Why I Write Dirty Books
There are various reasons somebody might decide to write erotica. Multiple reasons people might choose to write at all. Maybe they want an enjoyable hobby? Perhaps they want to make some pin money? (Who doesn’t?) Some might see it merely as a pastime, or a way to make a living. Some even might dream of a megabucks hit and retirement to some almost deserted island where all the fantasies they ever had might well come true.
For me? None of the above. Not at all…
Joan Didion, the American author, once said, ‘I don’t know what I think until I write it down.’ Well, that’s exactly how I felt about writing (and sex and life in general). I had no idea what the buzzing in my head actually meant – or if it meant anything at all. Nothing seemed to fit together; my mind felt like it was occupied by a gathering of disorderly bees—all complete strangers to each other.
Until one day, entirely of the blue, I decided to start a journal. This was mainly to give me something to do while my best friend at the time, Dee wrote hers. I started out writing about those separate visions in my head. Not just my thoughts or deeds, but my fantasies too. The ones that kept me awake at night and distracted through the day. It felt like I was tipping the complete contents of my busy mind onto a table, and then delicately arranging them into something I could see more clearly. Like a jig-saw. And just like magic, pictures developed. Whole landscapes of me.
They were short entries to start with, but they soon grew. I began to like the feeling of pouring things out onto paper. I never had any intention to make sense for anyone but me. After all, nobody would be reading them (and no-one ever has!). I was content just to fill in the time, to vent, and to talk utter bollocks to myself.
It was quite a few months later that I realised that there was a powerful central theme developing. What had started out as entries detailing what I had done, where I had been, what I had watched, read, thought and so on, had narrowed down to my increasingly lurid sexual preoccupations. My writings seemed to be taking the form of what I wanted to happen to me. What I wanted to be done to me.
They may have been quite ‘blurry’ in that they were hardly well-thought-out, but I soon realised how sharper they could get if I toyed around with them. Who doesn’t like to tinker a little while having playing with a sexual fantasy?
As my entries (no pun) became longer and more detailed, I started to understand that what I was doing was not merely ‘making things up’, what I was doing was putting down those things that recurred, stuff that ‘pushed my buttons‘. Those things which – in a genuine sense – were to become (and still remain) my grimy-minded obsessions.
Word by word, line by line, I was mapping my own sexuality; getting to know who I was, what I am; and becoming comfortable with what I found in those obscure recesses. So, the short answer is that I write erotica to know myself. The part of me that stirs in my deepest, darkest, most furtive, corners.
Through writing, I have been able to meet myself; introduce the self I thought I was to that person who lurked in my dark reaches. That is who writing helped me to make friends with.
The madwoman in my attic.
When you write, you put yourself in the place of other people. How else do you give life to your characters other than by pretending to be them? The key lies, I suppose, in the type of characters we choose, which characters we want to be ourselves, even if just for a short time. In my own erotic fiction, for example, my central characters often (though not always) share similar (though not identical) characteristics. And funnily enough, I share those very same features: late thirties, divorced…perhaps a little frustrated, vulnerable to…whatever comes their way…
I will often start by seeing a woman whose life I would like to be a tourist in. She could be a friend, a colleague, a woman I pass on this street. Whoever. I then begin the process of imagining I am them; reinventing them in my own splintered image. What I am really doing I suppose is using them as an actor playing ‘me’ in whatever fantasy I am using at the time. In my head, the character is fundamentally me, but the ‘look’ is whoever’s. It becomes less boring that way.
I become obsessed with the woman, by the situation and the possible truth of the stories. I would spend hours and hours imagining that I am her. Sometimes I think I actually want to be her.
I recognise in myself the need for the idea of humiliation and degradation as a means of sexual release. I think of myself as submissive, even masochistic and my fantasies centre around non-consensual sex and various shades of humiliation.
My stories seem to have a definite character type; the humiliated woman, the woman who had no choice, the victim. Do I see myself like that? Not exactly. But through breathing life into those characters, I was also breathing life into myself. I started to feel – well, to acknowledge – that the characteristics of those women formed a deep and abiding – if hidden – part of myself.
And that, dearest, reader….is why I write.
Thank you for reading this, and thank you for visiting my site. Please visit my ‘About Me’ page for more about me.
Other posts you might enjoy:
From IT to writing erotic fiction is a page about more about my own journey from IT geek to author of milf humiliation books, (via my own fantasies, right?). And one BIG fantasy of mine was what could happen if ever I had to take the late night train.
The story of a heart surgeon who learns a lot about herself from a mysterious stranger who lures her into a web of blackmail and degradation. The Ownership of Dr Sally contains the character I most strongly identify with in all my stories. Well….one of them anyway 🙂
You can also read an interview with myself as an author of erotic fiction. Enjoy!
I’m just a woman with an exceptionally ‘grimy’ mind, who loves turning my Immoral thoughts, lewd fantasies and deeply-felt desires into words and stories. Life is just too short to keep them all to myself.
Born and live in Oxford. Divorced. Hobby…..exercising my luring imagination! 🙂