appeared in The Iowa Review, Best New American Voices and Prairie Schooner. He also writes for film.

Min Jin Lee went to Yale College where she was awarded both the Henry Wright Prize for Nonfiction and the James Ashmun Veech Prize for Fiction. She then attended Georgetown Law School and worked as a lawyer for several years before leaving to write full time. She has received the NYFA Fellowship for Fiction, the Peden Prize from the Missouri Review for Best Story, and the Narrative Prize for New and Emerging Writer. Her work has also been featured on NPR's Selected Shorts and anthologized in TO BE REAL (Doubleday, 1995) and BREEDER (Seal Press, 2001). Her first novel FREE FOOD FOR MILLIONAIRES is published by Warner Books for May 2007. She lives in New York with her husband and son.



Felicia C. Sullivan is a New York based writer with an MFA from Columbia University. A two-time Pushcart Prize nominee, her work has been published in Swink, Post Road, Mississippi Review, Pindeldyboz, Ballyhoo Stories, Publisher's Weekly, the anthologies, HOMEWRECKER - AN ATLAS OF ILLICIT LOVES and MONEY CHANGES EVERYTHING.An excerpt from her memoir was a notable essay in THE BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 2006 collection. Algonquin Books will publish her memoir THE SKY ISN'T VISIBLE FROM HERE in August 2007. She is the founder of the literary journal, Small Spiral Notebook. Visit her website: www.feliciasullivan.com