Hi all, first time poster even though I've been posting stories on here for the past few months. Had a funny question rattling around in my head recently, and I'd like to put it to some of you: Have you ever, uh...pleasured yourself to erotica you've written here or anywhere else? Personally, it's something I'm guilty of fairly often. During the writing process basically all of my motivation to keep going rests on whether or not I find the thing I'm writing sexy, and often the chapters or stories that flow the easiest onto the page are the ones where my engine's pretty consistently running and I'm constantly steering it in directions I personally find arousing. My motivation to continue writing a story thread dies a death the instant I stop finding it sexy, or else find that I've written myself into one corner or another that makes further sexy stuff difficult to get to without compromising (what little) characters I've written into the story, or having to get bogged down in boring plot mechanics for too long. This is basically the number one reason I will sometimes have gaps in my output of weeks to a month, and it always drives me mad whenever it happens. It makes sense though, because for me, the whole 'writing erotica' thing basically grew out of me reading stuff on Literotica and wanting something tailored to my specific tastes; it turned out the easiest way to do that was just writing it myself, so here I am. The old gag about 'writing one-handed' is a thing for a reason, so I figure it's probably fairly widespread among those of us who write this kind of stuff, right? I mean, my assumption would be you're getting some level of gratification from it, even if it's more subdued than 'literally masturbating to words as you write them down like some kind of narcisstic weirdo', but maybe some of you have a different perspective on this?
Only very rarely. Even when I've written a story that's very arousing to me, by the time it's done I've spent so much effort and put so much time into it that I lose the ability to suppress my inner critic when reading it. I can't just sit back and enjoy it any more. When it's done, it's a Work, and The Work Has To Be Judged. "Oh, I could've written this better", "Huh, this motivation doesn't make a whole lot of sense", "Oof, you can really tell I'm forcing the story to go into a particular direction here". That said, writing such a story is very arousing to me, especially when I get to the hot and heavy parts. I don't write one-handed, though. I need my focus, even if my dick is saying "play with me, play with me!"
Honestly. I think a lot of people write because they didn't find anything that hits that particular itch. Like how I was annoyed that @TheLeherengin doesn't have that many lesbian femdom scenes in Dustbin Stories, so I ended up just starting to write scenes I want myself. I do relate to getting bogged down in plot elements but I just don't feel right if I force something or leave a massive gaping plot point. I enjoy quality writing so I have to meet my standard and that is easier said than done, hahah.
Short answer: Yes. Longer answer: I've read a lot of stuff here (and elsewhere), and I realize that while there are zillions of genres and stories, the ones that most consistently and effectively get me going are my own. Sadly, I find bad spelling and grammar, inconsistent plot lines, poor pacing, and impossible characters all to be significant turnoffs, so I work hard to make my own stuff meet my expectations. And when I go back and read my own threads, I get into it, I start enjoying it ... and then I see a typo I missed, sigh exasperatedly, and go back into edit mode to fix the mistake. If it's not right, it's not finished. Plus, the bottom line is that I'm in a bubble. Most folks on this site are. I don't have any sense of an audience. I don't get paid for anything I put out there. Likes and bookmarks are wonderful, but they're not much of a metric of success (and definitely don't translate to anything that can address my credit card debt!). And comment threads, at least on my own stuff, tend to be rather skimpy and unhelpful. On my chapters, at least, the math of views > likes > comments is so weirdly balanced that I have no real sense of whether anything is working or not. I suppose that until someone either says "wow, this is incredible, I want to hire you to write for me" or "wow, this is trash, I hope you never write another word," I'll just go on doing what suits me.
I very much write the content I would (and do) enjoy, because a HUGE motivation for me originally was the lack of stuff out there that hit my particular interest zone. No one else was writing Big, Dumb, Gay, Orc Bros, so here I am. Ditto my Gay Furry Space-Pirates & Cabin Boy smut, elsewhere. Toni Daring is my nom du porn. If you see a filthy gay fic by Toni Daring, it's probably me. If you know a Toni Daring IRL, please don't blame any of that on them.
