A really long time ago, I joined a writers' website called writing.com. If you are so inclined, you may find it here. I really enjoyed my time there and met a lot of really talented writers along the way. I won a bunch of contests and walked away with a couple of long-distance friendships. I can't say enough wonderful things about how this super in-depth website can help improve writing and give writers an outlet to connect with others who have similar interests. I love it.
I didn't let my membership lapse because I thought I'd gotten everything from the community I could. No, in fact, I gave up my membership because there are so many contests and forums and groups for aspiring writers that I found myself spending too much time working on things for the site and not enough on my long-term writing goals. If there's a pitfall of any kind, that would be it. It's easy to get caught up in the immediate feedback from other authors and find yourself writing short stories for peer-editing rather than novels. In some cases, that's a big bonus. For me, it was a dangerous distraction. Still though, good times.
Of the people I still keep in contact with, there's four in particular I really connected with. Each of them are fantastic writers, though they write in different genres. Among us, I'm the only one who writes YA. They served as beta readers for my recent novel and their insights helped me tons. One woman, a soft-spoken Southern Belle from Alabama, has a literary voice you can drown in but she's hell on plot holes. Vicious.
Let me paint you a picture. She'll never see five feet in her life; I'll be shocked if she ever weighs more than 100 pounds. She has curly blond hair and big brown eyes. Her cheeks are always perfectly pink and she only wears shimmery white eyeshadow and clear lipgloss. She favors lace and things she can crochet herself. She looks like a tiny, perfect child at the age of 29.
She writes erotica hot enough to melt ink off paper. Once she sent me an MS to edit; I still joke with her because my computer crashed the next day. I mean, her story probably didn't have anything to do with my computer shorting out. ....... ........
I would link to some of her stuff but I don't want to have to put a content restriction on my blog. And I would feel honor-bound to do it.
She sent me an email yesterday and asked if I was deep into anything for myself or one of the other three of our writing buddies. I told her I was prewriting a new idea. She knows I suck at prewriting and took pity on me. She sent me a new project to read over and asked if I'd email her any suggestions I had.
She always laughs when she asks me for suggestions about content. The only editorial comment I've ever made about content was "Can people actually do that?" She told me about this one time she...regardless. Turns out people can do that.
So I'm her mechanics editor. I doctor her their/there, her comma splices, and her obsessive use of semi-colons. Perhaps it's a side effect of the genre, but she's forever trying to join things with semi-colons.
I do not make suggestions or comments about what the people, ya' know, do. Squeebs me out to think of it. Not because I'm a prude. Because I would suck at writing it.
Sidebar: Erotica has got to be hard to write. I would never get through the first scene because I don't have the touch for it. "He put his you-know in her thingamajig" is NOT hot. Or hawt. Or remotely erotic. It's questionable to even call it an actual sentence. And that's as good as it gets.
I finished reading it and making editorial notes this afternoon. It's wonderful. The plot is sweet, the characters are completely likable. And flexible. Boy, howdy, are they flexible. Circus sideshow flexible. And the man, if I understood the subtle nuances of words like "huge" (and I believe I do) could damn near service the woman from another room. If you know what I mean.
If you don't, please don't ask me to explain it. Because my explanation is going to be something like:
His you-know was big. Like really big. Like, if it had a theme song it would be Whoomp, There it Is big.
So anyway, after I sent her the notes, she called me.
"How do you feel about throbbing versus pulsating?"
I answered thusly, because I am a jackassed idiot, "How do I feel about throbbing or pulsating in relation to what?"
After she finished laughing--and it took a minute or two--she explained what she meant.
"Oh." I said.
"So which do you like?"
"Um...either?" I asked by way of answering.
"No. It's two totally different things."
Is it now? Me, the girl who prides herself on finding exactly the right word, didn't get that.
Throbbing. Pulsating. See, I still don't get the distinction.
What, I wonder, is the quantifiable difference between the two?
The fact I don't get it is just another reason I would be bad at erotica.
I'd be very, very bad. I'd need to be span--
Nope, can't do it.
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