dragonlady7 (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
dragonlady7) wrote2019-02-05 12:33 pm
dragonlady7) wrote2019-02-05 12:33 pm
Entry tags:
on writing erotica
via http://bit.ly/2Ga4DVO
(i hate how long i dithered about writing that word. i’ll see if i get shadowbanned for lemony text here. no i know better than to type the society-standard courtesy acronym. don’t worry this is meta, not actual lemons.)
I’m writing a sex scene and I mean, it’s going just fine, I’m not new, but I was just struck again by how fucking awkward it always is. It’s worse than any other kind of scene, though only really slightly worse than action scenes– there’s a constant battle between the part that wants to be flowery and metaphorical and the part that wants to be salacious, and typing it out always feels like hammering clumsy nails into a too-hard board and desperately hoping that you can go back and make some of them stick but some are definitely going to fall out and the whole thing is a mess and you’re going to have to revise and oh. You should probably have. Like. Punctuation at some point. How many times have I said the word “gasped”? Oh I’ve used the phrase “gone still” like five clauses in a row, whoops. And there’s a part of you that’s like this is art but definitely a bigger part that’s like this is irredeemable smut and then like the biggest part that’s like this is so incoherent no one else will be able to figure out whether it’s art or smut or something else entirely, and you’re like
how do word
and I’ve been doing this twenty years and I don’t think it really gets any easier.
I’m just documenting this because prior to this I was in kind of a dry spell of writing and I had been rereading a lot of my old stuff and was starting to feel sort of conceited, like, oh, I’ve written so much, look how skillful I am, and that’s because I wasn’t really writing, you know? so I guess that’s a mark of success, when you read the finished piece and you’re like oh that was easy because I can assure you, from deep in my current perspective, no it is not.
The actual sex scene is progressing fast enough but let me point out for the record that I wrote, without exaggeration, twelve thousand words that are completely extraneous and will be discarded, just to work up to writing said sex scene which was the entire point, and I’m not kidding, the finished piece will probably wind up at around 5-7k, most of which I haven’t written yet, and all of those preceding twelve thousand words will be boiled down to an in-paragraph summary and the rest discarded. Sex scenes are just difficult enough that your brain will construct elaborate multi-day wordvomit obstacles to keep you from starting them, is what I’m saying.
(Your picture was not posted)
(i hate how long i dithered about writing that word. i’ll see if i get shadowbanned for lemony text here. no i know better than to type the society-standard courtesy acronym. don’t worry this is meta, not actual lemons.)
I’m writing a sex scene and I mean, it’s going just fine, I’m not new, but I was just struck again by how fucking awkward it always is. It’s worse than any other kind of scene, though only really slightly worse than action scenes– there’s a constant battle between the part that wants to be flowery and metaphorical and the part that wants to be salacious, and typing it out always feels like hammering clumsy nails into a too-hard board and desperately hoping that you can go back and make some of them stick but some are definitely going to fall out and the whole thing is a mess and you’re going to have to revise and oh. You should probably have. Like. Punctuation at some point. How many times have I said the word “gasped”? Oh I’ve used the phrase “gone still” like five clauses in a row, whoops. And there’s a part of you that’s like this is art but definitely a bigger part that’s like this is irredeemable smut and then like the biggest part that’s like this is so incoherent no one else will be able to figure out whether it’s art or smut or something else entirely, and you’re like
how do word
and I’ve been doing this twenty years and I don’t think it really gets any easier.
I’m just documenting this because prior to this I was in kind of a dry spell of writing and I had been rereading a lot of my old stuff and was starting to feel sort of conceited, like, oh, I’ve written so much, look how skillful I am, and that’s because I wasn’t really writing, you know? so I guess that’s a mark of success, when you read the finished piece and you’re like oh that was easy because I can assure you, from deep in my current perspective, no it is not.
The actual sex scene is progressing fast enough but let me point out for the record that I wrote, without exaggeration, twelve thousand words that are completely extraneous and will be discarded, just to work up to writing said sex scene which was the entire point, and I’m not kidding, the finished piece will probably wind up at around 5-7k, most of which I haven’t written yet, and all of those preceding twelve thousand words will be boiled down to an in-paragraph summary and the rest discarded. Sex scenes are just difficult enough that your brain will construct elaborate multi-day wordvomit obstacles to keep you from starting them, is what I’m saying.
(Your picture was not posted)
no subject
no subject
Honestly I think that's the only thing that keeps me going, really-- knowing I've somehow made this work in the past. It all seems like such a mess now but really if I push through it'll probably be fine when I look back on it. (Which goes for regular writing too, actually, but it's much more noticeable when it's erotica you've been writing circles around for several thousand words now because your brain's not Ready.)
When I was starting out I honestly didn't know any better, so I think I got good momentum going before it occurred to me that this is something that's not actually easy. I was just so interested, you know. It was like parallel parking-- I figured it out on my first try because I didn't know it was supposed to be difficult, and then since then I've encountered complicated situations where I couldn't do it on the first try and overthought it a bit and so on, but by now I'm so old and have done it so much that I know if I just-- focus, and finish doing it, it'll work out fine.
Goes for a lot of things, right?
Anyway, thanks. *blush*
no subject
It be hard.