Friday, July 1, 2016

Phallic Friday - erotic authors' thoughts

One of the erotic authors asked a bunch of other erotic authors to answer some questions for her. 130 people responded, which I think is completely incredible.

But what's more incredible are the posts from this Q & A of authors. So far there have been 6, but there's another half dozen planned and I'm loving reading them.

So let me point you to the place to find these gems: it's the website of author, Emmanuelle de Maupassant, which you can find here.

But if you aren't inclined to go and read, let me pull out some of the things that have blown my mind.

Men Reading Erotica
Over 50 male readers also took a survey and the results (in the above link) were really interesting. Owning your sexuality was a theme that came through. As was finding themes that validate you/your choices/your sexuality. Some liked to read about things that they would never do in reality, or that are unable to be done legally, or that stretch the realms of sanity. Some readers found it enhanced their understanding of female sexuality and others found it more realistic than porn. It's a fascinating article if you're interested in who reads erotic fiction.

Men Writing Erotic Fiction
This one was a real eye-opener for me. The major thing I took from this article was that male authors suffer the same 'stigma' that female authors do. I thought that men would be less judgemental about males writing about sex, but apparently this isn't so. In a way I was glad that it wasn't a gender-specific issue, but in another way, I'm sad that sex is such a taboo subject that no one can write it easily.

There's a lot more in this post than what I took out of it...so go read :)

Writers of Erotic Fiction
This post gives an overall intro to who the sort of people are who write about sex. Their ages range from 20s to over 70s.

What inspired you to write
Many were inspired by their own experiences, while others couldn't find what they wanted to read.

Why do you write erotic fiction?
I was interested to see that many authors wanted to explore - their fantasies, real events, human nature, a particular act. Some authors particularly write erotic fiction to tap into emotions - fear, arousal, desire, lust. Others want to own their sexuality, have a place to write what's important, without fear.

Fantasy and Reality
I found this quite fascinating from the post - "Just over 40% of the writers surveyed stress that they draw significantly on their own real life sexual experiences to inspire their writing. The majority mention doing so in addition to, rather than instead of, exploring imagined fantasies. Only a handful write primarily from a position of recalling their own sexual history, or drawing heavily on events witnessed/related to them."

And this - "The majority of authors note that, although their fantasies do, to some degree, inform their writing, storytelling tends to take over, adding embellishment and new direction."

I think these blog posts are a really interesting look into what happens behind a book. What thoughts people have as they write erotic fiction. It's certainly opened my eyes and made me think.

And separate to these articles, is one trying to see if you can pick the male/female authors. I'm eager to see if I got any of them correct because I found it incredibly difficult to pick!

A brilliant body of work from Emmanuelle. Thanks!!




No comments:

Post a Comment