It’s going to be interesting to see whether Only If You Want ever wins a poll before I finish GBM. I wonder which full story is going to see the light of day first, since OiYW is a standalone piece (but a long one at that, well over 10k words).

There’s an interesting paradox to writing erotica. Often times we write what we see and we know, and what we’ve experienced. Sometimes we guess what those experiences are like, as I’ve talked about in the last two blog posts about reliving. The trouble with writing erotica is that it’s insanely private subject matter. If I’ve experienced something unusual sexually in real life and want to write about it, there’s a hundred-to-one chance that the other person wouldn’t want me to write about it. Amy’s Fantasy was based on a secret flirting relationship I had with a female friend, but I had to change a lot of things around to make sure there wasn’t any breach of privacy. To this day, she has read my other stories but never that one, and I can’t say I blame her.

Recently I had some kind of experience with a girl that has an utterly unique name. I love unique names. The trouble is, her name is so unique that even using her name in a story would almost guarantee outing her. I’d love to write a story about her, but part of her uniqueness as a character is her name – not just the fact that it’s rare, but even the sound of her name and the way it conjures an idea of her image. Names are very powerful to me, and it may seem like I choose them willy-nilly, but I don’t. To me, a name has to embody the person. Perhaps I’m being too closed-minded, but there’s a reason that in BMS I named the rebel girl Nicole Baker and the shy sweetheart Megan Schneider. If you aren’t convinced, try picturing all of BMS with Nicole’s name replaced with Sally. There’s just something about it that doesn’t work, and something about Nicole that just… did.

I’m not saying these rules are etched in stone of course, but names have usefulness to them. I spent more time than I should have thinking of Jerome’s name in GBM. Sometimes I write characters’ personalities and then come up with matching names, and sometimes the names come to me and I already know their personalities from the get-go. Names are powerful. It’s why I hate having to replace names when they’re based on real people. That said, respecting real-life people comes before artistic perfection every time, so I shall continue to do so. That said, that most likely means I’ll never write about this girl with the unique name. She’ll be a story that never was, which is all for the better since she doesn’t know I write erotica and probably wouldn’t be too thrilled that I inspired her to write an erotic story anyway. Especially given how sad my erotic stories can end up being.

Maybe I’ll write about that next week, the blurred lines of writing about real-life people and being inspired by sex when it’s such a private affair. I don’t know. Speaking of, if anyone ever has any requests for blog topics, please fire them my way. This place has always just been my avenue of rambling about writing, I don’t exactly have a huge plan for them. My huge plans come for my stories primarily. I’m hoping that in the near future things will take off, but that’s up to fate and up to me to consistently write. Speaking of, I should probably get back to it. I’ll talk to you all next week.